Wednesday, September 11, 2013

9/11/13 Whydah, HMS Victory, Nugget Jewelry and Beach Conditions.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.


Treasure Coast Beach Showing A Little Erosion.
This photo is from yesterday.  Notice the small erosion creating a second step.

This erosion was really not significant in terms of improving detecting conditions. It probably occurred during one of the high tides the day before.

Also notice the sea weed.

The erosion was confined to a small area.  The sand in front was mushy, as you would expect from seeing the sea weed.

Two other beaches I looked at were about the same.  One beach was just a touch better looking, having a wider flat area in front.  

Overall this is pretty much what I'd expect to find almost anywhere along the Treasure Coast right now.  Nothing very exciting.

Here is a video showing one Treasure Coast beach and the surf yesterday morning.  Pretty typical.







The Whydah, which the following linked article calls the only documented pirate ship wreck, is producing a lot of artifacts and coins.

Salvage efforts on the Whydah may have recently struck a hot spot.  It looks like bags of coins have just been found.   It looks like there may still be something like 400,000 pieces of eight still unaccounted for.

Here is the link to the recent article Times News article.

http://www.timesnews.net/article/9067132/dive-signals-more-treasure-at-site-of-pirate-ship-wreck


Here is another good web site showing a reconstruction of the Whydah and some of the artifacts and treasure found on the site.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415873/Treasure-hunter-finds-gold-coins-stacked-like-poker-chips-18th-century-pirate-ship-Cape-Cod.html

Whydah links submitted by rinkrat.  Thanks fellow!


And here is a great web site on the HMS Victory.  Great pictures.  This one was submitted by Christopher P.  Thanks!

http://www.victory1744.org/


A week or so ago I showed a nugget ring beach find.  Robert K. wrote in about that.  Here is what Robert said.

As a prospector, I have several pieces of jewelry that were made from actual natural gold nuggets.
The ring you found may be marked 14K, but if you were to test the nuggets in the setting it is possible they would test out at 20 - 23K. It would depend on where the nuggets were found. Most AK. and CA.
nuggets are 20-22K, all though I have found many in Maine that test out at 22K as well.

Gold in it's natural form (nugget) is more valuable than gold that has been refined and poured into a mold or made into jewelry because nuggets are hard to find in their natural form and the bigger the better. Large nuggets are sold as "jewelry quality" and are generally made into pendants, rings, bracelets and the smaller ones can be lightly melted together and used as decoration on watch bands and belt buckles or ear rings.

Robert sent links to a number of items made from and decorated by natural nuggets.  Very nice stuff.


We're have 2 - 3 foot surf with very little variation the next few days.  Thursday a little less and Friday a little more, but nothing significant.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net