Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Another Recent Treasure Coast Beach Reale Find and Photo by William M. |
Yesterday I showed a cob found by William M. He was going through his finds and was excited to see that he had dug another cob.
The one I showed yesterday I'm guessing from the photos might be a Lima half reale. William is going to get it weighed so then we'll have a better idea if it is a half reale for sure.
This one is small and probably a half reale too. It looks like a rather typical beach find. It appears to be a Mexico half. You can tell from the ends of the cross that it was minted in Mexico.
The one he showed yesterday had a bar across the ends of the cross instead of the ball, like this one.
We'll see what if any more we can learn about these cobs. Maybe we'll get some more photos.
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| One Treasure Coast Beach Yesterday Near Low Tide.
The above is pretty much the kind of thing that you'll typically find around the Treasure Coast right now.
There are several things to notice. One is the sea weed and the sea weed line, which shows that light materials including sand had been coming in. The sea weed line can also tell you where the last high tide was.
On this beach a sand bar that was in shallow water is now pretty much attached to the front beach. In this photo, that would be between the white water and top seaweed line.
The black narrow rectangle shows the approximate area where I was getting miscellaneous targets. The targets were deep, below several inches of sand and near the top of a covered layer of shells.
When you don't know the denomination of a cob, you can often figure it out from its weight. Here are the proper weights for the denominations of silver cobs according to Royal Proclamations up to the year 1728.
8 reales - 27.468 grams 4 reales - 13.734 grams 2 reales - 6.867 grams 1 reale - 3.4335 grams 1/2 reale - 1.7167 grams 1/4 reale - 0.8584 grams As you probably know, cobs were not always made to the proper weight. Many were off when they were minted. But I think you can expect most cobs found on the beach to be slightly under weight due in part to corrosion. That has certainly been my experience. Most of the cobs that I've found in the past were just a touch underweight to considerably underweight. Sometimes you can tell when a cob has lost a lot of material to corrosion by looking at it. Cobs that were minted overweight cheated both the owner and the Royal Hacienda. If they were too much overweight, it would be detected and the entire batch would be remelted, costing the mint and assayer a lot of money. In 1728 the prescribed weights for reales were reduced slightly and stayed the same until 1825. William's cob shown above looks like it has that common black crust on it. Maybe we'll get a photo of the other side soon. Ingrid is in Mexico and Humberto is headed north into the North Atlantic. No other storms appear on the National Hurricane Service maps right now.
 A higher surf of 3 - 5 feet is now predicted for Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe I'll be able to increase my beach detecting conditions rating. Low tide today will be around 1 PM. The high tide will be a little higher than normal. Happy hunting, TreasureGuide@comcast.net |
