Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Coin As Found on Treasure Coast Beach |
On the side shown the exposed area looked like silver, but it was unusually shiny - not like oxidized silver.
On the other side, there appeared to be part of a design that looked like a wheat penny.
Put the clues together. One side looked silver, but the other side looked like it might be a wheat penny. What do you think it is?
After a little cleaning the answer was clear.
It turned out to be a steel cent. It was obviously lost before it was in circulation very long. The small details were sharp although some corrosion did mar the surface that wasn't protected by crust.
Below is the same coin, after some cleaning.
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| 1943 Steel Cent |
Wheat pennies have been popping up a lot lately, but steel cents are less common. I've found a lot of wheats in the past but very few steel.
If you find a 1943 cent made of copper, that could be worth thousands of dollars. Only 40 copper-alloy 1943 cents are known to exist.
The steel cents were made during the war because of shortages in copper and nickel but a few copper cents were struck by accident.
A 1943 copper penny sold for $10,000 in 1981. The highest amount paid for a 1943 copper cent was $82,500 in 1996.
1943 copper cents have been counterfeited by coating steel cents with copper or by altering the dates of 1945, 1948, and 1949 pennies.
If a 1943 cent is made of steel instead of copper it will stick to a magnet If it is copper it will not stick.
The hurricane season is nearly over and there has not been near the predicted activity. Here is a link to a story about that.
http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20131007/NEWS01/310070021/Climatologist-says-slow-hurricane-season-winding-down?gcheck=1
I sometimes wonder why things aren't made better, especially detectors. Nothing annoys me more than equipment that won't stand up to usage. That is one reason I don't like a lot of features on a detector. I don't want anymore than the basics that I really care about. The more there is, there more there is to go wrong.
And detectors, like many other consumer electronics, are often poorly designed. They are almost made like disposable products. Use them while they work and then trash them. But they are really too expensive for that to make sense.
One feature that more detectors should have is a separate compartments for the battery and circuits, most definitely for underwater detectors. The Fisher Aquanaut had that, and it was effective. You didn't get acid in the circuit compartment if you had a bad battery, and also if the seal was not tight and you got water leakage, as happened to me once, the circuit board was still protected because of the two separate compartments. That is good design.
I'll comment more on some repair experiences in the next few days.
A diver drowned after experiencing an equipment problem while cave diving in a Florida State Park yesterday.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2013/oct/11/drowned-florida-diver-had-equipment-trouble/
Columbus Day is Monday.
On the Treasure Coast the erosion that occurred the past couple of days is disappearing.
The four-foot cuts that I showed yesterday are now one to two feet less. The sand has begun to fill the cuts. And where I found targets yesterday, none today.
The surf web sites are predicting a two to three foot surf for a few days now. I didn't expect more erosion after yesterday, but I didn't expect such rapid filling either.
The high tides are fairly high, but so are the low tides.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
