10/29/30 Report - Seated Liberty, Silver Ring, Visually Scouting a Site, & Golden Leaves

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

Old coins found on the beach are often corroded and in poor condition.  Some old US coins recently found on a land site did not have the same type of corrosion typical of beach finds but were very heavily worn.  It made me wonder why they were so worn.  This one had a barely visible design.

The date on this one would be somewhere between 1837 and 1891 since it appears to be a Seated Liberty dime.  The melt value would be only a dollar or two.

Here is a web site that helps you to determine the melt value of silver coins as silver prices change from day to day.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Seated-Liberty-Dimes-How-Much-Is-The-Silver-Worth-/10000000007328101/g.html

Here is the other side of the same dime.

What I can't figure out is why all three silver coins that were found at the site would be so heavily worn.  It seems a little unusual to me.

The other day I said I was scouting a historic property.  I first did a lot of looking around to see if I could tell where things might have been years and years ago.

I do a lot of visual inspection of beaches too.  Often I don't even take my detector out, but depending upon how things look, just move to another site.

I think it is good to visually inspect sites before detecting.  There are a lot of things that will tip you off on where to detect.

On a beach, much of it has to do with where the sand is moving, but on modern swimming beaches you might look at other things such as where different types of people congregate and what activities take place at different places and what places other detectorists have been.  There are a lot of little clues to look for.

There are some places that are protected in one way or another.  For example around metal beach chairs, fences or poles, many detectorists don't detect.  You can actually learn how to detect places like that.  I've given a few clues on how that is done in old posts.

Back to land sites.  Inspect the terrain.  Are there streams, springs, dips, signs of old trenches or mounds?  All of those things can tell you where things were likely done in the past.

At the site I recently detected, I noticed pieces of concrete that were once part of an old foundation.  The first piece I found was down over a bank from the foundation.  I eventually found the original location.

The first things you'll often see are pieces of glass or pottery on the ground.  Also bricks.

Look for rusty iron, nails, and wood.  They'll often be on or near the surface.

Also look for signs of fire, charcoal, or burnt dark earth.

Just walk around and look for any clues, and then make a mental map of the site.

You might want to dig a few small holes to see what is directly under the surface at some locations.  And you might want to rake up grass, leaves or junk.

You can learn a lot by visually inspecting either a land site or beach before deciding where to detect.

And remember, there might be many layers to a site.  Modern items might be on top of older layers.

Silver Shallow Water Find by William M.
Photo by William m.

Here is a nice silver ring find by William M. who was doing some shallow water hunting the other day.
The small surf lately has made for some easy water detecting.

Some areas are also protected by a near shore sand bar.


It seems that inspection of trees reveals small amounts of gold in the leaves of trees growing up to 100 feet above gold deposits.

Here is a link to that story.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24628241


And if you don't have a way of looking for microscopic particles in leaves, you might consult a Swami.  Archaeologists digging into an area where a Swami dreamt there was tons of gold buried have found artifacts.

Maybe they'll find the gold.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-22/an-india-gold/5036784


On the Treasure Coast today we still have a one to two foot surf.

4 - 7 feet is predicted for a couple of days next week.  If that actually happens, it might significantly  improve beach detecting conditions for older items.  Keep watching that.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net