Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Gold and Onyx Ring |
The beach is always being replenished, and not only with sand.
When it comes to gold, it isn't always easy to tell how long ago it was lost. People still wear around antique and vintage items to some extent.
In the previous post I talked about the poll results related to silver cobs and coins. Today I'll talk about the results for finds other than reales. That includes both gold and non-precious metals.
In the most recent poll, fourteen people reported finding shipwreck items or artifacts of non-precious metals. That includes ceramics, such as olive jar pieces, iron or bronze spikes and other things.
The number of non-precious metal finds looks to be about the same as reale finds, although I do not have exact numbers found for any category - just the number of people that found one or more of a particular type of item. We don't know from the poll, if those that found non-precious metals also found silver or gold or if it was an entirely different group of people. I can only do so much with these very limited polls. I can however over time gather more information in additional polls and put it all together.
Now the very fascinating category - gold. Two people reported finding gold escudos. Amazing finds indeed! One was rumored to be an eight-escudo yet.
Unfortunately I have not received any photos of the escudo finds. Shipwreck gold beach finds are not real common, but according to the poll results, there were two people who found escudos but only one that found an eight-reale.
There were also two people who reported finding gold or silver shipwreck items other than cobs or coins. I haven't received photos or any other information about those either and don't know any more about them other than what I previously mentioned about a gold chain segment being found.
Not only are gold finds hard to come by, but so is information about them.
Despite all the limitations of the blog polls, they do provide some good information, certainly a lot more than we had before. The polls are certainly not perfect and leave a lot to be desired. There is a lot of information that needs to be gathered in the future. Piece by piece I hope to put together more of the puzzle of beach detecting. And piece by piece verify or refute various theories.
Plat2pus from Arizona, said he reads this blog on a regular basis and that I need to take into account the people who do not live or detect on the Treasure Coast when I asked who did not detect during November. He is correct. I'll try to gather more information on that in the future. I do have some demographic information on the readers of this blog that is provided by google analytics.
I do know that just over 95% of the visits to the blog come from the United States. That isn't too surprising. And the majority of those come from Florida, although I don't know the percentage right off. I'll have to look into that. And the predominant age group is 25 -34 - a bit younger than I might have expected. I'll have to do some more research.
On the Treasure Coast we're expecting a peak surf of only around five feet on Friday. Leading up to and after that, the surf is expected to be less.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
