Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.
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| Silver Shaker Box Found On Treasure Coast Wreck Site By Crew of the Capitana Photo submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez. |
The crew of the Capitana made some great finds this summer off the Treasure Coast. I showed you some of them. Some of them have now been conserved. Captain Jonah Martinez sent me a picture of the cleaned shaker box.
UNBELIEVABLE !
That box looks like it is brand new but is hundreds of years old!
Thanks for the great pictures Captain.
Below is a close up showing the top of the same box.
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| Top of Same Silver Shaker Box Photo submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez. |
Very ornate and intricate. As fine as it gets.
We would not get to see stuff like this without the work of the early treasure hunters that worked the beaches and waters along the Treasure Coast decades ago. They were the ones that invested time and effort and to find these wreck sites, and led to the eventual development of the field of underwater archaeology.
Back a few months ago I did a test of the Ace 250. I first used it on an old yard and by an old wooded wagon trail. It worked very well in those inland tests, but I suspected that it might not be good for hunting in wet sand.
This morning I took it for its first test at the beach. What I suspected was proved to be true. It did not work well in wet sand. It gave many false signals, especially in All Metals mode.
In Coin mode it worked better than in All Metals mode in the wet sand but still gave a good number of false signals.
[Added 10/4. One thing I forgot to mention is that the factory default sensitivity was use. I did not attempt to reduce the sensitivity.]
The sand was not only salt water wet, but there was also a scattering of black sand.
I took it up to the dry sand where it did everything you could possibly expect out of an inexpensive detector.
It performed excellently in a very junky area, correctly identifying coins and junk.
One thing about the 250, and I suspect most detectors with target ID, is that if the ID is consistent, the ID is correct a very high percentage of the time. However if the ID jumps around, for example between pull tab and penny, it is likely junk rather than a penny. Consistent good target IDs are almost always correct.
In summary, the 250 is in my opinion an excellent machine for the money. As far as I'm concerned, it will do the job very well on a dry sand beach. It is not, however, a good choice for salt water wet sand.
I also tested the 250 on a thin gold ring. It gave a good clear loud signal on that particular thin gold ring in the Coin, Jewelry, and All Metals Mode.
Some more expensive detectors that would far out-perform the 250 in the wet sand would not do as well as the 250 in the dry sand.
As I've said before, a detector that is good in one situation might not be good in another situation. There are situations when an expensive detector will not work as well as an inexpensive detector.
On the Treasure Coast we had a one to two foot surf again. Sunday the surf will increase a little, but probably not enough to do us much good.
The low tides are not going down very much.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net
