Written by the treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.
I often show mystery items. This one is a real mystery. I've talked to my smart friend, Fred D., who gave me some good thoughts on the item, but he suggested that I post it and see what you all think of it. I'm not going to tell you what Fred thought yet because I don't want to influence you.
I've had this item for a while hoping to learn something about it but so far it is still a mystery.
The item is about two inches in diameter. It is ball shaped with a hole in one side.
The hole is about an inch and a half across at its widest. The hole tapers and little and goes down most of the way.
One side of the object appears to have lost some material.
It is composed of small pieces of shell. The photos don't show it that well, but the grains are definitely small pieces of shells. I can see that very clearly under magnification. There is some sand in it too and some small unidentified particles.
Take a look at the last picture of the object, which shows a close-up vies of the outer surface of the object.
The picture just above that shows a close up view looking at the surface inside of the hole.
I think that is all I'll say about it. Please send any ideas or thoughts about the object.
I'll tell you what I've concluded up to this point after I hear from what you all have to say.
Below are the results for the most recent blog poll about the most favorite finds of the year. Since the poll was conducted during the busy holiday season, the sample size was smaller than usual.
US coin.
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Foreign coin.
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Old shipwreck cob or coin.
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Other old shipwreck item.
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Modern era Bottle, glass or ceramic.
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Fossil
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Modern era jewelry.
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Native American
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Other.
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As you can see the category of finds that was most often selected is modern jewelry. We did see some nice pictures of expensive diamond rings and things like that which were found this year.
The second most selected category of find US coins. Among those were a good number of silver coins, including some that were "firsts" or "oldest" coin finds.
Modern jewelry and US coins added together accounted for over half of the favorite finds.
And the third most frequent favorite find category was "other." To some extent that reflects the fact hat I left out some things from the poll. I should have had a category for relics, or example. We certainly saw some nice relics that were found this year.
The "other" category also includes some find that you might not think of. For example, one person wrote to me and told me that their favorite find was information about the location of a sunken ship. That certainly is a good find, but it is not something that I would ever think of including as a response category.
Only the top three categories were in the double digit percentages.
Although a lot of people who read this blog target 1715 Fleet items, it was not a big year for those kinds of finds on the beaches. We had poor conditions a lot of the time. Still, the favorite find of 9% of those who responded was an old shipwreck cob or coin, with another 9% indicating that their favorite find was some other type of old shipwreck find. The salvage guys did well this year. We saw some of their impressive finds.
There were very few respondents who selected the remaining categories, however "foreign coins," "Native American," "modern era glass and ceramics," and "fossils" were all selected by at least on person.
Beach replenishment had a big impact of this year. There sure has been a lot of it. Older items are harder to find when sand is dumped on the beaches. One of the best fossil beaches was ruined by recent replenishment.
Modern jewelry led the way, followed by US coins and "other," with a smaller number of the highly sought shipwreck coins and artifacts after that. That pretty much sums it up for the year, which is quickly coming to an end.
On the Treasure Coast we are supposed to have nothing more than about a 2 or 3 foot surf for several days.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net
