Tuesday, June 7, 2016

6/7/16 Report - Tropical Storm Colin Already Gone. Study Resources For Treasure Coins. 1970 Quarter Error.


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

Tropical Storm Colin.
Source: nhc.noaa.gov
Tropical Storm Colin is leaving us already.  We have some cooler air this morning, coming with the west wind.

Yesterday the surf was a little more choppy than I expected.  We'll have something like a one-foot surf for a few days.  Today we'll have some good negative tides again around 4:30 PM.

Beach Yesterday Around Low Tide.
If you look closely you might be able to see some small cuts in the distance up by the bend.

The beach front was firm but there was a lot of sand.

Beach Near Low Tide Yesterday Showing Small Cuts.

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In 1985 Alan Craig, a geographer and geologist specializing in Latin American studies, first proposed doing a complete study of the gold coins in the Florida Collection.  In 1988 his book on the gold coins in the Florida Collection was published.  That book was revised in 2000.  He published a book on the silver coins in the Florida Collection in 2000.  I have not seen any updates, revisions or similar studies published since that time.  That means unless I've missed it, we haven't seen a major study of the coins and artifacts added to the Florida Collection over the past 15 or so years.

The state does maintain a database of artifacts.  However it is not available to the public online.  In fact the database is for "internal use" only.

If you want to study treasure coins, it seems that the best and most easily available resource is the auction records.  There are tons of good pictures and descriptions in the various auction catalogs.  If we didn't have those, the public would have very little opportunity to study treasure coins.  I guess it is a good thing that so many coins are in private hands and come up for public auction.  Ideally, our tax-funded collections would be more accessible to the public.

I was lucky to find a 1977 Bowers and Ruddy treasure auction catalog, complete with realized prices, in a thrift store a number of years ago.  That was before we had all of the online resources we have today.

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There is a story about a 1970 error quarter that is appearing almost everywhere on the internet.  According to Country Living, The pieces of change were printed over 1941 Canadian quarters and therefore feature a teeny "1941" marking just above the word "DOLLAR" on the pack of the coin. It's almost impossible to see without a little help, but you can see the error explained in this eBay listing. You'll also see that 26 people are interested in paying $35,000 for this one coin—woah!

Here is the link.

http://www.countryliving.com/shopping/antiques/news/a38734/quarters-from-1970s/

I" prefer to see this error described on a numismatic web site.  You can't believe everything you see on eBay.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net