Friday, October 4, 2019

10/4/19 Report - WW2 Bomb on 17th Century Wreck. Upturned Bottle Border. The Quandry of Collections.


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


Excavated Line of Upturned Bottles.

An 1800s lot in Houston was excavated.  Above is one of the interested features that was uncovered.

“One really interesting feature that we found tends to be associated with German households,” says Boyd, “was empty bottles upturned in a line,” which were used to border yards and gardens. Backhoes stumbled upon a still-intact bottle alignment— “Only one got nicked,” says Barrett—including three original Carl Conrad & Company Budweiser bottles from the 1870s.


Here is the link.

https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2019/9/25/frost-town-james-bute-park-artifacts-from-houstons-first-working-class-community

Reading and interpreting the patterns of the past can be fruitful and interesting for any detectorist.

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Navy divers destroy WW2 bomb found in 17th Century warship.

The 987kg (2,175lbs) explosive was towed away from the protected remains of the sunken vessel near Southend Pier.

Divers worked on the bomb in a six-day operation, working mainly by touch because of poor visibility.,..

The bomb was discovered by civilian divers from Historic England during an archaeological dive on the shipwreck London, which was launched in 1656 and sank in 1665...


Here is the link.


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-49863564

That is one example of how things from widely differing ages can get intermingled.  Items found on old shipwrecks, like this bomb, sometimes come from other age periods and sources.

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The Quandry of Collections.

I believe that most detectorists that hunt the Treasure Coast are interested in finding old historic items.  They appreciate the history and story told by those objects.  They aren't primarily interested in economic value, but that helps.  There are exceptions for sure, but I don't think there are too many.

We all know you can't take it with you, so what do you do with it.  Well, when you have it you study it, enjoy it, talk about it and share it, but eventually you have to pass it on.  Maybe you might want to turn it into cash, but hopefully you have children or relatives that appreciate your finds as much as you do.  You might take note of those people who appreciate your items and try to foster an appreciation of the objects and their story with your children.

In any case, accumulating a bunch of stuff requires storage space.  One solution is to convert some of your less favorite finds into cash and focus on improving the quality of your collection.

If you want to turn finds into cash, a lot of mistakes can be made.  You need to know exactly what you have in order to market it well.  You have to know a little about the market for different kinds of items, and the market will change.  Reading always helps.

Kovels produces good articles and price guides on collectibles of various types.  Here is one good article on things that aren't worth collecting anymore.  The market for everything seems to vary from time to time.

https://www.kovels.com/latest-news/10-collectibles-not-worth-collecting-anymore.html

One good thing about silver and gold is that there is always a market and you can easily determine the melt value, but you can still make big mistakes by not knowing the real market value of an item.
Valuable coins can be worth many times the value of the metals.

Maybe for you it is more about the hunt.  You enjoy the search.  In that case, you might not be so interested in the monetary value of your finds but you will want to share your stories.  In that case you'll want to write down the details, as I've suggested many times before.  People tend to think of hardcopy books (maybe just people of my age) even though they are going the way of the dinosaur, but you can easily share your stories on the internet - perhaps on this site.  Of course I cannot post them all.

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Somebody was wanting to FOLLOW this blog, but couldn't find how to do that.  My followers list is presently at the bottom of the left side.  You'll have to scroll down to find it.  Unfortunately lately there have been times when it isn't showing up.  I suppose blogger will fix that.

We're having a three of four foot surf.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net