Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
It can be difficult to tell what an item is and how old it is when you dig it up. We might have a first impression that tells us that the item is old or that it is modern. But those two terms are very general and we might not know precisly how old the item is, and our impressions can be way off. |
| Winged Liberty Head Imprint. |
Bot "modern" and "old" are very general terms that might mean different things to different people. You might even use them differently at different times. When I say an item is modern, I'm usually thinking that it is 20th century or later, but that can vary.
In the absence of any definitive marks, when it comes to estimating an item's age I think most people look first at wear and deterioration. That is the first and most obvious thing you will see. An old item will generally look worn or corroded, but that really doesn't tell you much. Appearances can be very misleading.
Many years ago I thought that items that are hundreds of years old would look crude or primitive, but I learned that many really old items were very skillfully and wonderfully made, at times being every bit as nice as the finest modern items. If an item looked too good, I could have mistakenly dismissed it as being more modern. I probably made some mistakes like that.
It does take some time for items to wear down or corrode, but that process can take place very rapidly or very slowly, so the amount of wear or corrosion can be a very poor indicator of age.
The environment can have a lot to do with how quickly an item corrodes. Coins will corrode faster in salt water environments than fresh water, for example. I was always impressed by how well silver coins held up in the cold fresh water lakes of the north. And coins buried in the acidic soil around mangroves, on the contrary, corroded very rapidly. Nearby items can also accelerate corrosion or protect an item from corrosion.
Buried items can become encrusted. At the top of this post is an imprint of an winged liberty head. The imprint is in a clay coating that encased a mercury dime that I once dug up. After finding the coin, I took it home and placed it in Muriatic acid to clean it. The Muriatic acid appeared to have absolutely no effect at all on the crust or coin. I tried a stronger solution and left it longer, but the crust was completely resistant to the acid and completely protected the coin no matter how long I left it in the acid.
The imprint you see at the top of this post is on the inside surface of the crust that was removed from one side of the dime. The other side of the dime and the edges were completely coated too.
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| Outside Surface of the Crust Removed From The Same Dime. |
When the crust was removed, other than discoloration, the Mercury dime was still in great condition and looked very much like it probably looked when it was lost. The protective crust protected the dime very well until the crust was manually removed.
Here is another example. I've used this example before. It really shows how an item can be protected by a crust.
Here is how one side looked when it was dug (below). It actually wasn't so much dug as scooped up from the rushing water that was bouncing off an eroding cut.
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| Heavily Encrusted Side of Half Reale. |
Here is the extremely well preserved surface that was revealed when the crust was removed.
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| Surface of the Cleaned Coin That Was Protected by the Crust. |
The details on the side that was protected by a crust are unusually nice and sharp. The other side of the half reale had no protective crust when I picked it up. Here is the other side, which is not much different than it appeared when it was taken out of the scoop.
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Same Reale
Side That Did Not Have a Protective Crust.
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You can see that the edges, which were not covered by the crust are worn and the side that was not covered by the crust is not nearly as clear as the details on the side that was covered. If you go by the amount of wear or corrosion alone, one side looks older than the other.
Time alone does not cause an item to look older or newer. It depends upon where the item was and what happened to it. An item lost hundreds of years ago can easily look newer than an item that is actually very new. How well an item is preserved depends upon the material, the environment, and how the item reacts to the environment. An item can appear to age either very quickly or not hardly at all. You can not judge the age of an item with any precision from the amount of wear or corrosion, even though that is what we usually tend to do.
Today I gave two examples of items that were protected to some extent by protective encrustation. In the future, I plan to present other examples illustrating other things that can radically affect the apparent age of a beach find.
Items that are hundreds of years old can look days old and other items can deteriorate very rapidly, making them look much older than they are.
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Yesterday I showed a Facebook photo of a find by a Tom J. who was visiting the Treasure Coast and found what looked like a reale. Although the photo was not real clear, I thought I could see a raised edge on the object that made it look incorrect. I didn't have the entire text of the Facebook page yesterday, but DJ sent me the rest of the text, so I'll present that now.
Thanks to DJ.
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Looks like we'll get another bump in the surf - but only for one day.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com |
Too bad the wind will be mostly east/southeast.
I'll be talking more about corrosion on coins, Kang Hsi shards, Aztec gold and a variety of other topics that I've already started.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net