Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesereport.blogspot.com.
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| Partially Cleaned Surface of Four-Reale Found on Treasure Coast Beach on 1/22/20 |
I'm going to focus on the after-hunt today. The purpose of the "hunt" is to find objects, but after a successful hunt there is the "after-hunt," which has the purpose of learning more about the found objects. The after-hunt often involves cleaning the object so that it can be better inspected.
The four-reale shown below was cleaned with a diluted solution of Muriatic acid. I showed the pictures of that four-reale before, but you can see it as it was found compared to how it looked after a couple hours of cleaning. One thing that was revealed by the initial cleaning is the Arabic numeral "4" to the right of the shield, which indicates the denomination of the cob.
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| Four Reale as Originally Found and After a Couple Hours in Muriatic Acid. |
I cleaned it a little more in since then - maybe just an additional hour or so - and was thinking about how much more I wanted to clean it. I don't usually clean reales to the point that they look shiny new.
I was thinking about how much more cleaning I would do when I decided to take a good look at the surface to see how much foreign material remained on the surface. I looked at it under magnification, and saw there was still a good bit of foreign material on the surface (See picture at top of post.). I didn't see that with the naked eye. The picture shows quite a bit of encrustation remaining. I think you can see that very well in the photo.
I also noticed that when a small bright light made the cob sparkle when the light was shined parallel to the surface. (I didn't see it sparkle when the light was shined down on the cob.) I don't think it will sparkle like that when all of the remaining silica is removed. That might be another way you can tell there if the surface is clean.
I'm glad I looked at this cob under magnification, and will use magnification to check the progress of any cob I'm cleaning in the future.
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Here is another photo of the same cob. Does it look to you like the cross is debossed or embossed?
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| Another View of the Same Coin showing Foreign Material To Be Removed. |
For me it changes. Sometimes it looks debossed and sometimes embossed.
The light is coming from the bottom of the photo, which is why the bottom edge of the cross is lighted and the top edge is in the shadow.
That is an interesting illustration of visual perception.
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Since one of my main topics today is the after-hunt, here is another example. GC sent me this photo of an encrusted object and asked for thoughts about it. I posted the object, but didn't get much input. It is a tough one, but here it is again.
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| Encrusted Object Found and Photographed by GC. |
Just to remind you, here is a little of GC's description.
Not at all magnetic. Checked again at home with stronger magnet. Nope. When I tried, perhaps too vigorously, to chip off some of the encrusted material it broke, pretty much in half. The inside material appeared to be carbon, maybe charcoal like substance, in all appearances. and properties.
If we stick with the "flask" idea that CG also mentioned in his email and combine that with the carbon or charcoal like substance inside, we might think of a powder flask. Below are some examples.
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| Squares are one inch. |
Treasure hunters think of pirates, galleons, swords and romantic swash-buckling types of thing, so weapons and weapon-related objects are among the first to be considered, but we must remember that there is a much wider range of possibilities for an unidentified object. People must be involved in a wide range of activities, including the mundane. They had to eat and drink and be involved in the mundane and ordinary activities of life as well as those more romantic things which we tend to think of first.
Containers would be used for a lot of different kinds of things, such as medicines or cures, habits, cosmetics, kitchen or food related, such as spice containers, etc.
Tobacco was first introduced to Europeans in 1492 when Columbus landed in the Americas. Columbus wrote in his diary, on October 15th, 1492, that he observed an Indian sailing in a canoe with water, food, and tobacco leaves.2 Use of tobacco spread rapidly among the Spanish colonists and in 1531 its cultivation began in Santo Domingo. In 1526 Gonzalo Ferdandez de Oveido y Valdez noted that his fellow Spaniards were turned into drunks by tobacco. Bartolome de las Casas observed the following year that the colonists were developing a strong dependence on it and that it was hard to give up...
The 17th century saw the organization of the tobacco trade and the implementation of new laws regulating the sale of tobacco. In 1614 Spain proclaimed Seville the tobacco capital of the world. All tobacco produced for sale in New Spain had to first go through Seville before moving on to the rest of Europe...
(See https://www.lib.umn.edu/bell/tradeproducts/tobacco)Here are some examples of old tobacco boxes, which as you see are made of various metals, including brass, steel and silver.
This object presents a very daunting task. There is little data, certainly nothing like definitive marks or engraving. Our minds provide another important limitation. We tend to only consider a very limited range of possibilities. Yet, there are clues. In this case, the small size of the object helps us narrow it down a lot but we are still left with just a few clues and a range of possibilities, some of which I'm sure haven't been mentioned yet. One step that I would consider is an analysis of the substance. Can it be determined to be tobacco, gun powder, or something else?
The after-hunt can be just as fun, challenging and rewarding as the hunt.
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The other day I posted a photo of a half reale that was found on the 22nd of January. It had a nice little curly tail and a remarkably centered and perfectly oriented cross. I considered the possibility that it could have been created as a "heart cob", but after having researched it and considered how commonly Mexico half reales have that type of little tail along with the fact that there are no recognized Mexico heart reales, have for all practical purposes abandoned the idea that it might be a Mexico "heart reale."
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I hope to discuss the mystery object I showed yesterday some more in the near future.
I also plan to discuss some other topics such as long-term and short-term changes in beach conditions.
Happy Super Bowl Day,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
