Tuesday, March 31, 2020

3/31/20 Report - Some Very Old New World Spanish Reales. A What? Sunken Submarine Found. The Importance of Good Questions.


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

Early Mexico Four-Reale Displayed by McLarty Museum.
Submitted by JamminJack.

Not long ago I did a post on some of the oldest coins found on the Treasure Coast.  The one shown above is from the period of Juana and Carlos.  It is a Mexico minted four-reale.

Monedas Espanolas Desde Juana y Carlos a Isabel II: 1503 a 1868 by Calico, Calico and Trigo, 1985, shows a lot of early coins from both old world and new world mints.

See if you can tell the denomination of the one shown below..

Three Reale Shown in Calico et al Book.

Look between the two pillars above the banner and letters that run across the middle of the pillars.  Do you see three dots?  That is the denomination.  Yes, it is a three-reale!

Cobs, Pieces of Eight and Treasure Coins by Sewall Menzel shows an illustration of the designs on a a three-reale.  Here it is.

Three-reale as shown in Menzel book, Cobs, Pieces of Eight and Treasure Coins.

This next one isn't real clear, but I think you can see the two dots between the caps of the pillars.  It is a two-reale.
Two-Reale Shown in Calico et al Book.


Menzel also presents an illustration for that type of coin.

Carlos y Juana Three-Three Reale as Shown in Menzel Book.


Similarly, the one-reale has a single dot between the pillars.  I won't bother to show that one.

Both the one and two-reale, as well as the three reales shown above were minted in Mexico.

Unfortunately coinage of this period was not dated so it is nearly impossible to determine the date, or even the order of the coins.

The Calico book contains many examples and variations even a ten-reale from an old world mint.

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The crew of the USS Stickleback didn’t expect things to end this way—rising from the depths on May 28, 1958, only to be broadsided by the hull of a friendly American destroyer, the USS Silverstein. The Stickleback sank to the bottom, an 11,000-foot journey to nowhere.

Now, 62 years since the sub disappeared from any radar screen—and became one of only four U.S. Navy submarines lost since the end of World War II—it’s been found again...


Thanks to Douglas, here is that link.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stickleback-submarine-wreck-found

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Unfortunately you can't separate Covid-19 from metal detecting since it has resulted in the beaches being closed.

Checking the statistics this morning I find that there have been 3,170 Covid-19 deaths in the United States so far.

After looking at a sea of additional statistics, one of the things that sticks out is this Fortune Magazine report from 2018 -

The Flu is Killing Up to 4,000 Americans a Week

So, if this headline is correct, and as far as I've been able to find, it is, then more people got killed by the flu in one week in 2018 than have been killed in the U. S. so far this year by the current Coronavirus.

Dr. Fauci, in the March 26 New England Journal of Medicine, gives a much less dramatic estimate of Covid-19 than he has been giving on TV lately, suggesting that it might not be much different than the normal flu.

CBS admitted the image they used to show an overcrowded U. S. hostpical was actually an Italian hospital.  I'm not saying that U. S. hospitals aren't crowded.  They usually are during flu season, but the media can be deceptive.

In another report I saw that the CDC said that up to 15 times more people die of the flu than is reported on death certificates.  Health statistics can be very unreliable.  You have to look at the details.

You always have to ask questions.  I once said that the question is more important than the answer, which seems like a stupid thing to say, but the question is important.  Asking the right questions is critically important, no matter whether you are talking about something like metal detecting or epidemiology.

I'm surprised by the high degree of compliance of the American people so far.  They've been conditioned by a deluge of threats ranging from the danger of riding a bicycle without a helmet and pads to the threat of monster plastic up to the apocalyptic threat of the climate killing us all.  Americans and citizens of the world have been drowned in a sea of experts and bad reporting and have surrendered their independence to those who are thought to know better.  An informed involved public is necessary.

I'm very suspicious of what is going on here.  It is time for a whole lot of good questions.  Not the type of questions that the media is asking, but penetrating questions that will put this whole thing in a meaningful context, resolve doubt and confusion and lead to good practical decisions.

Ask the hard questions.  Hold your officials accountable.  They aren't losing their jobs and businesses.  

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The Treasure Coast surf will begin to build Saturday night.  We are supposed to have some good high surf on Sunday.

TreasureGuide@comcast.net