8/5/14 Report - Bertha Now Close To NC. Tungsten Ring? Antique Jewelry Maker's Marks. Hot Wheels & Action Figures.

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

Funny Things Found on the Beach At Different Times.

You can't always find an unusual item of historic significance like the gold pyx that was recently found by the crew of the Booty.  In fact, some days it is hard to find much of anything.  But no matter what big treasure you are trying to find, there is always something little that you can find along the way. 

Why in the world would I post a picture of these silly toys?  I'll tell you, but first I'll answer an email from Hans.

Hans J. wrote and said, I don't believe that unknown ring would be Titanium- Ti is very light like aluminum and I don't believe they make rings from them. I think you may have meant Tungsten- a common replacement for gold.

Also, I don't see a 'like' button on posts. Maybe you have to be logged in?

I'm sure he is right about the ring that I showed.  It is very heavy.  I noticed how heavy it was as soon as I picked it up.   Much too heavy to be titanium.  I should have thought of that before typing.

The "like" button that I referred to might not actually be a "like" button.  What I was talking about is the g+1 button that can be found at the bottom of each post.  I'm not sure if that is properly called a like button or not - evidently not.  I just noticed one day that some people were using it, and I found the feedback helpful.  Despite all of my posts, I haven't taken the time to learn anything about social media or promotions.  I just post.   Someday I'll have to learn to take this web stuff seriously.

Thanks Hans.


I was expecting another video of recent finds from a Spanish galleon, but didn't get it yet.  Maybe soon.


On the earring that I showed yesterday, I found that it was stamped with a very small "IBB CN."  Very small, but could be seen with my Celestron digital microscope.

I looked that up and found that IBB is a company that distributes high-end fashion jewelry and watch brands, including; Guess, Nautica, Marc Ecko and Gc.   It is a Canadian company, so that probably explains the CN.

In the process of researching the earring I also found (actually I need to credit the wife) a great web site on jewelry and particularly antique jewelry maker's marks.  Here it is.

http://www.langantiques.com/university/index.php/Category:Jewelry_Maker's_Marks

I'll probably add that web site to my reference links list.  I've found a number of good reference sites to add to the list lately.



As I've said before, I like a lot of different kinds of things.  I like bottles, fossils, gold nuggets, rings, artifacts, and the list goes on.  I even like old sinkers and fishing lures. Economic value isn't the only thing that interests me.

I like recycling things.  I like picking up something that has been lost and is lost and returning it to usefulness.  I don't like waste.   I hate to see useful things go to waste, no matter how big or small.

You know all of those little cars and toy that you find on the beach?  They might be toys but some of them can be worth something. 

1970s - 1990s items, especially toys, are collected by a lot of people who like to recapture their childhood.  As unexplainable as it might seem to some of you, items that are a few decades old can be more valuable than items that are centuries old.  It just depends on what you like.

Kovels Komments said,  Hot Wheels are hot. A 1973 pink toy Ferrari sold on eBay for $3,009, a record price for a Hot Wheels toy sold on eBay. It sold with its blister wrap. Antique Trader lists four other Hot Wheels worth more than $2,000 today: a mint-in-the-box 1969 blue Redline Oldsmobile 442, a yellow Redline Cipsa Mexican Sand Witch, an ice blue Redline Oldsmobile 442, and a dark purple Mustang Boss Hoss car with a black roof.

Of course the most valuable ones would be mint in box, but there are a lot of Hot Wheels collectors and if you find one of the more sought after models in decent condition, it might be worth something even if it is not in great shape.   Here are just a few that I dug up.  

 



A few detectorists collect Hot Wheels and other similar cars.  It is one more way to enjoy your day, especially when you aren't busy digging gold coins.

The little car above is in much better condition than the picture shows.  It has metal flake paint. 

Hot Wheels cars can be easily researched.  Check the bottom for markings.  It will show the year.

Of course you can detect those little cars, but there are other toys that are plastic, yet you can find them, and they can be worth a few bucks too.  Action toys from the 1980s are very popular.

At the top of the post are a few of those that I've picked up on a beach.  I've sold a few.   My uncle always said, "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."    These silly toys can often be sold for a few dollars, and that is better than many of the items you will dig.  I know a lot of people have no interest in this type of thing, but not only do I like them, they also help pay for batteries or whatever.

Masters of the universe toys (MOTU) are very popular.  The first one that I found I quickly sold for a few bucks at a comic book store.

The purple thing on the left is a Wendy's promotional item from a few decades ago.  It falls in the advertising collectibles category.

I don't know the guy on the right at all.

Here is a web site about the most popular action figures from the 80s.

http://gadgets.gunaxin.com/the-30-best-action-figures-of-the-80s/34730

NHC Image of Bertha.

On the Treasure Coast today the wind is still out of the west and the surf is running around one to two feet.

Bertha is up by North Carolina and is decreasing in strength.




People who dislike how thy are treated usually treat others very poorly.  That is part of the reason they aren't treated better, but the bigger reason is that they unwittingly treat themselves poorly.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net.

8/4/14 Report - Bertha Becomes Hurricane. Various Treasure Coast Beach Finds.

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

Treasure Coast Beach Gold Ring Find
Find and photo by Leonard G.

Leonard G. recently found this gold ring.  Congratulatons Leaonard!  

Leonard uses a Fisher 1280 and a GTA 350.

 

I went out to the beach this morning near low tide and did about an hour an a half of detecting.  The first hole was a silver ring, the fourth hole was a diamond stud earring.

 

Later I found the other stuff.  The percentage of jewelry to coins has been high there lately and the trash in the wet sand area has been very low where I've been hunting.

Below is a picture of the beach there.

Beach This Morning

The wave in this picture looks bigger than it actually was.  It looks much bigger from that angle for some reason.  It was only about a foot or foot and a half at the most.

The sand was nearly flat from the area where the wave is and in for a good fifty or more yards.  The wet sand had small ripples and scattered patches of black sand.  It was a very fine densely packed sand that made digging tough.



NOAA NHC Map.

I'm hoping for some of that sand to get moved some day soon.

Bertha is now a hurricane.  You wouldn't know it by looking at the beach.  She is already north of us and out on the other side of the Bahamas, heading north.

Maybe somebody up the coast will get something from that, but we're just going to get a 1 or 2 foot surf for the next several days.

It seems Bertha turned into a hurricane earlier than expected.
 

 

 



Some Finds From This Morning.

Here are some finds from the beach that I hunted this morning.

I was using the Whites PI again this morning. 

The stud earring didn't make a loud signal, as you would probably guess.  It tests as 9K gold.

I don't know what the big ring is made of.  Maybe titanium, cobalt or stainless steel.

It is just marked Triton.  They can sell for around $200 new.   More than silver in many cases.

I took some videos of the beach, but did a very poor job.   Sheeesh.   My fault, not the camera's.

A lot of people looked at the post about the Booty's find of the gold pyx.   If you haven't seen it you might want to go back and look at it.   I gave a couple of additional links there.

I did a post on old bottles the other day and added a great bottle link to my link list.

Don't forget to use the like button to indicate which posts you like.   Number of readers doesn't seem to highly correlate with number of likes.  Some posts get mentioned various places which brings more readers, so I can't go just by that.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

8/2/14 Report - Pre 1900 Beer Bottles Found On Treasure Coast. Bottle Research Links. When To Not Discriminate. Bertha Closer.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treaurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.


Pre 1900 Beer Bottle Find.

I've been doing a lot of detector tests lately and haven't mentioned other types of treasure much.  I did show some stone tools a few days ago, but that was the first for a long time.

Today I'll show a couple of 19th Century beer bottle finds.

The one shown to the left, as well as the one below, has an applied lip.  Both date to around the end of the 1800s.

The top arrow on this picture points to a seam where you can see the lip was applied. 

The middle arrow points to an elongated bubble in the glass (you can see it faintly in the photo), and the bottom arrow points to a vertical mold seam.

These things indicate a probable early date, but the bottom tells the story.

The bottom of the same bottle is shown below.

Notice the mold seams on the bottom.

It reads I. G. CO. L.  16.

That might not tell you much, but fortunately there are some very good sites that will help you find out what that means.

Here is a great web site on the marks used by bottle makers.

http://www.sha.org/bottle/makersmarks.htm

If you look up I. G. CO. L., you'll find that it indicates that the maker is the Ihmsen Glass Company Limited of Pittsburgh, PA




Bottom of Same Bottle.

Here is a small part of what the web site says.

The Pittsburgh directory listings show this company included the "Limited" in their name from 1878 to c.1896.

... Bottles bearing this mark can definitely be attributed to this company...

So we now have a good idea about when and where it was made.  The same web site has much more detailed information on the company. Like I said, a great web site about bottles!





The following beer bottle was also found on the Treasure Coast but was made by another company around the same time period.

This bottle is very much like the one above.  It has an applied lip and the same type of mold seams.  The biggest difference is the color and what is embossed on the bottom.

Another Pre-1900 Beer Bottle Find.

Bottom of Aqua Bottle.

The bottom of this one reads A B G CO. 8.

What do you think that means?

Anheuser Busch?

Nope.  It is Adolphus Busch Glass Co.

The date range would be 1886 to 1893.  

There you have two very similar beer bottles made around the same time that were found on the Treasure Coast.

You can explore the following web site for much more detailed information on this one too.

For the main page on bottles, use the following link.

http://www.sha.org/bottle

This is a great site, which I just added it to my reference link list. 


As I said yesterday, I used the Whites Surf PI Dual Field at the beach.   When I read the reviews on this detector, everybody says don't use it in the dry sand.  I have used it in the dry sand and used it in the dry sand some yesterday.

You know how I am about discrimination.  I preach against it.  I'm not saying that you should never use it, but it is used way too much. 

Some people run around using discrimination when there is nothing to discriminate.  Yesterday when I was in the wet sand - there was not a thing but coins, two rings and a fork.  There was no junk.  No pull tabs.  And no bottle tops in that wet sand.  That place is usually has tons of junk.  It wasn't there yesterday and I wouldn't have know the difference if I automatically used discrimination.  I wouldn't have found out that the beach conditions were different than normal there. 

At least start out without using discrimination.   You'll see what if anything there is to discriminate, and then you can decide if you need to discriminate.  And you'll have a better idea of what is or isn't  there. 

I use junk to tell me about beach conditions.  Junk can provide very useful information, and it can help you find where the good stuff is.

The PI Dual Field has no discrimination.   But don't decide to never use that detector in dry sand despite what everybody says.  Some beaches, even in the dry sand, don't have junk - at least not enough to worry about.   Some beaches have been cleaned up very well, but by using your PI you'll be able to detect the deeper items that others have missed. 

You'll never know where you do or don't need discrimination if you always run use it.  Don't assume that you always need it.  Check first.  You just might not need it.

One more thing.  You can learn to identify many targets by sound if you don't use discrimination all the time.   Like they say, "A brain is a terrible thing to waste."

NOAA Image.

Tropical storm Bertha is getting closer, but still looks like she'll stay far east of us.

On the Treasure Coast today the surf is up a little to around 2 or three feet.  It was higher in he evening yesterday.

I'd sure like to see some serious sand get moved.  There is so much of it to be moved.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

8/1/14 Report - New Tropical Storm in Atlantic. Diving Near The Wedge Wreck. Detecting a Treasure Coast Beach Today.

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

Diving North of Fort Pierce Inlet This Morning.

We have a new tropical storm heading this way.   Bertha is the second named storm of the season.  At present it doesn't look like it will be much more than a tropical storm and is supposed to pass well east of us.  They do a good job of predicting anymore, but there is always the possibility of some error.  I'll be keeping an eye on Bertha anyhow.

On the Treasure Coast we'll have a one-foot surf today, and then we'll have a one to two-foot surf for about a week.  So if the current predictions are accurate, Bertha won't affect us much.



Beach This Morning Near Low Tide.



This is the kind of thing we've been having nearly all summer this year.

On this beach a very fine compact layer of powder-like sand goes all the way to the dry sand.  Wasn't easy to dig deeper holes.  Really compact stuff.

I detected the area below the high-tide line.  This beach usually has a lot of pull tabs.   From the high tide line to the water this morning, there were NO pull tabs.  Only a good number of coins and couple rings and a fork.   That was very unusual.  I had to wonder what happened to all the pull tabs and bottle tops that are usually all over this beach.  There were still bottle tops in the dry sand, but the pull tabs were not there.

I took a Whites \Surf PI Dual Field detector this morning.  It turned out to be a good choice this morning -  no junk in the wet sand, but a good number of coins.  Except for one spill, most of the coins were down about six inches or so.

I have worked this beach in the past with an Excalibur.  I would have given the Ace a test in the wet sand, but I don't like to take two detectors to the beach in the summer.  It is too hot to leave a detector in the car.  That isn't really a good idea anyhow.  Don't leave anything of value in the car.

It is a good idea to check your detector before you leave home.  It can be a pain to get to the beach and find out that something is wrong.  It is also a good idea to have some spare batteries.

I really like to be able to switch detectors depending upon conditions. 

In the wet sand there were ripples and some black sand scattered about.  Again, I think the choice of detectors was a particularly good one today considering the conditions.

I got word of a platinum and diamond ring being lost a couple of days ago.  Things are always being lost.  I'll look for it.

The two rings I found were about six inches apart.

It seems that most beaches have one spot that is better than the others.  This one definitely does.


If you missed yesterday's post, you'll want to be sure to see that.


You have until August 20 to consign to the Nov. 5-6 Sedwick Coins auction.

Here is the link for more information.

http://www.sedwickcoins.com/consign.htm


And here is the projected path for Bertha according to NOAA.

 

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@Comcast.net