1/10/19 Report - Methods of Viewing and Photographing Coins. The Elephant in the Room. Sedwick Events

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

Notice the Orlando FUN convention beginning today.

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You saw her on Curse of Oak Island and the Jon Stewart show.  One of Oak Island's most revered "experts," now she'll visit your home - for a price of course.

If you want to arrange for a home visit from Dr. Lori, here is her web site.

https://www.drloriv.com/Find-Values/In-Home-Visit

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Yesterday I mentioned using magnification for inspecting coins.  There are a lot of good choices,  You might be able to use something you already have.

Of course there are the obvious choices such as a magnifying glass or jewelers loop, which are always handy to have around the house.  That is what I used years ago.  Now I usually use something else.

Here is a good suggestion from SuperRick.

When it comes to looking at coins there is no reason to spend a lot of money if you have a smartphone. Go to Google Play and get the App Magnifying Glass Flashlight Pro! I have been using it for a while now to look at coins and meteorites, Try it out you will love it!

If you want to go through lots of coins quickly, I've found that a stand can be a big help.  You can slide them under the viewer, quickly inspect them and then slide the next one under.  A stand also provides stability. 

Some of the guys that cherry-pick rolls, will buy rolls and go through hundreds of coins at a sitting.  You might also have a pile of old coin finds to go through.

This kind of thing might be useful.

See http://forlights.com/Lighting/magnifier-lights/Electrix-7450.html

Even before I got into error coins, I always had an inexpensive Celestron digital microscope.  It attaches to a computer or monitor through a USB port.  I can go through a lot of coins quickly with that.  I use an old laptop computer that isn't good for much of anything else to view coins and save coin photos.  Since I don't use it for anything else, it makes a nice dedicated coin station.

The Celestron microscope has some short-comings.  Lighting is very important for good coin photos.  The eight LEDs on the microscope are not ideal for all situations, but they can be dimmed or turned off. Sometimes you'll want to change the angle of the lighting.  You can use another light source for that.

Some people use a good camera with a good close-up lens for coin photos.   Again lighting is critical.

Also, some scanners will make excellent coin pictures, but scanners tend to be pretty slow.  You might try out your scanner and see how well it does with coins at high resolution.

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A cool front moved in and we're going to have a little increase in surf.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

11/8/17 Report - Tropical Storm Rina. Bigger Surf Coming to T. C. Oak Island's Expert.

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

Tropical Storm Rina
Source: nhc.noaa.gov

There is actually a tropical storm in the Atlantic.  It won't affect us, but a cold front that will come through Friday will affect us.  We'll get some north winds and a higher surf.

Predicted Surf for the Fort Pierce Area.
Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

That could improve conditions.

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Yesterday Darrel S. brought up the issue of the experience of the lady who seems to be playing the roll of archaeological expert on the Oak Island show.  Her name is Dr. Lori Verderame.   She makes some questionable, if not ridiculous, statements. It makes her seem much less than a trained archaeologist and certainly not a nautical archaeologist.  One statement I saw her make last night was so silly and far-fetched that I decided to look up her qualifications.  Below is what Wikipedia says about her.


Education[edit]

A native of New Haven, Connecticut, Verderame graduated from Hamden High School in Hamden, CT. She graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. She has a Master of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with an emphasis in History and Art History from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. She holds the Doctorate (Ph.D.) in the History of Art and Architecture from the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA.[4]
Experience[edit]

Verderame has held directorial and curatorial positions in America including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Allentown Art Museum, the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State, and the Martin Art Gallery at Muhlenberg College. She has lectured at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia, the MFA in Boston, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence Italy, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Musee de Louvre in Paris France among others. Dr. Lori has also taught art history at Penn State University at University Park, PA, the State University of New York (SUNY) in Cortland, NY, Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT, Southern Connecticut State University in Hamden, CT, Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, and Beaver College (Arcadia University) in Glenside, PA.[citation needed]
Columnist[edit]

Verderame's column entitled "Art & Antiques by Dr. Lori" appears in more than 400 newspapers and magazines around the world.[citation needed] Her Lifetime blogs are entitled "Antiques and Your Home" and "Travel, Shop, Eat by Dr. Lori".

Since 1998, Verderame has presented "Dr. Lori's Antiques Appraisal Comedy Show" to audiences around the world and on cruise ships.[citation needed] The show is presented live and audience members bring their objects for appraisal as part of the unscripted live comedy appraisal stage show. Verderame appraises each object while injecting humor and information about the antique. Verderame estimates that she appraises 20,000 objects each year.

So her academic training is in Art History.  She does a blog on antiques and one that seems to have something to do with eating - which it seems she does very well.  I'm not surprised she does some comedy work.  She has given me a few good laughs.  I just didn't think it was intentional.

As we all know, academic training isn't the most important thing.  Thomas Edison never took a course in making light bulbs.  Bill Gates never took a course in Windows.  The people that do really big things, do it before the courses exist.

Nautical archaeology or maritime archaeology is a relatively new discipline.  It owes its origin to the guys that do shipwreck salvage. They didn't take courses, but they learned through experience. Eventually the academic disciplines jumped on for the ride and created a new academic discipline.

I'm not criticizing Dr. Lori for not having the right degrees.  If she had the professional experience, she wouldn't need any academic degree at all, as far as I'm concerned, abut as it is,  lot of people who read this blog are more qualified than she is on some of the items that she comments on.  On those subjects, I think she just does the same thing that a lot of you would do - search the internet.

You have to remember that Oak Island is a TV show.  The show is more about show business than it is about archaeology.  You might say it is about treasure hunting, but you can't leave out the show business aspect.

The casting director found someone who has a doctorate and would seem credible to the average viewer.  She had media and TV connections, so that is probably how they found her.

When I saw the spike she showed and talked about, it didn't look to me like the same one that was originally found in the swamp.  By chance I happened to see that earlier segment again last night, and I didn't think it looked like the same spike then either.  I didn't see it very closely though, and I didn't take the time to do a screen freeze or anything so I could carefully compare them, so I could be wrong.  See what you think.

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Bigger surf coming up this weekend.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net