10/4/19 Report - WW2 Bomb on 17th Century Wreck. Upturned Bottle Border. The Quandry of Collections.

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

Excavated Line of Upturned Bottles.

An 1800s lot in Houston was excavated.  Above is one of the interested features that was uncovered.

“One really interesting feature that we found tends to be associated with German households,” says Boyd, “was empty bottles upturned in a line,” which were used to border yards and gardens. Backhoes stumbled upon a still-intact bottle alignment— “Only one got nicked,” says Barrett—including three original Carl Conrad & Company Budweiser bottles from the 1870s.


Here is the link.

https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2019/9/25/frost-town-james-bute-park-artifacts-from-houstons-first-working-class-community

Reading and interpreting the patterns of the past can be fruitful and interesting for any detectorist.

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Navy divers destroy WW2 bomb found in 17th Century warship.

The 987kg (2,175lbs) explosive was towed away from the protected remains of the sunken vessel near Southend Pier.

Divers worked on the bomb in a six-day operation, working mainly by touch because of poor visibility.,..

The bomb was discovered by civilian divers from Historic England during an archaeological dive on the shipwreck London, which was launched in 1656 and sank in 1665...

Here is the link.


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-49863564

That is one example of how things from widely differing ages can get intermingled.  Items found on old shipwrecks, like this bomb, sometimes come from other age periods and sources.

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The Quandry of Collections.

I believe that most detectorists that hunt the Treasure Coast are interested in finding old historic items.  They appreciate the history and story told by those objects.  They aren't primarily interested in economic value, but that helps.  There are exceptions for sure, but I don't think there are too many.

We all know you can't take it with you, so what do you do with it.  Well, when you have it you study it, enjoy it, talk about it and share it, but eventually you have to pass it on.  Maybe you might want to turn it into cash, but hopefully you have children or relatives that appreciate your finds as much as you do.  You might take note of those people who appreciate your items and try to foster an appreciation of the objects and their story with your children.

In any case, accumulating a bunch of stuff requires storage space.  One solution is to convert some of your less favorite finds into cash and focus on improving the quality of your collection.

If you want to turn finds into cash, a lot of mistakes can be made.  You need to know exactly what you have in order to market it well.  You have to know a little about the market for different kinds of items, and the market will change.  Reading always helps.

Kovels produces good articles and price guides on collectibles of various types.  Here is one good article on things that aren't worth collecting anymore.  The market for everything seems to vary from time to time.

https://www.kovels.com/latest-news/10-collectibles-not-worth-collecting-anymore.html

One good thing about silver and gold is that there is always a market and you can easily determine the melt value, but you can still make big mistakes by not knowing the real market value of an item.
Valuable coins can be worth many times the value of the metals.

Maybe for you it is more about the hunt.  You enjoy the search.  In that case, you might not be so interested in the monetary value of your finds but you will want to share your stories.  In that case you'll want to write down the details, as I've suggested many times before.  People tend to think of hardcopy books (maybe just people of my age) even though they are going the way of the dinosaur, but you can easily share your stories on the internet - perhaps on this site.  Of course I cannot post them all.

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Somebody was wanting to FOLLOW this blog, but couldn't find how to do that.  My followers list is presently at the bottom of the left side.  You'll have to scroll down to find it.  Unfortunately lately there have been times when it isn't showing up.  I suppose blogger will fix that.

We're having a three of four foot surf.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net

7/28/14 Report - Target ID Test On Silver Beach Finds. 13 At Beach Injured By Lightning. Old Bomb Stuck In Tree. New Tropical Wave.

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

1715 Shipwreck
Ornamental
Silver Fragment

Silver Bullion Coin.  1966 100 Pesetas.

As I promised, I did additional tests of target ID and discrimination using the Ace 250 for the tests.  This time I used some things that have been found on 1715 Fleet beaches over the years as well as a few other items.

Today I'll show what happened when I used this ornamental piece of silver.  I don't know for certain what this piece of silver was.  It obviously is broken.

 

This item and another very much like it gave an inconsistent pull tab ID in all four modes that I tested (All metals, relic, jewelry, and coin modes.).  It displayed pull tab a good bit of the time but jumped around.

 

You can't really expect a detector to correctly identify an item like this.  Yet you'd probably want to dig it.

 

Another item I used with this test wasn't a 1715 item.  It was the 1966 100 Pesetas bullion silver coin shown above.  It came from a Treasure Coast beach, but not a shipwreck treasure beach.  It weighs 0.6 troy oz.

 

This item was consistently identified by the detector as a 50 cent piece in all four modes.  Not exactly what it is, but not bad at all.  You couldn't expect any more of a detector.

 

Also I tested a silver dime.  Just like clad coins, it was properly identified as a dime 100% of the time.

 

I'll get into cobs on my next report.

If you are going to use target ID or discrimination, you should know how it works.  It is not always as simple as it seems.  You can easily miss some of the best things out there.  As I often say, test your detector on the types of targets you really want to find.

 

 

Here is an important warning!  We've had a lot of thunderstorms. 

 

Lightning killed one person and injured thirteen others when it struck the beach and water at Venice Beach, California.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/27/us/lightning-strike-venice-beach/index.html

 

Be careful when lightning is anywhere around.  It can come from miles away very unexpectedly.

 

 

Buried million dollar treasure in Yellowstone Park?   That is the rumor, and the rumor has the park service alarmed. 

 

http://xfinity.comcast.net/video/Park-rangers-warn-against-treasure-hunt-in-Yellowstone-National-Park/312753731795/Comcast/Today_in_Video/?cid=hero_sf_TIV

 

I suppose only treasure hunters have been rescued?  Why not the same alarm over climbers and hikers that get in over their heads.   I'm sure a lot more of them have been rescued than the two "treasure hunters."  

 

Don't get me wrong, don't hunt in parks or other places where it is illegal.  Obey the laws.  I just think treasure hunters and detectorists receive disproportionately bad press.  Treasure hunting is a bad word for some.

 

 

There was an clean up of the waterways around Sebastian.

 

http://www.veronews.com/news/sebastian/spotlight/trash-plucked-from-area-waterways-during-annual-cleanup/article_48e2cbae-1528-11e4-a402-001a4bcf6878.html

An old bomb remained stuck in tree for 75 years.  Interesting picture. 

http://www.thelocal.es/20140711/civil-war-bomb-stuck-in-pine-tree-for-75-years


There is a tropical wave over by the Verde Islands with a 30% chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours.  It is a long way off, but could develop.

On the Treasure Coast still more of the same.  No change in beach detecting conditions.

Use the g+1 button at the bottom of posts to indicate which posts you particularly like.  That will give me feedback on what you like to see.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net.

5/2/12 Report - Bomb Gate Defused & Many Happy Returns

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

Yesterday I showed a photo of some of the guys from the Bomb Unit from Patrick Air Force Base that were in Vero beach because of a suspicous buried object detected by W. D.  The Bomb Unit returned to the beach Tuesday morning and retrieved the object.  The object turned out to be part of a gate that was first detected but not retrieved  because of the depth and water last Saturday. 

When found at low tide Saturday the object was about 19 inches deep.  Only a  section of the drab green pipe was glimpsed at the time.  Tuesday, when it was retrieved, it was dug at a depth of only about 2 inches. As W. D. said, that gives some indication of the amount of  erosion that occured in that area in the past few days.  

W. D. uses a Detector Pro Headhunter Pulse Induction with a 11 inch coil.


 

He wrote, The police said they are very careful about this because back in the eighties a policeman in Port St. Lucie checked on a device on the beach that was a cannister. He cut it with an axe and it was a phosphorous flare. He suffered severe burns and the doctors had to immerse him in a tub of saline water in a darkened room to retrieve the burning metal with tweezers. Luckily he had his vest on.

My advice to everyone is if you find anything suspicious on the beach don't be too embarrased to call the police.

Good advice W. D., and thanks for the photo and story.


There are a couple of good lessons there.   One is how you can monitor sand levels as they increase and  decrease over detected objects.  Another is that there will be times when you can't retrieve certain objects, but if you try again when conditions such as the tide, sand level or surf changes, you might be able to get it later.  Of course, it could disappear too.  And third, be careful.  There are buried objects that can be dangerous.   In this case W. D. played it safe, and I think he enjoyed the experience.

I wonder how long that gate has been out there.   Evidently not too long by the looks of it.  So why is it there and how did it get there?  I wonder how many times it has been detected.  

I feel like I understand a lot about how object move on a beach and how they end up where they are found, but there is one important part that I wish I understood better.  I've conducted some experiments that have given me some insight, but I wish I could put a GPS locator on a cob so I could track it's movements. 

I was surprised by the results of the most recently concluded blog poll. I really expected either Garrett or Whites to come out on top. I didn't expect Minelab to be rated as having the best target ID.  When I think of  Minelab, I don't really think of target ID.  Of course they do have ID meters for some of their models such as the Sovereign.   The results could have been swayed by the popularity of Mainelab detectors on the Treasure Coast.

Minelab received 36% of the responses, Whites 25%, Garrett 19%, Fisher 9%, Tesoro 6% and other 2%. Target ID has never been something that has been real important to me, but it does have its applications, even though I think most people use it way too much.


Gold is still in the $1600s.  Not bad.  That makes almost any gold find worth something. 

Wedding bands are among the most common gold finds on the beach.   If you are only finding larger men's bands, you are probably using too much discrimination.  As I've said before, there was a time when I thought women didn't lose as many bands as men.  That was shortly after I began detecting and missed a lot of the smaller women's rings.

Rings with nice gem stones often have small bands.  You don't want to miss those.

If you've only been finding larger bands, it's time to experiment with your detector.  Take the smallest thinnest band you can find out and practice detecting it.

To the right is a recent gold band find.  18 kt. and nearly average size for a man's ring.  Not too large and not too small..

Look for any inscriptions on the inside of the band.   Some people even get their name inscribed.

Sometimes I'm surprised by what people do or don't respond to.  I thought I would get some email about the ghost ship post, but not a word.

I like to publish stories of returned finds.  People need to know how many finds are returned.  And the officials need to consider that when they talk about banning metal detectors.  If you ban metal detectors, a lot of cherished items will remain lost for ever.

A lot of my returns happened very shortly after the loss.  In those cases, someone usually saw me on the beach and asked me to come find the ring, gold chain, eye glasses, car keys or whatever it was that they just lost.  Those are the easy ones.  I've found and returned all of those kinds of things.  The eye glasses took me longer than the others that I can think of right now.  A guy staying at a hotel lost his glasses in two or three feet of water.   Like I said, it took me a while that time, but I found them.

Imagine the inconvenience of losing your eye glasses when away on vacation, especially if you need them to drive or whatever.

You know, the more I think of it the more cases I remember.  I just remembered the time a young girl came to me and said she lost her sister's class ring.  I haven't thought of that one in years.   She wasn't supposed to have her sister's ring, but took it and wore it and  dropped it in the ocean.  I found that one quickly in about four feet of water.  She was certainly relieved.

There are a lot of people out there that think detectorists profit from the losses of other people.  They don't know how many items that would have remained lost if not for a detectorist.  That is one reason I'd like to publish more stories on returns.  We do it all the time, but usually nobody hears about it.


Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions and Forecast.

I'm sticking with a minimal two rating on my Treasure Coast beach conditions rating scale for another day.  that will probably be the end of the upgrade.

The wind is from the southeast and the seas are down to around four or five feet.   Seas will be calm this weekend again.  Sunday the wind will be from the west.  With the calm seas, west wind and Super Moon, that should be a very good day for hunting the low tide zone, and be a good day for getting in the water if you can find a spot that isn't buried deep in sand.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/1/12 Report - Beach Upgrade, Super Moon & Bomb Squad on Vero Beach

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

Bomb Unit from Patrick Air Force Base at Vero Beach Yesterday.

A possible bomb was inspected by the police who were called in by a detectorist who found the suspicious object.  The police called in the bomb unit from Patrick Air Force Base, but they arrived too late as the incoming tide made it impossible for the object to dug up and inspected.  They will try again today at low tide.

The detectorist who originally detected this object sent me the photo and information.   Thanks W. D.

You got it here first.

Always remember that old ordnance could surface on our Treasure Coast beaches anytime.

You might have noticed the low low tides we've been having.  It is because of what has been called an Extreme Super Moon.  Super Moons aren't all that rare.   They occur every year.  Although this one may be one of the nearest in the last seventeen years. 

The closest and biggest full moon of 2012 will be on Saturday, May 5th. That means that high tides will be unusually high and low tides will be unusually low, then and for a few days before and after.

Yesterday I located an object in the low tide zone that I couldn't recover myself.   I dug it up this morning.  Nothing good.

The two to three foot cut that I talked about yesterday turned into a three to four foot cut by this morning. About one more foot of sand disappeared last night.


Here it is immediately below.

And the beach below had was cut even more - five to six foot. 

I'm issuing an upgrade on my Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions Rating Scale to a 2.   That is a minimal two.  Despite the nice looking cuts, they aren't the most productive.  There is just too much sand in front of the cuts.   And the foot of the cut is too high above the water line.

This google blog editor is poor.  

I don't expect the 2 rating to last long.  Seas have decreased since yesterday and will continue to decrease throughout the week.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net