12/13/19 Report - Looking More Closely At Your Coin Finds For Fun and Profit. Coin Chips and Cracks. Surf's Up.

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

Potosi Half Reale From Jupiter Beach.

I enjoy studying my finds.  Sometimes it is more than fun.  Occasionally it can be profitable.

When you look more closely at your coins you can discover all kinds of things.  For example on the Potosi half reale shown above, one thing that might jump out at you is the multiple impressions of the S at the bottom of the coin.

When you look at a cob this closely, you can see some of the workmanship of the fellow that cut the die and you might also see artifacts of the minting process.  That brings you closer to the person who made the die and the person that punched the coin.

Closer Look at the Multiple Impression of the S on a Potosi Half Reale.

Unfortunately most beach found cobs are worn and corroded so you can't see the details very clearly.  The side of the cob shown above was complete covered by a thick crust of sand, which preserved the details.

Think for a minute about the man that created the die.  He had to carve the design into the steel die.  Each of those dots was hand carved into the die.   Then the die was used to punch the cob.  

Some of the details you see are the result of workmanship, but some are the result of accident.  I don't know now if the multiple impressions of the S were made by multiple strikes, a bouncing die or recutting of the die.  Perhaps someone can tell me.  I was told something about that at one point but forget now.

Another View of the Same Cob.

It looks to me like the dash in the middle of the monogram might have been recut. Again, maybe  a more knowledgeable person can tell me for sure.

Modern coins also show a lot of interesting details if you look at them very closely.  You might see die chips or cracks, for example.

Below are a few examples.

Die Chips on the Face of Roosevelt.

Modern Roosevelt dimes often show die chips.  On the dime shown above you can see die chips on Roosevelt's cheek, beside the corner of his mouth and above his eye.   I have found numerous examples showing die chips on Roosevelt's face, often more obvious than those shown above.

Roosevelt dimes also often show die chips on the reverse on the olive and oak branches.

Die Chip on Oak Branch on Reverse of Roosevelt Dime.

You can see the die chip between the lower right branches of the oak branch in the picture above.

Die chips are also often found on recent Jefferson nickels.  Below you can see a small die chip between the e and r.

Small Die Chip on Jefferson Nickel.

Die Chips on the O, T, and S.

Above is another example of a Jefferson nickel showing die chips.  There are die chips on the O of Montecello as well as on the T and S in CENTS.

You can also find a lot of die cracks on modern coins if you look closely.  Many memorial cents show a die crack running from a corner of the memorial building to the edge of the coin.

Below is shown a die crack running down the steps and then to the edge of the coin.  Those are very common and insignificant.

Lincoln Memorial Die Crack.

A die crack will be raised on the coin.  It is caused by a crack in the die - not the coin.

Here is a larger and more significant example of a die crack that is actually cataloged.  This die crack runs from the edge of the coin all the way down to Lincoln's neck.

Crack Running From Edge of Coin Down to Lincoln's Chin.

By far my best die crack find is a die crack with retained cud.  A cud is a die break that has not yet fallen out.  You can find that coin cataloged online as well.

My point today is that you can get more enjoyment out of your coins and possibly find a coin worth some decent money if you look at your coin finds more closely.

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The surf is up a bit - maybe up to six or seven feet.  I hope to get out today to inspect some beaches.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/23/15 Report - How Did The Escudos End Up Where They Were Found. A Few Thoughts. Tropical Storm Danny.

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

One of the Cobs Recently Found By the Captiana Crew.

Just a picture of one of the escudos on display at the press release Thursday.

The press release was at Captain Hiram's Resort in Sebastian.   The 1715 Fleet Queens Jewels guys talked about their recent finds and their experiences. There were a lot of TV cameras.  You probably saw clips from the release on the local news.  I heard one video clip from the release on the radio Friday morning when I was in the car.

There are some guys in the metal detecting community that try to make it all about themselves.  For them it is all me, me, me.   That is how they sound.   You know the type.   The P. T. Barnums of metal detecting.  Those are the same guys that have to resort to dirty tricks to sabotage other detectorists.  Unfortunately we have some of those.

That is the exact opposite of what I saw at the press release Thursday.  The Capitana guys are treasure rock stars, but they don't act like it.  They are some of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

There was no arrogance.  No bragging.  There was no, We were successful because we were smarter and better than everybody else.  They told their stories with humility.  I wouldn't mind if all treasure hunters and detectorists were like them.  It would do us good.  Those are the kind of guys that you like to root for.  I know they'd be rooting for you too.

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I've shown a lot of treasure in the last few days.  I showed gold cobs of different sizes and types, and I showed a video of the guys finding those gold cobs.

There is a lot to take in and think about.  It is time to play Sherlock Holmes.  Let's see if there is anything we can learn.

Let's start with the cobs.  What did you notice?  One thing I noticed is the remarkable lack of scratches or other damage.  I didn't inspect the escudos carefully when I did get to see some in person.  Mostly I've seen photos, and that just isn't the same.

Gold is a relatively soft metal.  It can be easily scratched, yet the escudos seem to show very little damage of any kind.  Not even many scratches.

From the video we can see they were found among rocks, and they were found near shore where the breakers crash. You might think that combination would bang them up.  But you don't see much of that.

If you watched the video you also saw that many were found in crevices and cracks and dips where they would be protected.  Any covering sand would protect them too.

Yesterday I showed an escudo that was lodged in a crack of a rock.  And in the video we see that some of those pot holes were maybe two, three or four feet deep, and sometimes the space between the rocks was very narrow.  Once they got into a place like that they would be well protected.

Divers Finding Escudos In Dips Between Rocks.
Source: Video provided by Jonah Martinez.

Over the years I've found a lot of clad coins in the shallow water that were bent like those shown in the picture here.

Penny and Nickle Bent As Found

The picture shows just a couple examples of coins that I've found bent up, and some were bent almost in half.

If you try to bend a coin like that you'll find out how difficult it is.  That takes a lot of force.

I don't know exactly how it happens, but all the bent ones that I've found, if I correctly recall, were found near the water's edge or in shallow water. They were also found in areas where there were a lot of loose coral rocks.  I would see the rocks piled up at the edge of the water at times.  Sometimes you'd see them and other times not.  I'm sure the rocks got moved around, and sometimes piled up, and other times buried.  My guess is that the coins got trapped between rocks in rock piles and got bent when the rocks got shifted and buried.  That is my best theory at this point.

I see no evidence of anything like that on the recently recovered gold cobs - not even scratches.  What we see in the video is large rocks that would not move.

It appears to me, rightly or wrongly, that the gold cobs were well protected protected during the three hundred years they were lost,  Even hurricanes failed to damage them.

I'm guessing that these escudos did not drop immediately onto uncovered rocks when they were initially lost. I think either they were lost on the beach or in the water, but on sand, and then gradually settled as the sand moved.

There is the possibility that they were once in bags or boxes.  I know of no evidence of that though.

I think they gradually settled down into the rock crevices. Once covered by sand, even just a little, they would be well protected.

It is also possible that they didn't settled all of the way into the dips until sand was moved by the blowers. That is a possibility I want to look into. I have some experiments planned.

Once coins settle into the cracks and crevices and pot holes in the rocks, I think there is very little chance that even a hurricane would move them onto the beach again.  Those would certainly be protected from most, if not all violent water movement,  And they wouldn't move until the covering of sand was removed first.

If the escudos were lost on the beach or in deeper water or on sand over top of the rocks, they could settle deeper when the sand was moved.  I believe it would be possible for cobs to be lifted and even thrown, but in my opinion that would be very unusual and unlikely if they were protected by narrow crevices and deep pot holes.

There is still a lot to learn about how those escudos got to where they were found, but I think we may have at least started the journey.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

There are a lot of variables, for sure.  It seems near impossible to figure out all of this, but in the past year or two I've learned a heck of a lot that took me a few decades to learn.  For example, it took me a long time to understand and appreciate what I call "trigger points" and "drop points" and how that determines how items are sifted and sorted. For me, that was a big leap, and it just occurred in the past couple of years, and only after decades.

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Tropical Storm Danny
Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Tropical storm Danny is now headed towards the Dominican Republic.  As you can see things are heating up in the Atlantic.  There are three there other disturbances out there.

Danny will soon be downgraded to a depression.  I don't think it will amount to much by the time it gets close to us.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/10/15 Report - Beach Treasure - The Ground Floor. Rocks, Pot Holes, Cracks, Cuts and Beaches

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




I found another very good photo breaking down a typical beach.  Beach detectorists typically only detect a very small part of that.  We detect from the dune own into the water a short distance, but what diminishes the area covered even more is the fact that we only detect a few inches of the surface.  That would be the top few inches along the area shown in red below.  That isn't much of the beach.

First we have to narrow down the area of the beach where we want to detect, whether it is the dry beach, wet sand, shallow water, or what.  No one actually covers the area all the way from the dunes down and into the water.  That is simply too much area to cover.  You usually would be prepared for one area or another.  If you are working the dry sand you might want one detector or if you are working the shallow water another detector.  Maybe a different scoop and other equipment as well.

But my main point here is that you are only detecting a few inches of the surface of part of the beach.  Even with a very good detector you aren't getting into the deeper layers where there might or not be good things to be found.

When beach hunters are successful, the treasures are on or very near the surface for one reason or another.  Either they have just been deposited there (washed up or washed out) or a deeper treasure bearing layer has been cut into by mother nature.

When things are deeper into the yellow or one of the other layers shown above, we're not going to get them.

There is one way that the top diagram is not like what we have on the Treasure Coast.  The diagram shows various layers including sand, peat and clay, and we saw in a recent post a picture of a beach where those layers were being exposed, but the diagram does not show rocks.

You can see the rocks in many places along the Treasure Coast -  a lot along South Hutchinson Island.
You can see the rocks, actually reef, at Walton Rocks and down around Bathtub Beach, to name two notable locations.

Exposed Rocks On Treasure Coast.

At some locations the rocks are covered by a lot of sand and at other locations the rocks are actually exposed, at some times more than others as the sand comes and goes.  The big advantage the  treasure boats have is that they can remove the sand with blowers, and that is how they have been finding old treasures such as those that I've reported in the past.  The finds that I've reported were made after sand was blown away to expose coins and things that were laying on the rocks in pot holes and cracks between rocks.

Beach detectorists, on the other hand, are almost always detecting through inches or feet of sand.  We are dependent mostly upon Mother Nature depositing or exposing coins so we can find them in that few inches of surface that we have access to.  Old things also are occasionally made accessible when man moves sand, such as during construction or beach renourishment or something like that.

Rocks can provide a good indicator of the movement of sand as the rocks get covered or uncovered.

There is at least one Treasure Coast beach where I suspect that the reef covers a wreck or parts of a wreck.

I wanted to talk about the rocks today because that is one thing that the diagram left out, and they are very important.

Once in a while you will even find an old coin or something in a rock-like conglomerate.  That is not uncommon.  Very often it will be iron.

I've seen what looks and feels like sandstone form in about a year.  That sounds impossible, but I've seen it. It doesn't take very long for a sand and things to solidify in some places.  If you walk along the West bank of the Indian River and look at the lower concrete blocks that they put there to prevent erosion, in some places you'll see where sand has formed sandstone on the concrete blocks.

What you'll mostly see along the Treasure Coast beaches is a sharp type of rock like that shown in the picture above, but a few feet under the front of the beach you'll see large smoothed out flowing rock too.  You'll see the same or a similar kind also in places along the west side of the Indian River in places.

The coins found in deep pot holes won't be washing up in the near future as the result of nature.  It will take one heck of a storm to move most of them.  Others are more vulnerable.

What we're normally waiting for is a cut, something like that shown by my orange line above, where sand is removed and older layers are exposed.  That line is a little deceptive though.  You won't have a cut in one place without sand and things being moved elsewhere.  It is all connected.

The cut might cut into a treasure bearing layer, or coins might be deposited in front of the cut.  It could work either way.  And we've also in the past talked about other possibilities such as when coins are thrown up on the top edge of the cut.

In any case, don't forget the rocks.  They provide a surface beyond which things will not sink.  Sometimes that is close to the surface and sometimes it is several feet under the sand.

Along the west bank of the Indian River I'm told by the guys who place pilings for piers that the hard bottom is down about six feet.  Along the beach the rocks are sometimes exposed, such as on South Hutchinson Island, but up north, typically more like four feet- give or take.

As a detectorist, I've there have been a very few occasions I've seen when feet of sand has exposed treasure bearing rock.  When that happens you can find heavy concentrations of modern and/or older items.

I think I'll end there today.

Here is the link where I got the top diagram.

http://geologycafe.com/erosion/coastal.html

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There is no significant change Treasure Coast beach detecting conditions.  More of the same.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net