3/1/12 Report - Helmet Dredged Up By Commercial Dredger, Whatzit & More

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

2600 Year Old Bronze Greek Helmet Brought Up by Commercial Dredging In Harbor.

Here is a link to the article about that.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2852306/posts

If it was dug up by a detectorist would it have been a crime?

Take a look at how the Anglo-Saxon Hoard was handled when it was discovered by a detectorist in England. It provides a good example of how to handle these things and provides some good lessons.

The Hoard was the second most popular touring exhibition ever at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC. More than 1,000 visitors paid eight dollars each to the Anglo-Saxon treasure. Again, it was discovered by a detectorist who was fairly compensated.

Here is a link to an article about that.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33004687/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/largest-hoard-anglo-saxon-treasure-found/

People often ask me if you can find treasure in dredged sand. The helmet shown above is one example from Israel. If an entire helmet can be dredged up, certainly other smaller items can too.

I do know of cobs that were found in freshly pumped beach renourishment sand in the past.

As I've told people that have asked about that, you'll need patience looking through dredged sand because you'll generally find a lot of mangled aluminum and rusty iron.

I asked a question the other day that got overshadowed by the recent legislative uproar. I asked detectorists to send in stories of how people responded when a lost item was returned to them. I'm sure there are many good stories about that out there and I would like to post a few.

I've received offers of a few bucks, drinks and dinner. Sometimes though, people respond with a puzzling indifference, or even hostility.

Anyhow, please send in your best story about what someone did when you returned a lost item.

I've found keys that shut down a hole business for a day until they were located.

The world needs to know about that side of detecting to. All they hear about is grave robbers and looters, which, of course, has nothing to do with metal detecting. Metal detectors are sometimes used by criminals (as are shovels), but also sometimes by law enforcement. The crime is not metal detecting.

Mystery Object Found With Metal Detector.

I've posted this one before, but don't feel like I have it solved. It is about three inches across. There are similar ones that are smaller, but nearly the same shape with the same pattern of holes.

It was found where battles took place in the last half of the 19th Century and early part of the 20th Century, along with musket balls and musket parts. I assume it is from the same time period but could be earlier or later.

Someone thought it might be a gorget and that certainly is possible, but I'm not convinced yet. I'm still hoping someone might come up with the answer.

Let me know what you think.


I've been deluged by email concerning the proposed SB868. Please forgive me, but I can't personally respond to all of the communications that I've received the past two days.

There is a lot to digest, and I'll continue to comment on the legislative issue from time to time.

The detecting community certainly did mobilize and make it's voice heard. Citizens need to do that occasionally if for no other reason than to remind law makers that they are out there and have concerns.

There is one thing on the SB868 issue that I should address today. They claim that the reason for the whole problem is that an early draft of the bill mistakenly included the words "all lands." That typo, or whatever it was, has been removed from the bill, and they say that the new bill provides for only a very small extension to the land being protected.

As some have said, it is good that attention was brought to the error before it passed into law. Hmmmmmm.

Don't let down your vigilance. You never know when you might find an error. And as we've learned in the past year or so, even some of our Federal representatives don't read the bills they vote on.

I'll get back to some of this in the future. There were some other thingc in the response that I read that are red flags to me.

For today, I'm about out of time.

Don't miss this though!

Seas are decreasing through Saturday. Sunday they'll start increasing again, reaching up to seven feet or more by Wednesday if the surf web sites are correct.

That is getting high enough to give a good chance of significant improvement in beach conditions.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/3/11 Report - Blade? Found on Treasure Coast & More On Lines and Holes

Guess What This Is.

This is a really neat item found on the St. Johns wreck and pictured in the Fisher organization report that I mentioned yesterday for the St. Johns Wreck. I didn't keep it secret very long, but the item is a conquistador helmet.

I wonder how many of you would have tossed it away if you dug it up on a beach?

The report also has a drawing of how the helmet would have looked new. You can use the link I gave in yesterday's post if you want to see that.


I often talk about coin lines and coin holes. I don't know if I've explained that neither are found in the dry sand area. Coin lines and coin holes are the result of the sifting and sorting of items by water action. I think I've probably said that before.

You see coin lines mostly in the wet sand, although you will sometimes find coin holes in the wet sand, but you find coin holes in the water. Both areas receive enough water action and sand movement to sift and deposit coins in lines or holes. Like I said, coin lines are much more common in the wet sand and holes more common in the water.

If you live on the Treasure Coast and hunt mostly the shipwreck treasure beaches or hunt the dry sand areas, you probably wouldn't learn about coin lines and holes. On the shipwreck beaches, there usually isn't enough coins to define either a coin line or coin hole. If you only find one or two good targets, there simply aren't enough data points do make either a line or hole apparent.

If you live in South Florida, as I did for a number of years, most beaches have had enough traffic over time to create good coin lines and holes on a relatively frequent basis. There are way more coins on the beaches down there, not all of which are within detecting range at any given time, but they are available for the water action to create lines or holes.

I think it would have taken me much longer to learn about coin lines and holes if I only detected the Treasure Coast treasure beaches. I do occasionally find lines and holes on the Treasure Coast, it is just much less frequently, and I already know what to look for and how to find them.

By the way, things besides coins are often found in coin lines and holes. The better the line or hole, the more likely it is to find gold in with the coins. Some of the best concentrations of gold rings are in the middle of good coin holes in the water. Sometimes you need to clean out the coins so you can get to the yellow stuff. You'll find that sometimes you'll only notice the softer deeper sounds after you have cleaned out the louder surface targets, so after you do a good job of cleaning out a line or hole go back over it again a time or two listening for those soft signals.

If you haven't' been reading this blog very long you might want to do a search for older posts on coin lines and coin holes.

I got an email from someone yesterday about an area that I used to hunt. It was a park down south that has a wide shallow swimming beach. That place was a little unusual. I found almost as many gold rings there as coins. Well, maybe 1 ring to every four or so coins. That is pretty unusual in my experience. There weren't many coins at that beach, and there weren't usually any significant coin lines or holes. There just wasn't very much wave action due to how shallow the water was for hundreds of yards out. As a result, the beach didn't receive very much wave energy and not very much movement of sand. Anyhow, you could walk out there and find a nickle or something and wander around some more and hit a gold ring. The proportion of gold rings to coins was unusual. I don't know exactly why that was, but it was that way over a period of years.

The reason I mention that is when I talk about sampling a beach, you have to know the beach and consider what you know about the beach when you decide what to do next. If I went to that beach and didn't know it as well as I do, I might think it had been cleaned out after detecting for a while with so little to show for it. But knowing that beach, if I didn't hit a single coin for a while, I might still keep looking. On the other hand, there are beaches where there are usually scattered coins or maybe even junk items. If you know that when you sample the beach, you can tell what has changed. So what I am saying is that it helps to have a good knowledge of a particular beach to serve a baseline when you sample the beach. That takes some time.

While putting in your time learning a beach, you'll get to know the good spots, and you'll get to know the habits of other people that hunt that beach. You can use all of that to good advantage.

Some coin lines or holes tend to replenish or form repeatedly at the same place. Some tend to appear under certain conditions and some at different times of the year.

I've talked before about keeping good records of your hunts and finds. That can really help.

A Recent Find.

Here is an item I found the other day. It looks like it could possibly be an encrusted blade. It is about seven inches long and one inch wide. Let me know what you think.


Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.

As you probably know present conditions aren't very good and haven't changed much for quite some time.

Right now the wind is from the southeast and it is a little rough. Tomorrow might be a nice time to check around the beach front at low tide. The sea is expected to be calmer tomorrow.

A front will be coming through and the prediction is for northeast winds and seas of about 5.5 feet. That isn't usually enough, but if it hits just right, it might actually create some cuts.

As I said yesterday, you might want to check the low tide later tomorrow and then check the beaches after the Wednesday again.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/17/11 Report - Conquistador Helmet & Garrett AT Pro

Cabasset for Sale on eBay.

This Spanish Conquistador helmet is something you don't see too often.

I got a couple of emails in response to my comments about the feathers, which I don't know if I mentioned, were scattered along the beach for at least a few miles. I suspect further than that, but that is what I saw.

Jason F. said he has been running across dead pelicans that did not appear to have any physical signs of injury. And Aaron D. said he found a half buried pelican when he detected a metal band around it's leg.

Adam called the USCG to report the found tag and received a nice certificate. It is good to report any tagged birds or animals you find.

I once found a tag on a bird's leg bone. The bird was long gone. That bird was originally tagged in Virginia and found near Key Biscayne.

Watch for and report any tagged birds or other animals.

Some detectors are better than others in the wet sand. Some detectors are best in the dry sand, and are especially good for working in shallow water.

Marc M. sent in the following tips for using the newest Garrett all-terrain detector, the Garrett AT Pro.

When you are using the Garrett AT Pro at the beach, it’s very important that you be properly ground balanced. When you move from, say a dry sand environment to wet sand at the water’s edge where you are not ground balanced, you are going to hear some feedback and see some erratic behavior. So what you want to do is ground balance either manually or automatically. It’s recommended to go into automatic mode, push the button and move the coil up and down just above that wet saturated sand. Once you have a nice quiet operation, release the button and you will hear neither chatter nor feedback while resuming your hunt.

Once you move out into the deeper water, away from the edge of the shore, you’ll again want proper ground balance. And in some cases you might want to go a little into the negative (or negative bias) to achieve the stability you need. If you are hearing any chatter you can hit the ground balance button and take it down a few clicks, swing your coil and see if it’s stable and has lost some of the chatter you might have heard. If you are not happy, you can push down the button and take it down a few more clicks. Does this until you have got a nice stable operation and then begin hunting. If you go over a target, it’s still going to ring in loud and clear over any other background sound that might be going on.

In other situations you might decide you want to reduce the sensitivity a notch or two, try that. It depends on the beach you are going to be hunting on. How mineralized the sand is, is it white sand, is it black mineralized sand. Different beaches are going to require different ground balance situations and reductions on sensitivity. You’ll have to find what works best for you and your hunting situation. But you want to get it ground balanced to the conditions as best as you can. And any background chatter you might hear, you should still hear a good target ring out above that loud and clear.

Another main thing to keep in mind is that when you are searching in salt water conditions, keep the coil level, swing it level, don’t let it bang against the ground or swing it up at the end of your swings. Although you may not be able to see it, imagine how you would do it on the land, keeping that coil level just above the edge of the bottom without banging into the sand down below. Just keep a nice smooth level swing with a good ground balance and you can achieve good results on beaches and in the salt water.

For more information on the Garrett AT Pro, visit Hollands Brook Metal Detectors (authorized dealers of Garrett, Fisher, Tesoro and DetectorPro metal detectors.

As you know this blog is quickly growing and becoming more popular. I receive a lot of requests to provide links to commercial sites. I generally don't do that because space is at a premium and I can't provide free advertising for everyone.

This blog is not monetized in any way at this point. The assistance that I most appreciate comes directly from this blog's readers in the form of tips, reports, ideas, information, or questions.

Some people have offered to make a contribution to help keep the blog going. I have not accepted contributions and probably never will, but do appreciate kind offers like that because it tells me that people appreciate what I am doing. And it also tells me that there are people that are not trying to get something for nothing.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that just because I provided a link to one commercial site doesn't mean I will ever do that again, so don't expect me to provide free advertising for everyone. I can't do it.

On the other hand, I will try to mention sources and provide some type of value or recognition to those that provide some valuable input that I use.

Sometimes I do forget or simply lose things that people sent to me. I do try to keep up with the demands of this blog, but don't always do it perfectly. Don't take it personally if you don't get a response from me. Like I said, sometimes I do lose track of things.

I took one of my older detectors out in my back yard this morning just to check it out. My experience in the yard reminded me of two things I'll talk about in the future. One is a trait that will help any detectorist keep going when finds are not coming very fast, and the other is the topic of how history repeats and how you can use that fact to your advantage.

Forecast and Conditions.

Conditions remain poor for finding shipwreck cobs. It doesn't look like there will be much of any changes this week either.

The surf web site shows the seas at three feet or less for the next few days. The wind is out of the south this morning.

When your favorite spots aren't producing, as I would expect to be the case for many of you now, one thing I would recommend is taking a look at new spots.

I believe that most people identify a few favorite spots or beaches and when they are no good, do nothing. Instead, that might be a good opportunity to go scout out some new spots. Maybe you'll find a place that is worth hunting now, or maybe you'll find some new places to hunt when conditions improve.

Don't get stuck in a rut.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net