2/6/14 - Most Valuable Artifacts Ever Found! Eye-balled Sports Memorabilia Find. Lots of Wind But Very Little Erosion Found Today.

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



One Treasure Coast Beach This Afternoon Before Low Tide

We got a good bit of wind the past couple of days - even some small amount of wind damage, yet not much happened to the beaches.  Above you can see a pretty typical Treasure Coast beach this afternoon.  Not very good detecting conditions at all despite the increased surf.  When I was there the water was hitting from the East. 

There was one beach that had about a four foot cut.  It was getting down close to some of the older sand layers in one spot, yet most of the erosion was in only in renourishment sand.  That erosion was caused by a renourishment project and the tons of sand that was dumped just to the north of heavily eroded spot.  As a result of the artificial beach, the wave energy was redirected.  That happens a lot.  You dump sand in one spot and an adjacent area badly erodes. 

To sum it up, despite all the wind we had, beach conditions remain poor.  There are a few eroded areas, but those are mostly caused by recent renourishment projects, and they are generally not where shipwreck items would be uncovered.  It is possible that a very few older items might pop up in rare spots.

I'm not expecting any significant improvement in overall beach detecting conditions anytime soon.

-----

3.25 Inch Limestone Sculpture
Source:wikipedia Gruennel Lioness

What would be the thing you would most like to find?  Would it be gold, platinum or diamonds?  How about this 3.25 inch tall limestone figure? 

Take a look at this little beauty.  It is Guennol Lioness.  It is 5000 years old, and was found near Bagdad.  What do you think it is worth?

It sold at auction in 2007 for $57.2 million dollars.  It is one of the most valuable artfacts ever.

There are two sculptures by famous sculptures that have sold for more. One by Picasso and the other by Giacometti.

The next most valuable artifact of all time is could be Artemis and the Stag, a Hellenistic bronze sculpture that sold in 2007 for $28.6 million.

Artemis is just over 36 inches tall.  It was found in the 1920 during a construction project at a Roman site.

So if you ever wondered what the most valuable artifacts are, I just showed two of the top ten contenders.

You can learn more about those two and eight more of the most valuable artifacts by using the following link.

http://www.theartwolf.com/articles/10-most-expensive-antiquities.htm

That should be a good reminder to keep your eyes open for non-metallic items while metal detecting.  You never know what you might find.

------

One fellow was picking up aluminum cans in Lexingon Creek when he found an interesting piece of sports memorabilia.  It was metallic, but it was eye-balled.  It was coin-like and had the 1955-56 basketball schedule for the University of Kentucky on it. 

Here is the link for more about that.

http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/UK_fan_finds_rare_coin_in_Lexington_creek_131027803.html

-----

Too bad all of that wind didn't do more for us.

They are getting ready to dump more sand on South Inlet Park at Fort Pierce.  

They only get a dozen tourists there, and a few fisherman.  They must spend about a million dollars per tourist to dump sand there very year.  I'll be curious to see if this sand is filled mangled aluminum junk like it was the last time.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

11/12/14 Report - Inland Hunting Versus Beach Hunting, 2000 Year-Old Corded Pot Sherds Found

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

Find and photo by William M.

Here is a nice silver quarter find by William M.
He has been detecting off beach.  People do that more when beach conditions are not so good.

If you think about it, there is a lot more land in the U. S. than there is beach.  The beach is only a very narrow strip.

If you fly over the U. S. you'll see thousands of square miles of land that has not been detected or detected very little.

The main difference between beach hunting is the constant churn or turnover in the tidal area. 

There are a lot of differences between beach and inland hunting, but there are a lot of similarities too.

In future posts I'll talk about some of the differences and different strategies and techniques.  The biggest thing about working a beach is the sifting and sorting done by the water and waves.  The longer things are out there the more they will be sorted.  That means that you can hit it really good when you are able to get to where the gold has accumulated. 

When hunting dry land there can be accumulations too.  There are lakes, streams, etc. but there is erosion from rain too.  I hit one small area that held a good number of coins on an old path recently where the path narrowed.  There were steep cliffs on both sides of the path, and the path also got suddenly steeper and there were big tree roots sticking out.  I'd bet that a good bit of that concentration of coins was caused by people coming down the path slipping in rain or snow or tripping over the roots. 

In the near future, I'll probably be talking more about some of the similarities and differences between inland and beach hunting and the different strategies and techniques.



Pot Shards
 

Here are some finds from up north.  I said I'd show you some older stuff.  These are estimated to be up to between 2000 and 2500 years old.

You can see the chord marks.  They are all corded.  Some are tempered with limestone and some have bits of ground clamshells.



An Inside Surface.

Here are a couple of close-ups.

Keep your eyes open and be aware of non-metallic items that you might see.

These are from a large camp area on private property which has been investigated heavily by archaeologists.







An Outside Surface.

On the Treasure Coast it looks like we'll be having a one to two foot surf most of the time, with maybe a couple of days a foot bigger.  That won't really create good beach conditions.  It has really been a slow year for hunting older things on the Treasure Coast beaches.  It has got to change some time.  Don't fall asleep and miss it when it finally happens.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net