4/8/17 Report - Treasure Books and Book Treasures. Surf a Little Higher Next Week.

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

One of my favorite types of collectibles is books.  The only thing I don't like about old and rare books is the difficulty of maintaining them in Florida heat and humidity.  Anyhow, books can be valuable in more ways than one.

I once did an article for a treasure magazine on treasure books and book treasures.  In that article I offered a free list of valuable modern collector books.  (Books don't have to be very old to be valuable.) I had previously published a database of collector book values.

One day I went to the mail box and found about twenty letters asking for the free list of books.  I knew the article must have been published.  I didn't know that before I saw all the mail.

The next day even more envelopes showed up in my mail box.  That went on for quite a while.

I included a coupon with the list of collectible books that I sent out and a good number of people usedto the coupon to buy a book that I published.

It was a lot of fun getting so much mail everyday in response to my offer.

I just found an article on the Sotheby's web site telling ten things that make books valuable.  You might find it interesting and helpful if you have some books around the house.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/sotheby-s-at-large/2016/07/10-things-that-make-books-valuable.html

I once bought a book about making fly rods for one dollar a thrift store..  It was an early edition of
A Master's Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, by Hoagy Carmichael Jr.  The book was signed, and I found a business card of the author inside the book.  I sold the book with the card, if I remember correctly, for about $170.

I've found a lot of good books at thrift stores.  You can usually buy them inexpensively.  One that I got for one dollar is Monedas Espanolas Desde Juana y Carlos A Isabel II 1504 a 1868 by Calico, Calico ad Erigo.  It is 544 pages and covers, as the title suggests, Spanish coins from 1504 to 1968.  It is illustrated profusely and presents examples of most major varieties.  That is the kind of thing that would be difficult to find at a reasonable price if you were looking for it.

I've found other good treasure books and resources in thrift stores.

If you buy any old books at a thrift store or anything, don't forget to check between the pages.  You can find old letters, photos, post cards, autographs, business cards or even cash.

Someone once bought an old book from me, and I put a small amount of money in the book when I sent it to the buyer because he over paid.  When I told him I put some change in the book, he said that will teach him to look in books before he sends them out.  I guess he resold it and sent it off without ever looking in it.

Both nonfiction and fiction books can be surprisingly valuable.

Before places like eBay became so popular, it was easier to find books that you could sell for a profit. The internet changed the collectible book market.  More common books that you could easily sell before for a few dollars became worthless while the price of the rarer books increased.

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The surf is going to remain small on the Treasure Coast this weekend, then increase next week, but only to three to five feet.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/11/15 Report - Small Finds and Recovery Techniques. Book Treasures. A Little More On The Seminoles Wars.

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

Treasure Coast Beach This Morning.

This is what the beach looked like this morning.  There is still sand accumulating on the front beaches.

The surf was calm, there were however some surfable waves.

Notice anything about that beach? No people!  And I'm showing one of the busiest beaches along a twenty mile stretch.

I heard one South Florida guy whining about all the competition down there.  There is a reason there are a lot of detectorists down there.  There are tons of people that lose good things down there. Even a monkey will quit pulling the a if he never gets anything for it. If you have enough people in the water wearing good stuff - especially active people or people not accustomed to or prepared for the water - there are always some recent drops to be found.  It doesn't take much skill to do that.

Here is a quick video clip showing the surf on the Treasure Coast today.

Most all of the people I did see on the beach this morning were kids trying to learn to surf, along with a few fishermen.

Just noting the differences.  You always have to analyze the situation and make adjustments.

Below are a couple of my small finds this morning.  Both are the type of thing that will slip right through the holes in your scoop.

Two Very Small Jewelry Finds Made This Morning
At The Beach Shown Above.

If you don't know what you are doing, you can waste a lot of time trying to scoop up small items like that.

It is important to first get a good estimate of size and depth.  Familiarity with your detector and testing can help with that.

Once you have pinpointed the item and know about how deep it should be, put the point of your scoop right behind it and try not to dig any deeper than necessary.  Try to get the scoop just deep enough to get the scoop under the target and no more.

I've talked about recovery techniques for deep targets and won't get into that again now.

Good visibility can help with targets like this.  Watch the sand as your scoop comes up.  Watch for any sign of the object as your raise the scoop.  You might see it fall out or off to the side.  Don't get too much sand in the scoop.  If it slides through the hole quickly and you have good visibility, give the sand a toss to the side and watch for any glint from the object on the surface of the sand.

A snorkel mask can be helpful.  Also, very small targets can often be found by feel if the sand doesn't have shells and the sand is pretty stable on the bottom.

In the wet sand today, there was a couple inches of fine sand over top of a layer of shells on the front beach.

In the shallow water, the wave period was long.  I think you'll see that when you watch the video.  The wave would break and then come in over the sand in the shallow water, hit the beach, and then flow back out, so the current would come in over the sand and a few seconds later back out again.  The result was that the top sand in the shallow water would move a little one way and then the other.

I won't get in to other details about how that affects using your scoop.  Some other time maybe.

Sometimes its easier in deeper water,  For one thing you sometimes don't get as much current on the bottom in deeper water.

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I received a couple of great emails last night.  They were jam packed with good information.

Here is the first.  It is from S. W.

There are a couple of original copies of "War in Florida" on ebay. They are going for about $1200.00. There are not too many books that cover the Seminole War. Mostly a page or two in an old book here or there. Did you know one of the main reasons for the Second Seminole War was because the whites would not let the Indians take their slaves west with them and would not pay them for them when left behind. I have one of the best private collections of antique books from the war of 1812 through the Mexican War. Things from this era are not easy to find and are getting out of my price range. ...

I've always liked old books myself.  The market for old books has changed a lot in the past decade or so.  Before old books were as available on the internet as they are today, you could easily sell almost any book that was near a hundred.  Now most old books sell for very little if at all, however there are books that do bring higher prices, like the one S. W. mentioned.

I once was asked by a librarian at one of the local state colleges to look at a private collection that was once donated to them.  They were going to discard all of those books.  There were some very nice and valuable books in the collection, including things like a Mark Twain first edition, many 19th century books, and even an 18th century book.  They had no idea what they had.  I told them those books should be saved.

On the topic of books, here is a rare one.  A copy of The Hobbit (shown above) was recently sold at auction by Sotheby's for 137,000 British pounds, which would be around 200,000 U. S. dollars.

There are very very few fiction books worth that amount.  Most old books are not first editions and most authors do not have a cult following like Tolkien. 

Old non-fiction books can be valuable.  They can be valuable sources of information.
It is fortunate we can access as many as we can for free on the internet.  

Too me, old books, both fiction and non-fiction are loved collectibles.

The issue about the Seminoles owning slaves is very interesting to me because I hadn't heard anything about that until very recently.  Maybe I just missed it somehow, but it seems to me that we usually get a sanitized white-washed politically correct version of history in many modern history books and in our schools.  Only part of the story is told.  That is one reason why it is good to go back and read books that were written by the people that were closer to the actual events.  They have their own perspective, biases, etc. but seeing how they looked at things and wrote about them adds something.  Even the old style of language adds another dimension.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

4/24/15 Report - $5 Million Item Found In Attic. Glass Items Found On Atocha. Valuable Old Books.

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

Faberge Hardstone Figure
Sold For Over $5 Million.
 

This Faberge hardstone figure was found in the attic of a house by an executor of an estate.  The figure sold for over $5 million at auction.  The pre sale auction estimate was $500,000 to $800,000

Nice find.

Here is the link for the article.

http://artdaily.com/news/65924/Stair-Galleries-sets-world-record-for-Faberg--hardstone-figure--selling-for--5-980-000#.VToLB-l0yaE

Kovels Komments says, When going through the items in an old house, be sure to shake every book, look for hidden drawers in desks and blanket chests, and check hems of drapes, pillows and the backs of pictures hanging on the walls.

I've been in the unfortunate position of being an executor to an estate.  Also check pockets before getting rid of old clothes.

I also love old books and have spent a lot of time in thrift stores looking at old books.  It is not uncommon to find interesting items hidden in old books.  

I once published a list of the top 20 most valuable modern collectible books and offered the list in an article I wrote for a treasure magazine.  I received tons of requests for that list.

I've found a lot of things tucked between the pages of old books, including money.  

Old and vintage pictures are now very popular and are sold on sites like eBay and Etsy.  It is not unusual to find a neat old picture tucked between the pages of a book. 

Also check to see if the book is signed by the author or some famous person.  Sometimes a book will have been owned by a famous person before it was sold off. 

I once found a book written by Hoagie Carmichael Jr. that contained his signature and his personal calling card.

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Have you found any of these?

Lead Bottle Stoppers Found on Atocha.
Source: melfisher.org site linked below.

To the left are lead bottle stoppers that were found on the Atocha.  Some were found with glass from the bottle remaining on them.

Here is a very good and thorough report on glass from the Atocha.  It covers all kinds of glass found.  It is an older report, originally printed in 1990, but very good.

Glass from Nuestra Señora de Atocha By Corey Malcom Reprinted from: Astrolabe: Journal of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society Volume 6, No.1 - Fall, 1990

Here is the link.  Enjoy!

http://www.melfisher.org/pdf/Glass_from_Nuestra_Senora_de_Atocha.pdf

Most glass would be eye-balled, however some is found still attached to metal objects such as stoppers or frames.

Maybe you've found one of those lead stoppers and didn't know what it was.  That is a good thing about reading things like this.  It will help you identify various objects.

Nice photos and sketches of glass items and pieces to look at in that article.

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The Sedwick TREASURE, WORLD & U.S. COIN AUCTION # 17 will go live on the internet at 10:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 29, 2015 and end on the 30th.  Just a few days left to bid.

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I hope you'll send your suggestions about proper beach detecting etiquette.  Also send your "bad" experiences with other detectorists.

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Today (Friday) on the Treasure Coast we'll have some north winds later in the day and a two to three foot surf.  The low tides won't be as low as they have been recently.

There is one nice bump in the surf prediction listed for next week.  We'll see.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net