1/26/13 Report - Sand Continues to Accumulate While They Dump Even More

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

Cannon I saw the other day.

I saw this cannon Thursday and it reminded me of the cannon that sat in Central Park in New York for years before they discovered it was loaded.


Robert K. found a web site that identified the star fish I showed in a post the other day.  It is actually a  Luidia Senegalensis, or Nine-Armed Sea Star.  If you were really paying attention, as Robert was, you might have seen that it had nine arms, although I referred to eight in my post.  As I told Robert, I only counted eight because at that point I ran out of fingers.

Here is the link for more about the Sea Star if you are interested.

http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/Luidia_senegalensis.htm

Thanks Robert.

Beach Renourishment Project in Front of FPL Nuclear Plant

Just north of Walton Rocks they are dumping sand and grading the sand up to the top of the cliffs at the back of the beach.   I previously showed a photo of the south end of that project where they started.  It seems they are now finishing that project at the north end, which is shown in this photo.

The photo was taken Friday morning.

They filled that area just a few months ago, planted sea oats and everything, but that fill sand had completely disappeared.


A couple of days ago I showed a beach that had two steps cut into it.   The sand has accumulated in front of the lower step and shells were piled along the front of that lower cut yesterday.

Here is a quick video clip showing that beach as it looked Friday morning at John Brooks Park.

.The cuts hadn't changed much since I last showed them, but more sand had accumulated in front of the cuts.


The Mel Fisher organization has acquired an additional subcontractor to work the Margarita wreck site because the Dare is going to be working the Lost Merchant site this summer.  With the additional boats on the Margarita as well as continuing work on the Atocha, and the Dare working the Lost Merchant, it appears they are well positioned to make exciting new discoveries this summer.

You might know of some of the finds from the Margarita, including a gold chalice and reliquary.


On the Treasure Coast conditions remain poor for finding shipwreck treasure coins or cobs on the Treasure Coast beaches.

The surf was only about 1 -2 feet on Friday morning, then increased slightly in the evening and will remain at about 2 - 4 feet Saturday.   Low tide Saturday will be about 1:30 Saturday.

Nothing in the predictions give much hope that detecting conditions will improve on the Treasure Coast for at least several days.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/24/13 Report - On Cleaning Old Dug Silver Coins & More

I'm going to talk about that coin I dug Monday again.  I wasn't going to but when I cleaned it up I saw some neat things I wanted to show.

Same Spanish Silver Coin Dug Monday After Being Cleaned

I used Bill Popp's coin cleaning instructions as found in my treasure coins link list.  I diluted some acid and put the coin in the acid for a short while.  I then used baking soda.

If you haven't already, you should read Bills' coin cleaning instructions.  You'll see how nice this coin came out.  Really pretty, I think.

I really like the nice silver tone with some of the tarnish remaining.  I could get rid of some of the dark but don't want to.  I like it just like it is.

This coin surprised me in several way.

If you look at the date, there are stars on each side of the date.  The star on the left is imprinted with a "19" and the star on the right, imprinted with a "66" in it.

And if you look at the edge of the coin, the edge has writing on it.  I have a picture of that below.

Other Sid of the Same Coin

Warning:  Some coins should not be cleaned at all.  Cleaning can severely reduce the value of nice rare coins.  Don't clean a coin unless you know that it will not hurt the value of the coin.

Coins that are dug are most often not in great shape and can therefore often be cleaned without hurting
the value.

Sedwick Coins tells me that people often like salvaged cobs to be cleaned and toned to some extent, but don't clean coins unless you know what you are doing and know that you are not going to reduce the value of a valuable coin.

I always advise experimenting on junk coins first.

Edge of Same Coin.

Be safe when you are on the beach or in the water.  A man drowned in the Fort Pierce inlet this past weekend when his boat got swamped.

I thought this was interesting.  If you look at the picture below you'll see a faint eight pointed figure below the center of the picture.  It is a starfish that was in about a foot of water with a thin layer of sand over it.  I don't believe I've seen one just like that before.  It was about a foot across.

Starfish in Water.

Here is a little quiz.  Do you know when and where air conditioning was invented?   If you don't, you might be surprised to learn that it was invented in Florida in the 1850s.  John Gorrie was the inventor, and it happened in the bustling metropolis and research center of Apalachicola Florida.

The area around Apalachicola doesn't receive much attention, but it has a lot of interesting history and its fair share of shipwrecks and treasure.  You might want to look into it sometime.


The surf is supposed to be down around 1 - 2 feet today.  That could work out well.


Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net

1/23/13 Report - True Identity of Dug Spanish Silver Coin

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

Partially Cleaned Dug Coin

Yesterday I was talking about this coin that I was trying to identify.  It is still not very clean, but it is now clean enough that I have figured out what it is.

One small thing that originally made me think it was a fake treasure coin when I first saw it was a very shiny gold colored spot, which I thought could be the remains of some gold plating.  That isn't what it was at all.

There was a spot of gold colored encrustation that looked very much like gold.  Pretty amazing.  It really fooled me until I looked at it under magnification.  And it turns out that that gold spot was right on top of the date and prevented me from seeing the date.

It  really helped when I finally could see the letters PTAS and the number 100.

After I could tell that the coin was a Spanish 100 Pesetas coin, I was able to find pictures and details on the exact coin.       

A little internet research revealed that the dug coin is a silver bullion coin containing .489 Troy ounces of silver.  So it is worth a few bucks after all.

And here is a link from Dan B. showing what it is.

http://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1885.mobile.html

And another link.

http://www.coininvestdirect.com/wiki/100-pesetas-silver-coin/

You can see what it really looks like in those links.

So it turns out that the coin is not a fake, is Spanish, and is silver, but not real old.  How it came to be in that location with a bunch of US coins of similar date is anyone's guess.  I haven't cleaned all the coins that I presume to be US yet, so there might be another surprise or two.


Part of an old shipwreck recently washed up onto Cumberland Island GA.  Here is the link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/20/cumberland-island-shipwreck_n_2516676.html



Here is a little video clip showing one Treasure Coast treasure beach as I found it Tuesday morning.

Saturday this beach had some cuts.  By Monday it had pretty much filled in again, but by Tuesday morning it had cut again.

What I found Tuesday morning was that there were new cuts closer to the water than the remains of the previous cuts at that one beach.  That made the steps you see here.  This steps were all along the beach.  The new cuts were from nothing up to about 4.5 feet.

The sand in front of the lower step was more firm than the soft beach front that I found Monday.

Another beach that I saw Tuesday morning had no cuts at all.

Although we have some new cuts like this, it is not enough to significantly improve the probability of  finding old shipwreck cobs on the beach.

Tuesday afternoon, the wind increased and the waves increased some.  There may be some additional erosion from that.  I'm not expecting much though.  The surf is predicted to be in the area of 2 - 3 feet.  That normally won't improve beach detecting conditions much.  It looks to me like the sea might actually get a little rougher than what is predicted.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

[After this post I got the coin cleaned almost like new and a few more surprises were in store. I'll have that for you tomorrow.]

1/22/13 Report - Dug Coins & Beach Filling

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

I don't know what happened, but I noticed that yesterday's post, which should have appeared in the morning, wasn't there when it should have been.  I went back and fixed that, but it was late Monday before I got it fixed.  Sorry about that.




Beach Monday Morning

Some days you have to wear your long pants, even in Florida.  Its not the cold but those darn no-see-ems that can be a real pain on mornings when the sand is wet from rain.  They were eating me alive on Monday morning.

Another solution if you just can't bear long pants is insect repellant or getting in the water when it really gets bad.  They can't get to you under the water.

Anyhow, you might want to remember to be prepared for those little pests, expecially on mornings after a rain.


The cuts that I found Saturday morning were nearly gone Monday morning.  They were about half what they were Saturday.  Some filling had already taken place.

I was digging a good number of what looked like green encrusted US coins Monday morning when I dug a bigger coin.  At first glance I thought it was a half or something.  It was green and encrusted too, and I couldn't see very much of the surface of the coin, but I after some rubbing and eye-straining I could make out a cross.  And then a tressure.  Hmmm, looks Spanish, I thought.

Some Coins Dug Monday Morning

I couldn't see anything else at the time.  I figured that I had just found another one of those all-too-common fakes.  I wasn't going to take time to clean it off and inspect it there.  And from where I was and the other coins I was digging, I just figured it had to be a fake.

After I got it home and did a little more gentle cleaneing, I wasn't so sure it was a fake.   It didn't look like a fake.  It wasn't a cob.  It was round and had a rim.

After some more cleaning, I started to see some of the words.   Espana.  De.  00.

If it is a fake, it is a heavy fake.  Weighs .61 Troy Oz.  But I've found some heavy fakes.  The weight is about right for silver.

It is starting to look silver but isn't really clean enough to test yet.

Coin Dug Monday Mornin

I'd like to be able to read some more of the coin, but that will take more cleaning.

Below is what it looks like so far.

You might be able to make out the cross and crown at the top.

I'll probably have it figured out by tomorrow and will give you the verdict then.

Did you ever notice how prominent the cross is on Spanish treasure coins?   Have you ever thought about that?  It wasn't accidental.


The surf will be down around 1 -2 feet Tuesday morning and then increasing just a touch later in the day.  That makes for easy hunting.

The high tide will not be very high and the low tide will not be very low.  I'd like to see some lower low tides about now, but it isn't expected.

As I said, the cuts that I saw Saturday are already mostly filled in.

Treasure Coast beach detecting conditions are poor for finding shipwreck treasure coins on the beach, but you might be able to find some other types of things.

There is always some place to hunt and something to find.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/21/13 Report - Time to Bust Out & Easy Silver

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

Dan B. recently found this lump.   Of course he didn't know what was inside but was curious, as he should have been.  You never know.

See if you can guess what is in there.  I'll show the cleaned item(s) below.


I don't think most people take the time to check for silver coins in their change.  One way to easily find silver coins is to run your change through a machine.  Some banks (TD Bank for one) have machines that the public can use for counting change for conversion into bills.  The bank machine doesn't charge a fee like some machines in other retail locations.

That is an easy way to check a lot of coins for silver.  Of course you could still be missing some nice error or other valuable coins.

This YouTube video was made by a fellow that recovered two silver quarters worth nearly $10 that the machine wouldn't accept when he tried to cash in some coins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUi8Dc7tYE

Most vending machines and toll booth machines will also kick out silver coins as well as foreign and damaged coins.  When I was driving the Florida Toll Pike frequently I found silver coins simply by checking the change tray every time I went through.  I guess people simply threw in another coin when one was rejected.  If your car was not well positioned, it could be difficult to reach the tray and so I guess people just didn't bother.

Another thing about vending machines: it is an easy way to launder coins that are discolored from salt water.  Just put it in the vending machine and hit the coin return button.  You'll get a shiny new coin.  

I once asking a vending machine operator if he cared about that.  He said it didn't make any difference to him what color the coin was.

The first month of 2013 is about two thirds over.  Can you believe it?   Time flies.

How has the year been going for you?  Has it been frantic or dull, productive or a waste?  It could be time for a break out.

People tend to get into a rut.  They do the same thing over and over.  Trying something new takes some thought, initiative and investment of time, energy or money.

Everybody has there own style, but most of the time people are not very imaginative.  If you watch Bering Sea Gold on TV, you'll see most everybody doing things pretty much the same.  Some have bigger rigs than others, but generally speaking they do things pretty much the same.  And those are some pretty tough independent people.  It is even worse for the general run of the mill person in a hum drum life.  There is a lot of inertia.  It is easier to fall into the beaten path.

You might say there is a reason everybody does things about the same thing.  Maybe they know that is what has worked.   But somebody had to do it first!  And that is often where the biggest results are found.  And what worked at first, often quits working.  After a while the same old thing starts to produce diminishing results and it is time to try something new.

When I watch some of those TV shows I can think of a variety of ways to approach things differently.   And they are not all expensive.  Some are the result of applying creativity - just trying something new and different.

It does take time.  It does take thought.  It does take some effort.   And there is the risk of failure - but not really.   Even when you fail you learn something and move onto the next step.  You often find out what will work right after you find out a lot of things that won't work.    People don't want to go through that learning process, but you'll never be the first if you won't give it a shot.

You don't have to go to Alaska to try something new.  There is an opportunity and challenge right in your own back yard waiting to be discovered.

This doesn't only apply to treasure hunting.   It applies to life in general.  Trying something new won't guarantee immediate success, but staying in the rut will pretty much guarantee a lot less.  Take the time to evaluate things and see if it is time for you to try something new.



Here is what Dan B. found in the lump shown at the top of the blog.  Not big gobs of coins - but like I said, you never know.   So check it out.


The surf will decrease a little today on the Treasure Coast.  The surf will be around 2 - 4 feet with the wind out of the northeast.

The tides are modest now.  Low tide this morning will be around 9:45 AM.

I'll try to get some new beach photos posted later.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/19/13 Report - Some Cutting on the Treasure Coast From Last Night

Written by the Treasure Guide for the exclusive use of treaurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

This Morning Near Low Tide on the Treasure Coast

Last night it was pretty windy.  This morning I took a look near low tide and some sand had been moved.  One of the primary treasure beaches on the Treasure Coast was scalloped.

Here is a photo of what I saw.  The beach was scalloped for a at least a mile or so, and the cuts, like the one shown here, were from roughly two to four feet.  A lot of shells were behind the cuts and scallops, and the sand in front was generally mushy.

I could see that sand was in front of the beach extending out some thirty yards or so where the waves were crashing.

Since the surf was predicted to get up to 4 - 6 feet today, I'd expect a little more erosion near high tide (around 2 PM today) but not much.

That bit of sand movement might help a little but not enough for me to upgrade my beach detecting conditions rating yet.


A few days ago I mentioned the Craigslist Lost and Found ads and one listing that I thought was a scam, and I gave some tips for avoiding scams like that.   It might be useful to check those ads to see what jewelry or other items might have been lost or to list fund items that you have found.

Will B. say that he checks the lost and found ads often and has noticed another scam that often appears in them.  Here is what he said.

 I check them all the time. another scam I noticed was someone placing an ad claiming to have found a very expensive ring. He then proceeded to request that anybody who had lost a ring to describe the ring itself and more specifically EXACTLY where they lost it. It appeared to me that he was trying to bait people into giving him information so that he can go look for the jewelry and maybe keep it for himself. I have seen the ad regularly over the course of the last 2 years. I usually flag it.

Thanks Will.  These days it pays to be alert.  There are so many scams out there.

Here is a quick clip showing a big project at Fort Pierce Riverside Park.

They've been bringing in rocks and material for months for this project.   I've seen some rocks arriving by truck and others coming up the river on barges from the South.  Does anyone know where those rocks are coming from?  I'd like to know.

Also, I've not found out where the sand that they are dumping on the beach in front of the power plant is coming from.  I'm thinking from the east side of the island, but I don't know.

The surf is predicted to decrease tomorrow.

Happy hutning,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/18/13 Report - BIGGGG Gold Nugget & Front Coming Through

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

Gold Nugget Found With Metal Detector
From BBC linked story. 

How's that for a gold nugget?  177 ounces, found by a man with a metal detector, and the largest by far known to prospectors in the area.

Here is the link to the article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21055206

Link submitted by Oliver J., a new reader of this blog and Dan B.

Another reader is seeking someone who can repair detectors.  I've asked about this before in my blog and never found anyone who said they would do it.  If you do detector repairs, let me know and I'll let others know.


Bill P., author of the coin cleaning instructions listed in my reference link list, has found gold rings on both of his last two outings to a beach in Northern Florida.  Both were found in the low tide zone.

That is what I've been talking about recently.  The low tide zones on several beaches have been productive lately even though they don't look particularly good.  I think that Sandy might have something to do with that. Sandy might have churned up some older stuff that is still being shifted around in the shallow water and on the front of the beaches.

Below is a short video of the beach at Pepper Park this morning around low tide.  Only one to two foot surf, as you can see.  This beach was pretty clean, but there was one spot near the water that held some good targets.  This beach seems to get hit hard by snow birds every winter.

It was chilly this morning.  Almost reminded me of some of my best cob days in years past when it was really cold. 

Tomorrow a 4 - 6 foot surf is expected along with northeast winds.  Right now the wind is too much out of the East.  If the surf does get up to six feet and the wind is more from the north, there is some chance that beach detecting conditions will improve a little.  There is lot of sand to be moved though. 

I do expect that some of the spots that have been producing recently could improve a little more.  That will be on the beach fronts.  I don't expect the water to get back to the dunes like it did during Sandy.

I dug a wheat penny today that looked like it had just been dropped.  They are still being found in pocket change occasionally.   Just goes to show that you can't tell how recently a coin might have been dropped by the date alone.

Have you seen what they are doing at the Fort Pierce river front.  A lot of money is being spent there.  Some of those rocks are coming in by truck and some by barge up the river from the South.  Does anyone know exactly where those rocks are coming from?  If so, I'd like to know.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net