2/4/12 Report - Slight Improvement in Treasure Coast Conditions & Miscellaneous Beach News

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

One Treasure Coast Treasure Beach This Morning.

These were three-foot cuts here. I'm increasing my beach conditions rating to a two again.

There was a lot of ankle-deep mushy sand in front of the cut, so conditions here were not as good as it looks from the photo alone. Look for a few scattered spots around where conditions might be a bit better despite the easterly direction of the wind.


Here is a link to a finance article on a couple wrecks and treasure hunting.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/02/03/wrecks-to-riches-hunting-sunken-treasures-from-cape-cod-to-the/

Odyssey Marine stock fell back some yesterday as I expected.


James F. reports that the City of Cocoa Beach is now in the process of installing parking meters on what was, for the last 50 years or so, free public access to the beach, north of the Cocoa pier. He also saw where it was reported that Cocoa beach is "gearing up" for spring break with double or triple police patrols and new paint on the pier ...


They are also getting ready to renourish the beach south of the Fort Pierce inlet again. Seems like they just did that.

I heard that the sand is to come from about five miles south of the inlet and well off shore.

Some of the heavy equipment is already arriving.


The blog poll is well underway. If you can send photos of the finds being reported, I would be glad to see them and possibly post them. As always I will credit you however you want. You can remain anonymous or tell me how you want to be credited.

I think I'll run this type of poll every month. That will give me a way to track what is being found over the year.

I'd expect the winter months to be the most productive unless we have a hurricane or good sustained northeaster.


A few more cobs have already been reported in the blog poll than I expected. As expected though, more jewelry and US coins are being reported.


Treasure Coast Beach Conditions Forecast

The seas will remain around the four to six foot level today and then start decreasing tomorrow, going back to around two feet next week.

The wind direction does not look favorable for continued improvement in beach conditions.

It looks like we might be back to level one conditions next week.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

2/3/12 Report - Odyssey Marine, A Lake Wreck and Current Conditions

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

Divers Inside the Costa Concordia.

That is an amazing photo. I found it on an AP article listed as anonymous. On another web site I found a similar, or maybe the same photo, crediting the Italian Navy, which I think is probably right.


Shares of Odyssey Marine stock were over $3.90 per share for a while yesterday. The price increases seemed to be based largely upon the contract for salvaging the HMS Victory.

It sounds like investors have not heard or have already have taken into account Tuesday's ruling ordering Odyssey to hand over to Spain the 500 million dollars worth of coins they found in 2007 on what is thought to be the wreck of the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes.

They can still appeal to the Supreme Court.

Here is the link to that story.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/world/europe/spain-u-s--treasure-dispute/index.html



A large piece of a 140 year old wreck, possibly the schooner Jennie and Annie, recently washed up on the beach of Lake Michigan.

Here is the link.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/140-year-old_shipwreck_fragmen.html

Nice photos.

Wait until you read the paragraph about why it should be left alone. The convoluted logic is simply amazing!

I wonder if it really washed up or was just uncovered. When things suddenly appear on a beach people often assume that they washed up when that is not always the case.




Beaches always change. A beach can change day to day or hour by hour. Cuts can occur and disappear in less than an hour.

One moment a beach can have all kinds of targets and a few minutes later nothing. That works the other way too.

Treasure Coast beaches have been producing treasure for decades - actually centuries if you go back to the early salvage efforts. But just think, some of those beaches are detected every day by multiple detectorists. And they still produce treasure when conditions are right. That is pretty amazing.

I've heard people talk about the treasure beaches being worked out. And I'll admit that there are times when it seems that way. But then the conditions will change and treasure starts showing up again.

Conditions have been relativey poor on the Treasure Coast beaches a lot lately. Between nature and all of the beach renourishment projects, it has been slow. Yet things are still found occasionally. I have no doubt that things will improve dramatically again. I don't know when, or for how long, but things will get churned up and the treasure will appear again.

For beach and shallow water hunters, the biggest obstacle is the sand. The salvage boats have blowers to move the sand, but on the beaches we have to wait for Mother Nature to do the job.

Anyhow, you have to watch for the opportunties when they do arise. There are times when even the most "cleaned out" sites are refreshed.



It is a little windy today. Unfortunately the wind seems to be coming directly from the east.

Tomorrow we're expecting higher seas - something in the range of five feet or higher. IF we get some better angles that could be good.

I don't have much time today, so that's it for now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

2/2/12 Report - Beach Conditions Back to 1 Temporarily

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

1879 Penny Found in County Park That Was Dedicated in 1970.

Find and photo submitted by James F.

Just because a site doesn't appear to be old doesn't mean it isn't.

A few days ago I mentioned how sites often have older layers under them. The same things that make them attractive now were also found attractive by people in times past.

The 1879 penny was found in a trench being dug for a drainage pipe. I'll elaborate on that some time.

James wasn't expecting much from this park except maybe some newer items, but he was told by a guy he met in the park that the area was used as a park way back to near the Civil War period.

You can sometimes get some good tips from people you just happen to meet.



The wreck of a British merchant ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Cape Cod during World War II has been found. It is thought to have hold a cargo of platinum bars worth more than $3 billion and other precious items.

Here is the link to that story.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/port-nichelson-shipwreck-_n_1247835.html

Of course various parties are lining up to claim the

Thanks to Don B. for the link.


Artifacts dealer Christopher Kortlander is trying to regain possession of war bonnets, medicine bags and other items confiscated during government raids on his privately-operated Custer museum. Although the government has failed to prove its case against Kortlander, it has not returned all of the confiscated items and has not made restitution for damages and abuse.

Here is the link to that story.

http://www.centredaily.com/2012/01/29/3070950/custer-dealer-seeks-return-of.html#storylink=cpy

By the way, the year the penny was minted (1879), is only three years after the battle of Little Big Horn.


I added a new poll to the blog. Take a look. It will give us a good idea about what people have been finding.


Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Conditions and Forecast

Well the front passed through and we're back to southeast winds again.

I'm giving a beach conditions rating of 1 (poor).

That rating could change soon though. Although seas are now down around two feet, it will start building Friday, and, according to current predictions, will get up to around six feet on Saturday. That could result in further erosion to those spots that were eroded a few days ago.

Time will tell.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net

1/31/12 Report - Cleaned Out Sites

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

Old Gold Scarf Pin from Lawnwood Park. Submitted anonymously.

I was at the same beach today which was cut and which I showed in yesterday's post. One reason I returned to the same beach is that I detected an item yesterday that I couldn't retrieve and I wanted to bring my shovel so I could find out what it was.

Well, I brought my shovel and quickly located the item in the wet sand. The water was washing over the area but I thought I could get it if I dug hard. I put my detector up on the dunes and went back to the spot that I marked and dug quickly, throwing the sand from the hole up out of the water. After I thought I probably had it, I got my detector and detected that sand. Sure enough, there it was.

It wasn't anything much good, although it is a usable item. It was a Gator Digger. Not treasure, but it could come in handy. And it told me that there was stuff on that heavily detected beach that wasn't being picked up real quickly.

It was down a little over a foot I would say.

Sometimes you can find useful things. All the dive weights that I have were dug up, for example.

Anyhow, as much as the treasure beaches are hunted, there are still things that remain on the beach from day to day. It often surprises me that where there are so many detectorists how many targets are still out there.

That leads to my main topic today.

"Cleaned out" is a phrase that most detectorists don't want to hear. Hearing that phrase is enough to discourage some. I have another reaction. When I hear that phrase my ears perk up. Why?

Here's why.

First, it usually refers to a spot that has been proven to have been very productive at one time.

I remember one of the first times somebody told me a spot was cleaned out. I was on the beach and another detectorist came and told me he just cleaned out a spot. He said he got a bunch of coins and a gold ring. He told me where the "cleaned out" spot was. I got in my car and drove to the spot he told me about. In a short time of detecting I had a few coins and a few pieces of gold.

Most of the time when a site is said to be cleaned out there is something left. What is left might not be the easiest or most obvious targets, but there is usually something left.

There is something about a place with a lot of easy targets. When there are a lot of easy targets littering a site it seems that I don't hear the softer signals until after I've removed most of the louder targets.

I remember one day when I visited a spot where I got over three hundred coins the first day but no gold. I went back the second day and only got a few coins, but then I got some gold.

When you think you've cleaned out a good spot on a beach, go back over it - sometimes again and again. I think you'll find that you hear softer signals and get deeper targets that you missed at first. I don't know if it is a sensory/psychological thing or if it has to do with detector sensitivity, but it really seems to me that when there are a lot of loud signals I don't seem to hear or detect the soft whisper signals.

Another thing to try after "cleaning out" a good spot is using another detector on the same spot. Sometimes one detector will detect things that another won't under certain circumstances. And definitely turn the discrimination off and the sensitivity up as much as possible.

You might also change the direction of your sweeps. Go up and down the slope as opposed to parallel the water's edge, for example.

Here is another good thing about "cleaned out" sites. There are usually some obstacles that guard some targets. It can be bushes, rocks, iron objects, or almost anything that can cause people to miss things.

When visiting a site that has been "cleaned out" notice any obstacles and find a way to take advantage of those obstacles.

Sometimes you'll find that things are left under bushes or close to rocks, etc. Remove junk that could be masking good targets.

I won't give you all the tricks for hunting a cleaned out site, but here is one more thing you should know.

When you find a site that had a lot of targets, there are almost always other sites that are related to that site somehow that might have been missed.

To give a very simple example, I've mentioned before a shallow water swimming area that I visited and found to be very much cleaned out. After scanning the area quickly, I could tell that the "cleaned out" area was a rectangular area that was defined by the shore and two pilings. When I detected just outside the boundaries of the cleaned out area I quickly found a number of pieces of gold.

If there is an area that was at one time visited by numbers of people, there will be other areas nearby to check out. People didn't get to that one spot without going through others. You can usually find areas near a "cleaned out" area which could have been missed.

So the next time you hear someone tell you site has been cleaned out, instead of immediately throwing up you hands and giving up, start thinking about how you might be able to capitalize on the new knowledge.


Treasure Coast Beach Conditions and Forecast.

Treasure Coast Beach This Morning.

You can see the sea weed, which indicates that sand was coming in. I would say that about a half foot of sand was added at the foot of the cut.

The wind is more from the east today rather than the northeast. That explains the difference.

Compare this photo with the photo of the cut yesterday.

The seas will be decreasing a little the next couple of days.

Beach conditions are deteriorating just a little. I'm keeping my 2 rating for today though.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/30/12 Report - Treasure Coast Beach Conditions Upgrade

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

Two to Three Foot Cut on One Treasure Coast Beach This Morning.

I saw the northeast wind coming in yesterday afternoon and here is what happened to a few of the Treasure Coast Beaches.

This beach had a cut that ran from two to three feet for several hundred yards.

Of course the cut was in sand that had accumulated recently. The sand in front was a bit mushy and there were very few targets.

I am upgrading my Treasure Coast Beach Conditions Rating to a 2. My scale is a five point scale, with 1 being poor and 5 excellent.

Of course I didn't see all of the beaches, but I saw enough to know that some beaches cut while others did not.



Same Beach As Above.

You can see from this slab how the beach was cutting. I've explained the process before.

I'd say that the waves are hitting this afternoon just like they did yesterday and therefore I would expect a little additional cutting around high tide today. Not a great deal though.

The wind is still coming from the northeast - actually more like the east/northeast now.

Below is one beach that did not cut.

It did, however, have some dips.

A Treasure Coast Beach That Was Not Cut.

I'll get back to my other topics tomorrow or sometime soon.

According to the predictions, we'll have seas at similar levels through tomorrow and maybe Wednesday. I hope the wind stays from a more northerly direction.

Then after a period of smaller seas, maybe picking up again around next weekend.

Things have been so slow that a person starts to expect nothing much to happen, but it looks like there is at least a possibility of improving conditions in the next week or so.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/29/12 Report - More On Researching Old Sites.

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

Old Postcard View of Daytona Beach From the Pier.

I was saying yesterday how old postcards can be good research resources. The above postcard, for example, shows where things were located and where people congregated decades ago on Daytona Beach. Near the middle of the view you can see the clock towers and bandshell, which you can use as a landmark to get an idea about how things have changed around there.

You can also see how wide the beach was and where people were swimming. By comparing the width of the beach back then to the width of the beach today, you can assess the beach conditions for finding old items from that time.

In a recent post I discussed how longer term changes to a beach affects conditions for finding older items.

In the above photo, you can also see that there was a lot of sand out in the water in front of the beach. Some of those dips might have been good hunting spots back then. Of course not many people had detectors back then and much of what was lost could still be there today - probably under a lot of sand and some water.

Besides providing good research resources, some old postcards can have some value of their own. There are a lot of postcard collectors. Common postcards like this from the fifties and sixties would not have much value to a collector.


Here is a method that James F. uses to find sites to hunt.

...I found several years ago, that Florida Agricultural concerns had contracted, since the 1920's or 30's, up until the mid-or late 60's, to have aerial photographs taken all over Florida. These are available digitally, for free, from this site: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/aerials. The way I use them, is I pull an old aerial image from the collection, and try to find one with a decent sized landmark on it, say a lake, major highway, towns, bridges or airports. Then I pull open a google maps image, usually I use the satellite images, and screen-print, and copy it, into any decent graphics program, like corel photo or Photoshop (which is what I use) and then put both images on two different layers of the program, make em' both slightly transparent, then line up any major landmarks still here today.

I use lakes a lot, since most of the major ones have been around for many hundreds of years. Using this method, I found many WW2 barracks and buildings on several old airports (Orlando-Sanford originally) that no longer exist, but let you locate their positions, if not by visual means, then by GPS coordinates. Google maps let you move the cursor to ANY place on their maps and will let you get a readout of the GPS coordinates, so once you find a position of a building on the old aerial map, lined it up with google images, you can easily go back to google online and find the coordinates.

Thanks James!

Yesterday I mentioned Lawnwood Park and wondered where it was. Once again the knowledge of this blog's readers was manifested. Concerning the old amusement park, Ken W. wrote the following, It is located in the present day City zoo and botanical gardens in Sanford on the shore of Lake Monroe. The old Woodland Park was located on the western part of the current property. There is a historical marker there.

Thanks Ken!

Here is the address of the zoo: 3755 Nw Us-17-92, Sanford, FL 32771

On the same subject, Tony D. sent an email and said, Woodland park is on private land and was cleaned out years ago. The concession area (ran by Victor Schmelze's) daughter) was located and over 1200 old coins were found in an area the size of 3 parking spaces).

And Thanks Tony!

Those are the types of places I am talking about, and I can guarantee you of two things. First, there are places like that still out there. And second, well maybe I better keep that one to myself for now. I'll address that topic some other time.


As I've been saying for a few days, the seas are expected to increase up to five feet on Monday. The wind seems to be coming in from the northeast already this afternoon. It looks like there could be some small improvement in beach conditions tomorrow - probably not enough for me to change my beach conditions rating though.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/28/12 Report - Woodlawn Park & Using Old Postcards for Research

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

St. Pete Pier Postcard.

A couple of days ago I mentioned Tarzan Park, a tourist attraction in Vero back around 1900, and yesterday I suggested maybe trying to find some of the old tourist spots to detect while the local beaches are sanded in.

James F. sent me a link to a 1997 article about Woodland Park, which he has been hoping to locate. Woodland Park is not on the Treasure Coast but is the type of place I was talking about and could be a dream of a detecting site.

From what the article says the amusement park was in operation in 1917, and was a tourist haven. It was on the shores of the St. Johns River and served by paddlewheelers. It was sometimes referred to as "The Gateway to South Florida," or "The City Substantial."

Farmer Schmelz created the amusement park on top of a Timucuan midden mound on several acres of woody swamp land a few hundred yards from Lake Monroe.

It had a dance hall build on stilts over Lake Monroe and a gigantic swimming pool and many rides and attractions.

That would be a great place to research and detect. If you want to go after it, I'd suggest letting James or this blog know what you find. James was generous enough to provide the lead and said I could post what he found.

The site could provide both some good water and dry land hunting. Just finding out where it was would be a fun project and quite an accomplishment.

One reader of this blog took a lead that I provided earlier in this blog and located the site and information about the Walton Hotel and then detected the site.

That is the type of thing you can do if you are tired of detecting the same old beaches that everybody else detects over and over again. Of course you have to do some research, but that can be very worthwhile.

One tool I'd suggest using is a good old USGS topological map.

Another resource that I like to use is old picture postcards.

At the top of this post you see the St. Pete pier. I believe that postcard is from the fifties.

Can you imagine all of the stuff that is in the water below that pier? Of course there would be tons and tons of lead, but also a lot of other things.

When using a postcard like that, notice the background and all of the details such as the boats and where things were back then. It looks like there might have been a ferry or shuttle boat there, but maybe just a fishing or sight-seeing boat.

You can also see where people were gathering on the beach.

Old Postcard Showing Location of a Cabin.

This one isn't of Florida but it is a good example. Somebody marked the location of a cabin on this nice aerial view along with the mileage to the cabin.


Tresure Coast Beach Conditions and Forecast.

The wind has shifted as a front comes through and is now coming from the north/northwest. Seas are still running around two or three feet, so conditions haven't changed yet.

We're still expecting five foot seas on Monday. That will give us some chance of improvement.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net