Backyard Finds From Fred D.Hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects were found by a man turning dirt in his own back yard. The trove consisted of more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments that were judged to be about 650 years old.
Here is the link to that story.
http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-world-europe/20110422/EU.Austria.Buried.Treasure/
Can you imagine digging up a hoard like that in your own back yard. It happens. I've posted other stories like that. One that I recently posted described the finds made by a lady in her garden.
It's not likely that you'll make a find like that, but i highly recommend thoroughly and repeatedly hunting your own yard. It is good practice. And you might be surprised by what you find.
You can learn something by covering and recovering the same old yard. Use different detectors. Use the same detector again and again using different settings.
One thing I think most detectorists do not do enough of, is simply play with their detector, experimenting and practicing.
And if your yard is junky, so much the better. Learn to work in and around junk. Learn how different types of junk sounds. Learn how junk can mask good targets. All of that experience is good and will help you on the beach.
Too many detectorists simply do not experiment enough with their detector. And too many detectorists set their detector to detect coins and discriminate everything else. That is a big mistake. If you do that, you're going to miss a lot of different kinds of artifacts - and some artifacts can be worth more than those coins you are looking for.
Check to see if your detector would discriminate a watch or a shipwreck spike. Learn what they sound like. I don't know of any target ID system that handles all of those kinds of things well. The result is that you can miss some of the best finds.
I've talked about this a lot in the past, but the presence of junk can provide important information. It can tell you about the area you are in and what types of materials are being deposited in the area. Take advantage of the sifting action of the waves. It sifts and sorts, but if you are not seeing what kinds of materials are being deposited in a given area, you are not fully using that information.
I was talking about hunting your own yard. Not only can that be informative, but you might also find something interesting. Finding your old toys can be a lot of fun. you can some by Fred D. above.
I once went back to the place that I grew up and dug up a number of the metal toys that I and my childhood friends played with about fifty years ago. It can be fun and a sentimental experience to dig up pieces of your own past and the fond memories that go with them.
Some of the toys from my past that I dug up are shown in my 5/23/09 report.
While I was going back look for that post, I noticed a number of other posts showing things that I forgot about. You might want to browse some of the older posts if you haven't done that.
You can also use the search box on the blog to help you find specific topics.
If you've found Indian artifacts or other items that might be of interest to the Florida Museum of Natural History, don't be afraid to contact them. I've found them to be both friendly and helpful.
Treasure Coast Beach Conditions and Forecast.
It looks like we'll have five foot seas on Monday, slackening off on Tuesday. Five feet isn't usually enough to do much good, but it should at least bring some small improvement in conditions. Unfortunately the prediction is for then is winds from eh east, which is not real good either. As I've often mentioned, it seems to take north/northeast winds for the best effect on the beaches.
I'm curious to see how the new pile of sand on the Fort Pierce beach will respond to the five foot seas on Tuesday.
To sum it up, nothing exciting in the forecast that I'd expect to improve detecting conditions on the Treasure Coast. I do, however, think there could be some slight improvement on the beach fronts where some artifacts might become accessible.
If you are somewhere where you've been doing some water hunting, you'll probably see some sand movement in the shallow water.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
