Figa Found Some Time Ago on a Treasure Coast Beach.A figa (or Higa) is a good luck charm of sorts. They have been used for centuries in this form. I ran across one today in the Florida Museum of Natural History Database that is made of wood instead of ivory and silver like this one. There is one that is more like this one in the Mel Fisher artifact database.
I provided the link to the wood one below.
This is the week of the Sedwick Auction. There isn't much time left to register. Here is an excerpt from their latest press release.
Our latest auction closes in six sessions LIVE on the Internet over three days, Tuesday, April 26, through Thursday, April 28. The first day is all gold coins, the second day is shipwreck ingots and coins plus all cobs, and the third day is world silver coins, artifacts, documents and books. Now is your last chance to get on the phone bidding list, as our phone lines are limited. No matter how you bid, you must be registered for our auction on iCollector prior to bidding, so please do not wait till it is too late for that.
The Florida Museum of Natural History has a nice web site and a good artifact database. You can search the database looking for various archaeological sites or types of materials or artifacts.
The St. Augustine exhibit is nice to.
Here is the link to the database.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/histarch/artifactgallery.asp
And here is the link to the wood Higa.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/histarch/featuredObject.htm
Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.
I got out for a little while this morning. There were some scattered showers. For me, they were too scattered. We can use the rain, and I really don't like the hot humid weather that is coming.
It seems the tide had been up pretty high. There was a lot of seaweed though. And the sand was accumulating. The tide was out pretty far this morning and there are some broad flat beach fronts when the tide is out.
The sand bars and dips are forming like you would expect from the summer and the south and southeast winds. Some of the dips looked tempting as did the flat bottoms out to the water.
I didn't have enough time to try all of that though. And unfortunately I forgot my camera.
I felt like a fish in a bowl. Two people off a few yards and watching every move I made. Reminded me of that old barracuda that would watch me for hours on end at one spot down south.
One fellow, who had a detector, asked me some questions. His name was Moe. Hi Moe!
Anyhow, I found a lot of coins mingled with junk in one of the flat beach fronts. It was a decent coin hole. If you've been reading this blog very long, you know what a coin hole is.
First I checked the dry sand and found very little. It had obviously been hunted, so after I sampled the area briefly and determined that it wasn't very promising, I dropped down to the wet sand and started finding things, including the coin hole.
That is what I've been talking about. Sampling spots and moving on until you find a spot that is worth spending some time on.
I had to move quickly because the objects were being found near the water line and the tide was about to start coming in. I actually used a little discrimination, which again, if you've been reading this blog very long you know that I generally discourage. But I didn't have time to really clean out the hole, so I got as much as I could as quickly as I could. I know that if I go back, I will find some more to clean out of that hole.
I saw some rocks that I haven't seen for a while where dips were forming. That is worth noting.
What I'd recommend right now is hunting the flat bottoms down to the dips, and where you're allowed, check out some of the dips in the water. It seems there was enough recent sand movement to freshen up some of the wet sand areas.
The sea will be slackening off the next couple of days, so that will be a good time to check out those wet sand areas that were replenished.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
