7/12/12 Report - Cache Hunting & More

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



The St. Lucie Metal Detecting Club will meet at 6 PM Saturday at Bernie's house at 1256 SE Palm Beach Road, Port St Lucie.  Bring your beverage and finds.

For more information contact Bernie at twiprod001@att.net.



An air conditioning repair man found 180 ounces of gold in an air conditioning unit.

People sometimes hide things and then either forget where they put them or they are discovered before the owner removes them. 

Here is the link to that story.  Thanks to Plat2pus.

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-man-finds-gold-stash-in-ac-unit-20120709,0,991043.story?hpt=us_bn10

The stock photo of the gold bars had nothing to do with the story.


Talking about caches - 

One day a number of years ago while I was sitting in a detector shop waiting for the tide to change, in came a fellow that I had recently got to know a little.   I had been running into him out at the beach.  
I didn't know him well.  I could tell that he knew what he was doing, but I didn't know the half of it yet.

He had been working some South Florida beaches, which is where I ran into him.  I knew he was finding a good amount of gold jewelry. 

Before arriving in South Florida, he was down in the Keys for a while.

Well, one day I was sitting in a local detector shop shooting the breeze and waiting for the tide to change, and in came this fellow.  I'll call him Bill.

He had a large silver bar with him.  And I do mean large.  I could see the Spanish markings on it.  When he saw me, he tried to tell me that it was lead.   I knew better.

After I got to know him better he eventually confessed that it was silver and that it was one of several that he found in a large cache.  The one I saw that day when he came into the shop, he brought to sell.

That was not the only large cache that he had found.  He took his detecting to the next level.  

When you target and recover large caches (plural), that takes detecting to an entirely different level.   When these guys go out and detect like most of us, picking up one coin or ring at a time, they are doing it to fill time or seek additional clues to a specific cache, but they are always on the trail of one or more specific caches.  Like, I said, that is a completely different ball game.  To me it is much more difficult than simply detecting the beach or shallow water, no matter how well, and being fortunate enough to pick up a few particularly valuable finds.  Cache hunters target big ticket caches.  It takes a lot of research, focus, commitment and patience.

Bill  wasn't the only successful cache hunter that I've known.  You will seldom know about these types of guys.  They aren't seeking publicity.  They don't have their picture on web sites.  They don't want to call attention to themselves.  They just go about their work.  They are too busy for all the other stuff.

Bill left South Florida after a few weeks.  I think he moved on to the Gulf Coast next.  I haven't seen him since, and that was quite a few years ago.

If you want to take your hunting to the next level, you might want to target a large cache.  It isn't easy.  It's not for everyone.  In fact it is for very very few.  There is no guarantee of success, and most of us simply enjoy going out on a beach for some leisurely detecting.  And it is possible for anyone to stumble upon a large cache, even though that seems to be becoming more and more unlikely, but that is a totally different ballgame from being a "cache" hunter.




It seems there is always a new frontier.   Someone sent me this link to an article about deep sea gold mining.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/science/vast-deposits-of-gold-and-other-ores-lure-seabed-miners.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Sorry, I lost track of who sent it.


No change in conditions.  Slightly increasing seas, that's all.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net