Written by the treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Above is a video of the beach conditions at John Brooks this morning near low tide. The wide angle lens on this camera creates an artificial bend in the picture and I think makes the waves look a little smoother than actual. Nonetheless, this will give you some idea.
There was some wind from the northeast this morning. Early it was pretty significant.
It looked like sand has been accumulating on most of the beach fronts.
I did find a spot on another beach where there was a bend in the beach and artifacts were accumulating in a dip in the beach near the center of the bend in the wet sand. A clue was provided by some large rocks that had accumulated in and around the dip. And as I approached the center of the hot spot, heavy targets became more frequent.
A lot of led sinkers were found along with some iron and a few coins, but near the center of the hot spot was an old bent shipwreck spike and a heavily encrusted old cross.
Most finds were down a foot or so in the second layer of sand, which was lighter in color and more dense, almost like mud. I got the feeling that that second layer had not be disturbed for quite some time.
The shape of the beach, the distribution of finds, and the rocks helped lead me to the hot spot.
Sinkers can be a pain, but when you are finding older sinkers that have been out there a number of years, that can be a good clue. I wouldn't pay much attention to sinkers that were recently dropped but would definitely pay attention to and dig older sinkers. Very often there will be other good old stuff with old sinkers. Sometimes gold.
It appeared to me that some items,including modern coins were being washed up with the newly accumulating sand in some areas.
A silver ring was also found in the hot spot.
The place to be looking today is in the wet sand and near low tide.
I was browsing through some old incomplete and unposted drafts for this blog and discovered a real treasure trove of information. It was a bit like sifting through an old refuse pile.
One of the valuable items I found is a link to a Google digitized book containing a variety of anthropology papers compile by the Smithsonian.
Included in the book are several papers on explorations in Florida. One is Gold, Silver and other Ornaments Found in Florida written by Francis le Baron. Another by the same author is a paper entitled Prehistoric Remains in Florida. Another paper discussed a silver cross found in an Indian grave in Florida. That paper was by Charles Jones. There were more papers on Florida explorations, and also other states that you might also find interesting.
The book is a compilation of papers and is not easy to navigate. You'll just have to take the time to browse to find the papers you are interested in.
You can download it in PDF format and even convert it to a Word file for easy browing if you wish.
If you are serious about history or getting detecting leads, you'll love this.
Here is the link.
http://books.google.com/books?id=P1USAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
There are so many fakes being sold and found that anyone and everyone should be aware of the Sedwick database of fakes. Take a look.
http://www.sedwickcoins.com/fake_cobs.htm
I'll try to get some decent photos of the spike and cross and maybe some other finds.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
