Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
 |
| Item For Sale at theSpanish Treasure Museum in St. Augustine Photo by William M. |
The big news today is that 44 gold coins were found off Sebastian by the crew of the Capitana on Saturday.
Here is a link to that story.
http://www.wesh.com/news/florida/treasure-hunters-find-gold-off-sebastian/-/11788072/20966526/-/c3p4jb/-/index.html
William M. took a little trip to St. Augustine, did a little hunting and visited a museum. He sent me some photos from the trip.
Here is a photo of one of the items for sale at the museum. You can see their description and listed price in the photo.
A photo of shark teeth found on St. Augustine Beach can be seen below.
Thanks for the photos and report on your trip William.
William also offered a comment on the musket ball that I showed yesterday, pointing out that old musket balls found at water sites or in low oxygen environments do not typically have the same white patina that those long buried in sand tend to have. They can look very new.
You can also still buy the all the equipment needed to make your own musket balls. It doesn't really take much - basically a mould and the lead that can be melted and poured into the mould.
I made a mistake in something I said yesterday about the records and finds that I discussed. I said that the finds from the site that I showed the records for tapered off over an eight day period. That was wrong. After looking at the records again and more carefully, the finds actually dwindled to only one gold item by the third day. I don't know how I got that wrong. Just didn't read carefully enough I guess. According to those records, after the one find on the third day, the next hunt was conducted at a different beach.
Here are the notes for the 2/4 (second day) hunt at the same beach.
2/5 Nautilus 571
- 18K charm
- Gold crucifix on gold chain [at middle picnic area] Actually that would be in the water below the middle picnic area. .
- 10K High school class ring
- 10K band. [South picnic area]
- 14K Jesus and Mary religious medallion
- Silver ring
- 14K man's nugget band [north picnic area]
I recommend keeping more details than was found in these old records.
When I first started keeping records of finds, I kept the number of coins and the number of each denomination, and also noted any other significant finds such as rings. After a while I quit keeping track of coin finds. Some time in the past I told about that in this blog. A rough number of coin finds would have been helpful and could have told how much of correlation there was between coins and gold rings, for example.
\I now wish I had kept more information than I did. If you keep to much data you can always ignore it, but if you keep too little there might come a time when you wish you had it and can't do anything about it. I always liked data analysis anyhow.
Some things you might want to keep beside the date of the find (including the year, which might not seem necessary now) is number of coins, description of gold items, including the weight of the item, description of old items, beach conditions, etc. Records can provide useful information and help improve your success rate.
These days, the computer can be used to keep your records neatly. You can also easily add pictures of items and beach conditions to supplement your data.
 |
| Shark Teeth Found on St. Augustine Beach by William M. Photo by William M. |
On the Treasure Coast today, we still have a 1 - 2 foot surf. That isn't expected to change until Tuesday when the surf will be up to possibly 3 or 4 feet.
The wind continues from the south and east. The low tides are still generally pretty low.
There isn't anything of interest in the tropics right now.
I don't expect any significant change in beach detecting conditions real soon.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
