Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
You'll occasionally see black sand on our Treasure Coast beaches. Some black sand is slightly magnetic. It is ilmenite, an iron titanium oxide. Florida ilmenite occurs in round sand-size particles.
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| Closeup of Black Sand From the site linked below. |
Other heavy minerals on Florida beaches include rutile, zircon, and staurolite.
Ilmenite has industrial uses such as being used in the manufacture of titanium.
Some detectorists have a lot of trouble detecting in black sand. I don't find it particularly problematic. It will give false signals, but you can learn to distinguish most signals coming from actual targets from the false signals.
One thing that will help is swinging your coil with the flow of the black sand instead of across it. Edges will cause more false signals. So will foot prints or holes. Foot prints and holes create sharp edges in the black sand which will cause louder false signals. It can be difficult to determine if you removed the target from a hole dug in black sand or if you didn't get the target.
Detecting in black sand is a little like detecting in wet salt sand.
Here is a nice web site that talks about some different kinds of sand and shows some nice photos of different kinds of sand.
http://www.microscope-microscope.org/applications/sand/microscopic-sand.htm
If you read that site carefully you'll see a couple of nice useful hints.
A shipwreck was discovered on a Florida beach back in October. I think I missed that one then. This one might be only about a hundred years old or so.
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/shipwreck-discovered-on-florida-beach/-/1637132/22526280/-/r3wnrv/-/index.html
An 1861 steamer possibly containing gold was found in Lake Huron. Here is the link to learn more about that.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522233/Shipwreck-hunter-finds-missing-Keystone-State-1861-ship-Lake-Huron.html
Here are some good prices reported by Kovels Komments.
Jesse Owens' 1936 Olympic gold medal set a record for any piece of Olympic memorabilia. SCP Auctions of Laguna Niguel, Calif., sold it on Dec. 8, 2013, for $1,466,574.
Norman Rockwell's 1951 painting, "Saying Grace," brought $46 million at a Sotheby's auction on Dec. 4, 2013. It's the highest price ever paid at auction for an American painting and is about 1,500 times as much as Rockwell was paid to paint it (he was paid $3,500, which is equivalent to about $30,500 today).
The lead statue of the Maltese Falcon used as a prop in the 1941 movie sold at a Bonhams auction on Nov. 25, 2013, for $4,085,000.
I always find it interesting what people are willing to pay big bucks for.
On the Treasure Coast we only have about a two-foot surf. That will increase in a couple of days but not nearly enough to improve beach detecting conditions.
Happy hunting,
