4/9/14 Report - Old Railroad Freight Tag, Setting The Record Straight On The 1715 Fleet Diamond Ring & Returned Wallet

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

Old Copper Railroad Freight Tag Find.

To start off today I have to say thanks to this blog's readers for all the help I get.  You can probably tell that I often do my posts in a bit of a hurry.  Heaven knows that by the time I enter the material and then try to edit it a time or two or more, I sometimes end up with something messed up.  I try to get it right but make mistakes.   I think most of my errors are simple things like typos that you can figure out or work around, but it isn't always that way.  In any case I have to thank you all for the help you do provide in providing photos, reports, links, information and corrections.

Above is a find from James F.  And here is the story of the find as described by James.

Well, due to some ongoing road work, I've been finding artifacts in a very old town north of Orlando...so old in fact, that when the roads were torn up, large amounts of what was left of the original 19th Century brick road (which had been paved over in the 20th Century with asphalt (who knew?) was found scattered all over the site, so we have been locating some very old coinage and artifacts which have lain under the brick portion of the road for quite some time. Here is one artifact I discovered which is apparently (after I spent literally days using electrolysis and good ol' elbow grease, scrubbing toothbrush and toothpaste and baking soda and hot water (the list goes on :-)  Seems to be a 2" diameter solid copper railroad freight tag identifying a load of "8 IN FLUE THIMBLE" shipped by the S.F, R.R. with an identification mark of "A   127" I don't know if this indicates the number of items shipped, the order, or waybill number...anyway, it's pretty cool...just thought I'd let you know we are still finding cool items underground as opposed to under-sand and water.

Thanks for the report James.  Great find!

If anyone can answer any of James' questions, shoot me an email. 


I got an email from Christopher P.  who said he had no problem with the video that I posted.  I'm glad to know that.  It might help me narrow down the problem. 


Bruce Beck, who you might know from his diving courses or salvage work, was able to offer some first hand information concerning the 1715 Fleet diamond ring that I mentioned in my 4/7/14 post.

Here is what Bruce said about the find.   Actually, my dive partner and friend, Christopher R. James found the gold hole on his own about seventy-five yards from the Pandion, Bob’s boat.  ... Christopher first found the butterfly brooch and then the rest of the crew of the Pandion, including Bob Weller, blew holes in an area about the size of a pickup truck and uncovered the rest. I wrote a feature article about Christopher’s recoveries on different sites in the June 1997 edition of Lost Treasure magazine. I was an investor of Bob’s in 1994 and Christopher and I began our partnership in 1995.

If you can find the June 1997 issue, I'm sure you would enjoy reading that article getting even more of the details surrounding that find.

Thanks much for the information Bruce!  I really appreciate it.


Did you know that you can tell the type of beer from the shape of old ring style pull tabs.

William K. sent me a list of beer types and pictures of the corresponding pull tabs. 

Thanks William!


Maybe you heard this nice story.   A 16 year-old high school student lost his wallet at the stadium on opening day at a Marlins game.  Someone found it, and not only did they go to the trouble of returning the wallet anonymously, but inside the returned wallet was an additional $20 and a note telling the student that the student might see that the world isn't such a bad place.  The note also told him to pass the good deed along in the future.

Here is the actual story.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/04/08/miami-high-school-student-wallet-returned-anonymously-with-extra-20-and-special/


The blog poll seems to be going well.  Still a couple of days left to respond.

I was more hurried today than normal but managed to get a post done because of all the help I received.

I'll revisit some of these things in greater detail in the future.  That is all I'm going to be able to enter now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net