Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blospot.com.
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| Photo by Mitch K. |
I received these photos and the following email from Mitch K.
I was hunting in the same area as Terry S.
I was hitting the beaches looking for some jewelry. We had just had some
extra high tides and some fresh cuts had appeared. Was not expecting a
lot but was hoping for a gold ring or two. Was digging lots of fishing
weights and modern coinage when this little guy popped up. 1689 Spanish
2 Reale ! This makes it the oldest coin I have found here in the USA.
(my oldest is a Celtic silver coin found in England from the year 10AD)
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| Photo by Mitch K. |
Mitch said he was a day behind Terry S.
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All kinds of people like metal detecting. They do it for different reasons, look for different things, and go about it differently.
I went through several different stages. I told before how I started hunting coins and later moved on to jewelry, and eventually moved to the Treasure Coast and started detecting the treasure beaches.
Thinking back to the days when I was hitting the South Florida jewelry beaches, there were a few professionals and some pretty hard core amateurs. The top professionals in those days were very secretive. One in particular, would crawl out of the ocean just before sunrise every morning. He carefully avoided being seen. There were very few that even knew about him. That was not unusual among the top guys down there in those days. Although not everybody was that competitive and secretive in those days, there was nothing like the communication that occurs today.
When I started, and even later when I became more hard core, there was not so much communication. Detectorists back then communicated maybe with a few friends and occasionally talked to a fellow detectorist that they happened to meet on the beach, and maybe attended a monthly club meeting or stopped by the local detector shop to exchange gossip around high tide, but they didn't have access to the tons of information that we all have easy access to on the internet today.
The internet has changed the detecting community. No one today can hide from the general population the kind of things that can be found. That cat is out of the bag.
There are still some guys that fly below the radar, but there are many more that are very social and open about their detecting. There are also detectorists that promote themselves and publicize every find to build a reputation and sell their books. So at one extreme you have some guys that do extremely well but act like they find nothing, and at the other extreme you have the guys that exaggerate their finds.
There are many good reasons to be secretive. I won't list them all, but I became more discrete after encounters with people who tried to claim finds that did not belong to them. Also there was also a lot of theft and crime in South Florida.
I've tried to conduct this blog in a way that is safe and encourages sharing while not being abused by those who might want to use it for personal promotion and commercial interests. That isn't always easy, but I think I've done it fairly well even though I know I've made some mistakes. In the early years one person used the blog to help build his reputation then when he got a good start turned around and slandered this blog. That was the exception. On the whole it has been a pleasure to interact with all the fine people I hear from even if I never met them.
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I'll be adding at least one new factor to my formula for metal detecting success. I plan to present that soon, but I also have more super finds to post.
The surf predictions still look encouraging,
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
I'll be adding at least one new factor to my formula for metal detecting success. I plan to present that soon, but I also have more super finds to post.
The surf predictions still look encouraging,
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
