Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
For more information
http://www.treasurecoastpiratefest.com/
For more information
http://www.treasurecoastpiratefest.com/
---
I find it useful to pay attention to what I am finding and what I am not finding. I said something about that just yesterday. There is always a reason why you are finding some things and not others. Analyzing your finds will always provide helpful information.
That applies to all finds but it is easiest to illustrate by using US coins. They are relatively easy to find and there are plenty of them, so that gives you a lot of data points. It is easier to see patterns ad figure out what is going on when you have a lot of data.
I'm using US coins for my examples, but you so the same type of analysis with treasure coins, artifacts or almost any kind of target for which you have enough data. I should say before going any farther, that it is a lot easier to develop generalizations about US coins than it is to develop good generalizations about treasure coins, but the same principles apply, and you can actually apply some of the things you learn from hunting modern coins to hunting treasure coins.
There can be a lot of unknown factors involved. When there are a lot of unknown factors and you can't figure out what is going on, it can seem like pure chance, but there are still reasons even when you don't know what they are.
What you are finding or not finding can tell you something about the site you are searching, or something about how your detector works, or how targets are distributed.
If you keep good records, you will know the proportion of different types of coins you've found over some reasonable time span. For example, I used to know for certain types of sites how many US coins I would find on average between each gold ring. As a result I would know when I was long overdue as well as when I was in a hot streak. I would start to wonder what was going on when I was long overdue. That meant taking time to think things over and trying to figure out if something was wrong or if something needed fixed.
The main point so far is that there are reasons that you do or do not find certain types of targets, and it helps to know why you are or are not finding those types of things.
Maybe you haven't kept good records of your finds. Lets just start with some rough numbers on coins. Above is a table giving the production of various denomination of coins for 2015 and 2016. If the production numbers for those years are fairly typical, pennies should represent something close to fifty percent of your coin finds if you are not intentionally discriminating them. Nickels would be close to 10% of you finds, while dimes and quarters would each make up about 30% of your coin finds.
There are other coins listed such as half dollars and dollar coins, but they are few in comparison and are not found very often for other reasons, so I'll leave the out to keep things simple.
So what if you are finding a lot more quarters than dimes? Again, there are a variety of possibilities. Maybe for some reason there are more quarters at that site. Or maybe you are detecting more quarters because of something about your detector or how you are detecting. You might think it is hard to believe but some people detect a greater proportion of the larger coins because of their detector settings or how they detect. A very poor detector, or a high coil and fast sweep speed can cause you to miss a greater proportion of small dimes.
If you know your typical coin distribution as determined by your own records with that detector, you will have a good idea of what to expect and therefore be alert to any deviation that might have a cause that you can address. You might be able to figure out if it is due to the site, your detector, or something you are doing.
I recently mentioned how when I expected a lot of coins in one area and but was only finding nickels at first, how that told me that someone had probably already detected that area. It is not uncommon for some detectorists to leave a disproportionate number of nickels behind. The point being once again, that an unusual distribution of targets can tell you something. In this case it had to do with the site. It had already been detected. Further analysis of finds at the site confirmed that.
To give you another example. There was one beach where I was finding a lot of dollar coins. That was unusual. Anyone would take notice of that even if they didn't have a detailed set of expectations. I found nearly a roll of silver dollars in one small area. I thought maybe someone dropped a roll of dollar coins there. I eventually found out that there was once a gambling casino at that location. Again, ask yourself if any unusual distribution of coins might be due to the site, your detector or how you are searching.
Unfortunately we can't go from mint production numbers alone. There are a lot of things that can affect your personal baseline. My personal experience suggests that some detectors are more sensitive to nickels than others, as one example. Where and how you detect will also affect your personal baseline.
Parking or park admission fees can have something to do with the distribution of coins at a particular beach, although that is less often true today than it once was. If there are parking meters by the beach, there would usually be more coins of the type accepted by the meters. Beaches that had concession stands had more coins. I think you can see where I'm going with this. There are quite a variety of things that can affect the distribution of coins at a site.
If we use the above mint production numbers to provide a sample baseline, you might expect something like two dollar coins per every thousand modern coin finds. I doubt if that happens though. A lot of the dollar coins go into collections instead of into circulation. Also people are generally more careful with larger and higher denomination coins, and they are easier to find if dropped. There are social/behavioral factors too.
I talked mostly about modern coins today, but remember whenever you are finding a lot of one type of thing and very few of another, there is a reason, and it might be worth thinking about.
Just to throw out one final example, I found a lot of reales and precious metal artifacts before I found any shipwreck spikes. You might think it is a lot easier to find big spikes, but there was a reason I was finding the smaller precious metal items and no spikes. In fact there were at least two reasons for that. One had to do with my detector, which was used mostly to find precious metals and was not hot at all to iron, and the second reason had to do with how I was hunting. When I first hunted for shipwreck treasure I had for years up until that time been hunting gold jewelry. I was still hunting like I hunted when I hunted jewelry. I was disregarding a lot of items that didn't seem like they would be made of precious metals. As a result I was finding small item made of precious metals but no spikes. Again, there are reasons, and they can be addressed if you know what they are.
---
We still have some decent tides but the low tides will not be quite so low as they have been recently. The surf will be something like two to five feet for a few days.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
