Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Let me put some things in context today. Recently I've been showing some cob finds. There were days when several were found. That doesn't mean that it was typical to walk out on the beach and find that many. I was living in the Fort Lauderdale area when I started hunting the Treasure Coast. That means that I had to drive up to hunt without knowing what beach conditions were like on the Treasure Coast. There was no Treasure Beaches Report. In fact people didn't have the internet - or cell phones. There are some advantages you have today with the new technologies, detectors and information sources. |
| Mexico Minted Half Reale. |
There was no good way to know what beach conditions were like without going to the beach and taking a look. For me that meant driving a couple of hours. I would drive two hours often to find nothing but a crummy looking beach. I made a lot of those trips before I ever found a single cob. I was getting discouraged and didn't think that I would ever find one.
People tend to think that because there were days when several coins were found that it was always good in those days or that it was much easier. You often hear people say that it has all been found or there isn't much left and it is much harder today. I completely disagree with all of that. It is very much the same now as it was thirty or forty years ago. It wasn't easy back then, and it isn't easy today. That is why I have so much to write about.
The one big thing that I think has changed is the frequency of beach renrouishment projects and the amount of sand being dumped on our beaches. I do believe that has had an effect. The dunes are protected and don't erode when they otherwise would if it weren't for the renourishment sand. And the renourishment sand in the water protects the beaches to some extent.
Still, there are good days and bad days. Some years are better than others. And some decades are better than others. Nature has the biggest effect. There are times when you get a lot of rough weather and erosion. There are also times when you get a lot of accretion. Just like the normal winter and summer shifts.
Winter typically makes for better beach hunting than summer - other than tropical storms and hurricanes. Sand tends to accumulate on the beaches in the summer and the rougher winter weather tends to strip it off. I've long said that the best treasure beach hunting, with the exception of after good summer storms, is September to April. And November to February is the peak for treasure beach hunting. My records of finds confirms that.
There are both long term and short term trends. There are days, months, and years when things either improve or deteriorate. If you get a long-term trend of erosion in one area and then get a few good days on top of that long term trend, you have a real good shot. The same few good days on top of a long-term trend of accretion or towards the end of a summer of southeast winds and accretion, won't likely produce much of anything. A few additional feet of erosion on a beach that has already been losing sand will produce more finds than the same erosion after a few weeks, months or years of accretion. (For this discussion I'm not taking into account shallow water conditions.)
When you pile sand up in one place on the beach where nature was taking it away, it will erode faster than ever. It creates a vicious circle. Not all erosion is the same
I've never detected after the hurricanes that produced some of the best detecting and biggest finds. I've missed those times when the hunting was at its absolute best. For example in 2004, I had a lot of other responsibilities that were more important.
In the past few years beach hunting has been slow. It is a combination of things. There has been a lot of beach renourishment and the weather hasn't been helping either. That is one trend, but it won't last forever. You have to take a long term perspective. Some times its hot and other times its not.
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| Philip Monogram on Same Half Reale Shown Above. |
This is the same half reales shown at the top of the post. It is one of those that was not completely labeled so I don't know when it was found.
This one is on the thin side and has a lot of surface area. It is pretty much as found and could use a little cleaning. You can see some shells and crust.
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... “And, in excavating it, we found a big iron concretion, about fist size, with turtle shell fragments sitting on top of it,” said Walker, noting that they had the iron X-rayed in the UWF lab. “It looks like it’s a perfectly circular item, about 2 and a quarter inches wide in diameter.”
Walker believes the metal object could be associated with ritual or religious activity by the slaves. They expect to have a better idea in a few weeks, after conservation and cleaning in the electrolysis tank...
Here is the link for the entire article about the dig at the Arcadia Mill site.http://wuwf.org/post/uwf-researchers-build-story-arcadia-mill-homestead-find-slave-cabin-chimney
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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
