Wednesday, June 6, 2018

6/6/18 Report - Underwater Statue Stolen. Harrington Farthing. Canadian Silver. Junk Lines.


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

Source: Telegraph.co.uk link below

Thieves in Italy have stolen an underwater statue of Christ which was an attraction for divers and a location for scuba-diving couples to tie the knot.
The bronze statue, “Christ of the Deep”, has stood on the seabed off the Adriatic coast since it was installed in 1994...

One of the most famous is an 8ft-tall bronze statue of Christ that sits on the seabed in the bay of San Fruttuoso, in the northwestern region of Liguria. It was placed there in 1954, submerged at a depth of 56ft.

An exact replica stands on the seabed off the coast of Key Largo in Florida..

Here is the link for the rest of the article.

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Yesterday I posted a picture of a Harrington farthing that was found at Jamestown.  The Harrington farthing has an interesting history.  Here is a bit of it from the OldCurrencyExhange web site (link below).

From his previous experience as King of Scotland, James realised that small denomination copper coins would be acceptable, as they had been in use in Scotland and on the European mainland for some time. However the English seemed to have an obsession with gold and silver, requiring that coins had their proper values’ worth of metal.
  • James decided not to have the copper coinage produced by the Royal Mint
On May 19, 1613 James issued a proclamation prohibiting private token coinage and granting John Harrington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton, a royal patent (after a number of other proposals had been considered) to produce tin coated bronze farthing tokens which were to be used throughout the realm.
  • Harington was heavily charged for the privilege of minting the farthings, but also made a healthy profit from this enterprise
  • The coins were authorized to be just six grains but the first products actually weighed only five grains
  • They were 12.25 mm in diameter, showing two sceptres through a crown on the obverse and a crowned harp on the reverse, so they are often called Irish coins but in fact they were the only English coins which were notauthorised for circulation in Ireland
The Harington issues originally had a surface of tin which served to make counterfeiting more difficult and to make the coins look more like silver and therefore more acceptable.
  • The obverse shows two sceptres through a crown, and the legend IACO DG MAG BRIT — James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain
  • The reverse shows a crowned harp and the continuing inscription FRA ET HIB REX — France and Ireland, King.
Despite Harington’s best intentions, these copper coins were extremely small and easily counterfeited. Due to protests by traders and the public over the minute size of these tokens, the weight was increased to nine grains and made slightly larger – 15mm diameter – and without the tin wash.
You often find Canadian coins on Florida beaches.  I was surprised to learn that this one is either 80% or 50% silver.  They changed the composition at some point without changing the die.  Not worth much, but I was surprised to learn of the silver content.




I enjoy having my close-up photo system working again.

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Because I've mentioned it a couple of times recently, I was watching a couple guys using a Minelab Equinox.  I was interested in how they were doing with it.

One fellow was following a slight dip that I wouldn't have spent much time on and kept digging bottle caps and pull tabs and small pieces of wire.  

Quite a few years ago I described what I referred to as coin lines and coin holes.  I think most people now know what coin lines are.  Well there are other kinds of lines too.  The surf does not just sift and sort coins.  There are shell lines and junk lines too.  The surf sorts everything according to its characteristics, most notably the density but also including other things such as the shape of the object.

I always used junk targets as one indicator that I might not be in a good area for better targets.  I've said before that is one reason I seldom use discrimination.  Junk targets provide good information.  

If I want to find something like a gold ring, I'm not going to spend a lot of time where pull tabs and other aluminum or light materials are accumulating.  You might occasionally find something good in an area like that, but not real often.  I'll go with the probabilities, and the probability of finding dense targets in with concentrations of recently accumulated aluminum and other less dense targets is not so good.  Junk targets will direct me elsewhere as much as dense targets might attract me.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

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