Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| John Brooks Beach This Morning Near High Tide. |
The surf was nearly flat this morning at John Brooks. The high tide had been far back on the beach, but not to the dunes. As you can see in the photo, there were some scattered shells.
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov |
Florence, Isaac and Helene have all become hurricanes. That is quite a parade.
Florence still looks to be headed towards North or South Carolina,, Isaac into the Caribbean, and Helene to the North Atlantic.
Helene will probably be no threat to the U. S.
I won't show the predicted tracks of each today. I'll do that again tomorrow or some time soon.
The Treasure Coast surf for this week still looks promising
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
The Treasure Coast surf predictions haven't changed much for several days now. It still looks like Wednesday we will get some good surf. The tides are now pretty big also.
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| a50% Silver Canadian Quarter. |
Above is a 50% Canadian silver quarter, and below are two 50% silver dimes that I found.
I would not have guessed that the 1968 quarter would be silver. I discovered that it was silver when I used a magnet to screen a bunch of Canadian coins that I dug up over the years. Most of the Canadian quarters, and dimes, stuck to the magnet. The silver ones did not.
In 1968 the first quarters were made of silver, but those made later in the year were made of nickel. The ,magnet test showed the one above to be silver.
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| 1962 and 1963 50% Silver Canadian Dimes. |
I had previously discovered some silver Canadian coins but hadn't looked through the entire pile. Those that I had discovered before included some that were much older than these.
I've been very impressed by the usefulness of a magnet for testing coins.
I read one web site that said that UK coins are magnetic and U.S. coins are not. There are exceptions to that. There are the steel war cents that the US produced in 1943, for example. And there are many older U.K. coins that are not magnetic, including silver and gold coins. There are always exceptions, it seems.
There are also transition coins. like the Canadian quarter shown above, that were made of a magnetic material for part of a year and a non-magnetic metal during the other part of the year. And there also error coins that were created on the wrong type of planchet. Those can be very valuable.
In 1943 the U.S. mint made steel pennies. In 1944 they used copper again, but a few 1944 pennies were mistakenly made on steel planchets. If you find a 1944 steel penny, it could be very valuable.
I've been talking about using a magnet to test coins, but there is a danger with that. The magnet can scratch your coins, which can diminish the coin's value. Don't use a magnet on coins that are in excellent condition or potentially very rare or valuable without taking precautions.
I've found two ways to diminish the danger of a magnet scratching the coins. One is to put a cloth over the magnet. That will help, but there are probably better methods.
Another method is to stack the coins and hold the stack between your thumb and forefinger and place the stack of coins on the magnet so only the edge of each coin contacts the magnet. The magnet will still separate the magnetic ones from the non-magnetic coins, but only the edge of the coin is at risk of touching the magnet.
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I added the great token database to my treasure reference link list.
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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
