11/25/18 Report - Some Ideas About Coin Caches. What Are Your Dug Coins Trying To Tell You?

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

Coin Found Friday.

Did you ever notice that most coin caches are found by accident? Very few coin caches are found as a result of a hunt for that specific cache.  You can prove that for yourself by doing a little research.  If you do a Google search, you'll find that most caches are discovered purely by accident.  Gardening accounts for a few. Some have been dug up by dogs or other animals.  Some have been found by spelunkers.  Very often someone is just searching a field or conducting an archaeological dig when they discover a cache.

A cache of gold, dollars and euros found in a garden outside of Gaddafi's stronghold.  

A cache is typically described in terms of the quantity of coins, dates, denomination and types of coin.  The earliest and most recent dated coins and distribution of dates is often significant.

The container is also significant.  It seems a good number of caches are buried in canning jars, others in metal or ceramic containers and many in bags of some type.  Cloth containers often deteriorate and disappear.  Most often they are not buried deep - at least not those that are discovered.

As with any find, it can be difficult to learn much from a cache if without information about the context.  Archaeological context  refers to the place where an artifact is found, including the soil, the site type, the layer the artifact came from, what else is found in that layer or area, including remnants of buildings and things.

I've talked before about how dates on coins can be misleading. I won't go over that again now.

I saw a new episode of the Oak Island TV show the other day.  I had pretty much lost interest, but was encouraged by the Seismic Scanning Survey.  Up until that time their search had been, with the exception of the sample holes, unfocused and disorganized.  The sample drill holes from last season and the seismic survey of this season are the two most reasonable things they've done.

As a scientist, I like to see defined goals and theories that give rise to hypotheses that can be tested.  I prefer a thorough systematic approach.  After a while, running around in circles and making wild claims about miscellaneous isolated surface finds deposited over the history of the island is at first comical but eventually becomes tiring.

 Hopefully the seismic scan will keep them focused.  I know they have to get enough video for a season of TV, and the miscellaneous surface finds do that, but the surface finds are misdirected energy and don't do much to answer the big question of what, if anything, is buried in the shafts or vault.

I'm not talking about a leisurely metal detecting outing here.  If you just want a leisurely hunt and there is no big question or puzzle to be solved, you can go about it any way you want, but when you have a specific targeted cache or treasure, a lot of research and a more scientific approach is wise.  Old maps that show the island in centuries past could be very helpful.

A few targeted caches have been found as the result of good thorough research.  Ron Pastore has reportedly found some of the smaller Jesse James caches, even though the big James cache has not yet been found.  Some criticize Pastore's book, Jesse James' Secret, which they claim is full of mistakes, but Pastore has appeared on the History Channel's documentary, Jesse James' Hidden Treasure ,and was also discussed at some length in Jack Myers' book Knights' Gold.

Here is an interesting web site presenting Pastore's materials on the James treasure.

 http://jessejamesphotoalbum.com/the-rj-pastore-collection/

When a random coin cache is found, it can be difficult to figure out where it came from and why it was buried.

Here is a brief excerpt about a Nazi cache find.

An amateur archaeologist in Germany has found a historic collection of gold coins worth around 45,000 euros, probably buried during the Nazi era or shortly after World War Two, experts said on Wednesday.

Armed with a metal detector, Florian Bautsch found 10 coins in a hollow under a tree near the northern town of Lueneburg and professionals then excavated another 207.

They are of French, Belgian, Italian and Austro-Hungarian origin and date from 1831 to 1910.

Two aluminum seals featuring swastika crosses, eagles and the words "Reichsbank Berlin 244" were also discovered under the field with the coins. Germany's central bank was called "Deutsche Reichsbank" during the Nazi era and an analysis of the metal in the seals suggests they were made some time after 1940.

"This was all found under a pine tree that is around 50 years old ... and that must have grown afterwards ... so we know it must have been buried in the last days of the war or shortly afterwards," Mario Pahlow, a local archaeologist, told Reuters...

And here is the link for more about that one.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Nazi-gold-cache-buried-at-end-of-war-or-after-found-in-Germany-409096

You might want to take a look at that one.  It provides some good hints and tips.

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Dime Found Friday.

The past couple days I went out to see what was going on at the beach.  On Friday I did a few minutes of detecting at a couple beaches.  At the first beach I found the dime shown above.  It was discolored but otherwise looked in pretty good shape.  Just a clad find.  I was surprised by the date when I got it home and took a look.  Only one year off being silver.  It looked pretty much like the other coins that I was getting at that particular beach.  Nothing real old.

I then moved to a beach that had been renourished probably about a year ago.  The coins there looked different.  You can see one of those at the very top of this post.  It is a heavily encrusted and worn quarter.  It had more crust on it when I dug it up.  I just brushed some of the crust off, but still can not see a date.

As you can see beside being encrusted it is heavily worn.

Closer Look At Edge of Same Quarter Shown Above.

You can see how worn the edge is.  You might think it has been out there a while.  It sure looks like it.

Here is another coin found at the second beach.  I found it after the quarter.

Penny Found At Same Beach As the Quarter.

The penny is also encrusted with similar color shell bits, but the discoloring and encrustation is not as complete as on the quarter.

Also unlike the quarter, you can see that the lettering on this coin is still sharp.  It must have been lost nearly new.  The penny, however, is at least as recent as 2008.  I can't make out the third digit at this time.  So even though it is encrusted fairly heavily, it has not been out there a very long time.

These shield cents deteriorate in regular circulation, but this one has held up well even though it is encrusted.  It doesn't look like it took long to become encrusted.

While I can't say for sure, it looks like the encrusted coins from the second beach might have been dumped with the renourishment sand.  I'll have a better idea of that when I clean the penny enough to see the remaining digit of the date.

My point here is that you can sometimes get some useful information from the condition of the coins you find.

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The Treasure Coast surf is supposed to be around two to four feet today.  

The wind continues out of the west and the tides remain high 


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net