Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Unidentified Paper Money Found in Pages of Old Book. |
After Thanksgiving I told about finding a ten dollar bill on the floor of a restaurant. I remembered that when I woke up this morning and started thinking about other times I found paper money. There were actually quite a few, and there were even times when I set out to find paper money.
Of course, you don't do that with a metal detector. There are, however, things you can do that will increase the probability of finding paper money. One is being generally alert. But there are also specific strategies for different times and places.
Finding paper money is one aspect of what I call eye-balling. Years ago I wrote an article about that for a treasure hunting magazine. It was either Lost Treasure, Treasure, or Western and Eastern Treasures. I forget which one right now.
I once found a twenty dollar bill while driving through the parking lot in front of a Bealls store. You can find stuff while driving. I once saw a watch on the street while driving. I drove up to it, stopped, opened the door and picked it up.
I won't mention all the bottles, rings and other treasures that I've found visually, but will get back to paper money. There are some places where you have a decent chance of finding paper money.
I always liked to search the grounds after a carnival, circus or fair. You could always find a good number of coins right after they left, and most of them would be on top of the ground so you could find a lot of them visually, but also there was also a good chance of finding paper money.
The best place to check at a fair grounds was the fence line on the down wind side. Usually the fence line would also have a bunch of weeds that would help trap blown paper money.
At the beach I've found paper money in the seaweed along the seaweed line.
A lot of wind or big surf helps you chances.
A lot of wind or big surf helps you chances.
There aren't so many of them out there anymore, but people used to leave cigarette packages on the beach. I would always check out packages like that for any money. There would occasionally be a folded bill stuffed inside.
I've also found paper money while metal detecting in the water. I remember one time when a bill came floating by about a foot deep in the water. It wasn't real easy to see.
There was also a dip in about six feet of water in front of one beach-side hotel where bills often collected.
Of course, paper money can be found in with coin caches.
Of course, paper money can be found in with coin caches.
I used to stop at a thrift store to buy old and collectible books. I once found a ten dollar bill in between the pages of a book I bought.
A lot of good things can be found in between the pages of old books. Old calling cards, autographed papers, tickets, etc.
One of my favorites was the business card of Hoagie Carmichael Jr., which was in a book written by him. I purchased the autographed book on building a fly rod for a dollar and sold it for around $125, as I recall.
I've also found very nice old photos in books, including one showing a some people in the old long bathing suits at a New Jersey beach. It looked like it was from the twenties or thirties. Also some nice wedding and other photos.
The clown postcard shown above was found in an old book. It has the typical postcard look with the space for stamp and everything on the other side, but it also appears to have the name of the person (Charles H...).
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Old Photo Postcard Found Between Pages of An Old Book.
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Another favorite book find included a religious card with a small cloth relic attached.
Outdoors, consider the wind and water and where paper will evntually be trapped.
Indoors, consider anyplace where paper can be stuffed away for safe keeping. Old books are one of my favorites.
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Recent calmer weather allowed a lot of salvage activity down around Key West.
The crew of the Dare has been trying to determine if there might be another debris trail on the Atocha site. In the process they found a couple silver coins and a few EOs.
On the Margarita site, the Sea Reaper was searching for a missing section of the Santa Margarita. There are about 22 chests of coins missing, including about 80 thousand pieces of eight. They found a silver coin, musket balls and lead sheathing while searching.
Doug Pope has made an agreement with the Fishers, and the Polly-L be working with the Fisher organization again on the Santa Margarita site. The Polly-L worked on the Margarita site back in the early 2000s and found a 40 carat uncut Colombian emerald. It was the only emerald ever found on the Santa Margarita wreck site. It was found in a conch shell.
Source: email from the Fisher organization.
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Let me know if you can identify the partial bill shown at the top of the page.
It looks like we'll have south winds and less than a two foot surf for a few days. We might have something bigger after that.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
