11/8/16 Report - The Florida Collection and Hoards. Narrowing Down The Date of Potosi Cobs From The Column Cap.

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

1715 Fleet 1714 Eight-Escudo

This is one of several NGC graded 1715 Fleet escudos in the current online Sedwick Coins auction. The current bid is already $11,000.

There are a good many graded escudos in this auction.  

I also noticed a lot of Potosi half-reales and a few quarter-reales.

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In Alan Craig's book, Spanish Colonial Gold Coins in the Florida Collection, he mentions a couple times that the Florida citizens own the collection.  "Own" implies control.  I don't know how you can say that the collection is in any way "owned" by the citizens.  Other than paying for its maintenance, few of them even know of its existence.  And their database is only for "internal" use, unlike the Mel Fisher artifact database.

As I've shown through my blog polls only a small minority(5%)  have ever seen any of the items in the Florida Collection.  And the poll results are based upon readers of this blog, who you would think would be much more interested in the collection than the average citizen.  About 73% of those who responded to the same poll said they knew virtually nothing about the collection - and those are detectorists and treasure hunters.  Most learn about Florida's treasures through non-government sources, including web sites, auction catalogs, magazines or expensive books such as Alan Craig's.

By the way, compared to his book on silver coins in the collection his book on gold coins was a disappointment to me, so check it out in the library or something before you spend the money.  There are a few interesting things to be found in that book though.

In his book on the gold coins in the collection, Craig includes a section on coin hoards.  He says that large hoards are uncommon, especially those that include coins in fine conditions covering a large time span.  That seems rather obvious, but it makes me think of some of the clusters of cobs found near or in the dunes along the Treasure Coast.  I could easily imagine that in the chaos following a shipwreck, that some survivor might take the opportunity of burying whatever he could gather.  It wouldn't be difficult digging.  All you would need to do would be to kick some sand over it, maybe during the night.  No metal detectors back then, so you might have a hard time finding it again - harder than you might think.

Several times I've recovered keys or rings or other things that beach goers buried for safe keeping while they took and dip and then found when they returned that they couldn't locate the items.

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If you have a pillar Potosi cob without the date or assayer information being visible, you might be be to narrow down the date by matching the cap on the pillars to dated examples.

Below are three examples of column caps.  All three examples came from the current Sedwick online auction.

Match the cap with those shown in a good book such as the Sewall Menzel book.  Some caps might look different because they were not struck as sharply and some may be more worn.  The second one above is similar to the first, but was either not as well struck or is more worn than the first, but I think it is different.  The third one is from an earlier period and very different from the other two.  Many times you'll at least be able to narrow down the date from the cap.

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We're supposed to have something like a 6 - 8 foot surf on Wednesday and a north wind.  That could possibly do something, depending upon the how the water hits the beach.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/28/16 Report - Tropical Storm Bonnie Forming. Has It All Been Found? Fisher Airlift Video. 14.000 Year Old Discovery.

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

Diver Using Airlift.
Source: Fisher YouTube Video.  See link below.

You might not think this story has anything to do with you, but read on a little and you'll find that it does.

A series of prehistoric cave paintings has been uncovered in the Basque Country, northern Spain, in a discovery experts have called a "once in a generation" find.

The paintings, which include those of bison, horses and goats, were discovered by archeologist Diego Garate at a depth of 300m in the Atxurra caves, around 50km from Bilbao.

The paintings are between 12,000 and 14,000 years old and depict traditional hunting scenes, including a bison pierced "with over 20 spears" - which marks the cave painting of a bison with the most spear marks in all of Europe...

Here is the link for the rest of that article.

http://www.thelocal.es/20160526/ancient-art-gallery-discovered-in-basque-country-atxurra-cave-paintings

The reason I mention this article is that the paintings were there for 12,000 to 14,000 years and were just discovered.  They were there thousands of years before being discovered.

There are some people that think that there is not very much left to find.  They believe that it has all been found.  This article shows that you just don't know what might be under your feet or around the next bend.  There is always more, you just don't know what is still there.

The amazing gold coin finds north of Vero last year is a good example.  All of those gold coins were in shallow water just yards off of the beach and buried under just a few feet of sand.  Detectorists walked within yards of those gold coins hundreds of times never knowing the gold coins were there or how close they were.

That is the thing about detecting.  You never know what is there until you detect it.  When the detector beeps and you dig up what was causing the signal and see it for the first time, it can be a surprising discovery.  Of course, that also means it can be a bit of a disappointment too.  It is a little like unwrapping a gift on Christmas morning.   When you actually see whatever it was, it is a discovery, and sometimes it is a surprising and wonderful discovery.

In Alan Craig's book on the silver coins in the Florida Collection, James Miller, the State Archaeologist at the time, wrote, "The law of diminishing returns has had its way with the increasingly expensive search for the finite remains of the treasure fleets.  Each year more people try a little harder to recover that which is more difficult to find."

He goes on to say, "Between 1975 and 1982, ten separate salvage contracts resulted in a little more than five hundred coins being added to the collection."   That is just over 70 coins per year.  There were ten separate salvage contracts at the time, and Dr. Miller tells us that only four of those "added more than five coins to the collection."

Craig's book was copyrighted in 2000.  If the finite supply of treasure was diminishing to a trickle before the turn of the millennium, surely after another decade and a half, the flow of treasure on the Treasure Coast would now be down to almost nothing.  But that is not what we saw.  Despite Dr. Millers outlook, the 2015 salvage season produced amazing discoveries, both in terms of quantity and quality.

It is easy enough to accept the law of diminishing returns.  It is easy enough to accept the idea that it is getting harder and harder, and maybe it isn't even worth going out there any more.  If you've accepted all of that, you probably won't be the one to make the next big find.  What is in you is as important as what is out there.

It might not seem easy.  It might not come quickly.  I don't know that it should.  If it did, there wouldn't be so much joy in the success.

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Here is a recent video of a diver from the Dare using an airlift to uncover deeply buried barrel hoops from the site of the Atocha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-W-rylDTpU&mc_cid=ab461745d0&mc_eid=e9c86e5425

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Early Saturday the Treasure Coast will have northeast winds and up to a four or five foot surf as topical depression Two heads towards South Carolina. Tropical depression two is expected to become Tropical Storm Bonnie on Saturday night. Bonnie will bring bad beach weather to the coastal Carolinas and Georgia for the Memorial Day weekend, including rip currents, potentially heavy rain, and battering waves.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net