12/1/18 Report - Tips and Techniques for Finding Paper Money and Other Valuable Papers. News on the Atocha And Santa Margarita Sites.

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

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.

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.  

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.

Old Photo Postcard Found Between Pages of An Old Book.

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...).

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

7/23/18 Report - Cache Hunting: Tips and Misconceptions. Fisher Organization Salvage Activities.

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

I've written about a couple of Florida cache finds this year.  Caches are found, but not real often.

Hunting for a cache is different than hunting for individual coins or pieces of jewelry, and a lot of what you read about how to find a cache is wrong.

The first thing about cache hunting, is you have to have reason to be looking for one.  If you just go out and cover a lot of ground, you might eventually find one, but the odds are very long against it.

Caches are rare, so it helps if you have reason to believe there might be one.  Of course if you are hunting the right kind of place, for example a historic home site, you should be aware that there is always the possibility of a cache being present.  If you don't want to miss any possible caches, you want to alert to a variety of types of targets that you otherwise might discriminate out.

If you read most articles about cache hunting, you'll probably read about things like two-box detectors for detecting really deep targets.  For many caches, a regular detector will work just fine if you aren't using too much discrimination.  The idea that every cache is going to be buried ten feet deep just isn't true.  People don't have to dig down ten feet to hide a cache.  There are other things that will hide a cache as well or better than a few feet of earth.

Someone who buries a cache, will usually hide it where they think they can find it again.  That means that the cache will be near landmarks or features - perhaps a tree, wall, fence or walk.  That can cause a problem for the detectorist.  They will not be able to detect the area well either because of physical obstacles, like walls, or noise from rebar or buried cables.  You can't detect with a two-box detector in small areas or around other big metal items.

The caches that I'm most familiar with were buried in canning jars, not treasure chests.  One cache was distributed around a home site with individual jars placed in different areas.  And each jar contained different kinds of coins.  You don't know what the container might be so you don't want to discriminate iron or a lot of other metals

If you've been hunting very long, you can probably easily tell the difference between a small surface target and a deeper large target from the sound of the signal.  You can't pay too much attention to your meter.  Many caches will give mixed signals because there can be signals from the container as well as the coins or whatever else is in the container.  They can be quite a mixed bag.

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A very dark two carat emerald was discovered on 7/11/18 while the Magruder was working Emerald City.

The Magruder will be going back to the site of the Margarita to dig the virgin area on the northern trail near where the gold chalice was found years ago.  They will be using an airlift to excavate holes in the bedrock.

The Margruder was finding Ming Dynasty blue and white porcelain and olive jar shards on the Atocha site.

The Fisher organization will also be returning to the deep target site with Dolores.

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I think it is amazing how little coins have changed over the past thousand years.  I guess they were well-designed for the job and worked well.  Mostly flat and round with designs on two sides.  It is fairly obvious what works well about that.

Anyway, I think coins will be going away before long.  Canada quit producing the-one cent coin in 2012.

Keys had a long run too, and are disappearing.

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We had a nice west wind this morning, but there are no storms around, and the surf is only one to two feet.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/30/17 Report - Exposed Reef In Ambersands/Sebastian Area. Big Nested Iron Pots Found On Margarita Site. Personal Story of Sadness and Gratitude.

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

Exposed Rocks at Low Tide.
Photo by Darrel S.

 The rocks you see in the picture above and below were found by Darrel S. two or three days ago in the Ambersand/Sebastian area.

He detected the area and said he dug a hundred holes and left fifty more targets he didn't feel like digging.  There was a lot of small junk.  A lot of fishing stuff (See below.).

Rocks Exposed At Low Tide Up In Sebastian Area.
Photo by Darrel S.

Dug Fishing Related Junk.
Photo by Darrel S.

Darrel also said there was a lot of noseeums one day.  And on Sunday the parking lots in the Turtle Trail area where full - both sides of A1A.  He didn't find a place to park.

Well Memorial Day is over and there should be some out there that the beach-goers lost.  We are getting the summer heat now.

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Here is some news from the Fisher organization.

The Sea Reaper worked the Margarita scatter where a lot of artifacts from the galley were found.  They recovered over 100 artifacts in that area, including two heavily encrusted large nested iron pots.  Other finds included musket balls, majolica, blade fragments and other unidentified objects.

They will be searching an area that they call the "silver store house," which is where 17th century salvors found numerous silver bars.  Personal property of passengers such as emeralds and jewelry might also be found in the area. One eight reales has been found there.

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I posted a picture of may father yesterday.  He was in France in 1943, I think.  I posted that it was 1944 yesterday, but after thinking about it some more, I think it was probably 1943.  Anyhow, I awoke last night thinking about something I felt compelled to post today.

When I was about eleven  years old, which would have been about 1956, my dad was driving me somewhere on a unpaved road that snaked along the top of  ridge.  On both side there were green farm fields descending into a valley.  Near one very sharp bend in the road, somebody was building a house on top of a high point that would have been a fine lookout from which you could see for miles in every direction.   It was a very small house being built out of what appeared to be second hand lumber.  Mockingly I cracked, "You might as well live in a chicken coop."  My dad's reaction was strong.  I could see the anger in his eyes.  He told me something like, "Never judge a person like that."  At the time, I didn't really understand why he reacted the way he did.

Many years later - a few years after he passed away - I learned why he responded the way he did.  He was right.  It was wrong to judge a person that way, but there was more to it.  When he was young - younger than I was when this incident took place - there were times when he lived on the streets.  His father was gone and he dug ditches and did what he could from the time he was ten years old. I was too young to realize it, but he was ashamed of his childhood and early family life,  He never talked about it, and  I never knew or met any of his relatives.  If I asked about his family he just said that he was s*it in a field and hatched.

Back to the chicken coop.  When he was about the age I was when this incident occurred ( which would have been during the Great Depression, as well as I can figure it ) he and his destitute single mother and two half siblings lived in a chicken coop.

He wouldn't want me to tell you this, He wouldn't want anyone to know about his youth.  It wasn't long ago that I learned about this.

He was ashamed of where he came from.  He should have been proud of what he overcame to become the man he was.  I thought we were rich.  We didn't have much ( something else I didn't realize at the time ), but I had more than the other kids I knew.  I really did feel wealthy.  I never went without food, and he made sure I had more than I needed and everything I wanted.  He should have been proud.  I had love and security and he spent his hard earned money on toys and things for me that he never had.

I didn't realize it at the time, but he should have been proud, and I should have been ashamed.  But what do kids know?  What do any of us know?

It is always hard for later generations to know what it was like before their time.  And it is therefore hard to appreciate their accomplishments.  The same thing applies to history in general as well as metal detecting.

Very often, we know too little until it is too late.  Thanks dad!

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/3/16 Report - New Disturbance On Its Way. How One Beach Changed Last Week. Tracking Treasure. Fisher Action.

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

Source: nola.com

Hermine is gone, but all the action isn't over.  There is another disturbance approaching.  You can see it on the above chart.

Expect a small surf through the weekend.  Monday and Tuesday the surf is expected to be a bit bigger.

Even when you don't have a storm or anything rough, beaches change.  Below I'll show you what happened on one beach over the past week.  It is a good lesson.

Beach Illustration.

In my 8/27 post I showed the above illustration.  The illustration shows a beach that I hunted and where the coins and jewelry were.  That beach had a cut (shown in brown) and a distribution of coins (in the orange area), including a jewelry hole.  As I explained, this beach is a beach where mostly cheap items are found.  What I wanted to show is how finds get distributed on a beach.  It is not a random process, especially when the items have been lost a while and they have been sifted and sorted by the water.

I went back to the same beach yesterday.  That was about one week later.  As you know, we have been having mostly south winds and relatively small surf and decent tides.

Here is how the beach and target distribution had changed.

Same Beach As It Appeared Yesterday At Low Tide.

Last week the cut (light brown crescent) was about a foot high at the peak and tapered.  Yesterday the cut was not nearly as high (only about a half foot at the most) but it ran much farther (darker brown line).  Other than how that cut changed, there wasn't too much that was obvious.

The jewelry was found at a different location this time. Last week the jewelry was found at the blue circle.  Yesterday jewelry was found in the area of the blue rectangle. It was lower on the beach and was spread out along the wet sand in a narrow strip between the dry sand and water line.

It took me about fifteen minutes, at most, to find the new jewelry location and to find the items shown below.

Cheap Jewelry Found At One Beach Yesterday.

There were almost no coins found with the jewelry.  Just one penny and two bottle tops.

Although I wouldn't spend much time on a beach like this that produces almost exclusively cheap stuff, I wanted to illustrate how beaches change and how you can benefit by identifying and tracking different target areas.  Again, I didn't need discrimination because when I was in either the area where the jewelry was or the area where the coins were located, and there was almost no junk in either of those locations, and I also wanted to know where the junk was.  The junk can help you to define beach areas, and it can help to tell you where to spend your time or where to not spend your time.

The orange outlined area that contained coins last week, did not now produce any coins.  The coins were now farther south, just beyond the area shown in the illustration.  It was fairly compact or dense hole.  There was one unidentifiable piece of junk in the coin hole.  Again, no need for discrimination.

Besides that hole, which often appears on this beach, there is often another spot where concentrations of coins are found, but the second spot was not producing yesterday.

I wouldn't spend much time on a beach like this, but I did it primarily to illustrate how beaches change and how the distribution of targets on a beach will change.

Until you get to know a particular beach, you might have to do a few hunts just to become familiar with the beach.

Knowing where things were found last week helped me to find the productive area yesterday.  

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Down in the Keys, the Fisher boats were back in port, however before having to come in they made some good finds, including a few silver coins and an adze.  I discussed some tools from the Treasure Coast not too long ago.  A 4 inch square stone that appears to be onyx is a more curious find.  There was another similar one found on the Atocha site about thirty years ago.

The crew of the Dare has been exploring EM hits.  One was a bomb strap.  Another target that appears to be non-ferrous was missed after digging a large hole.  They'll return to recover that one.

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Keep watching the latest disturbance.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

11/30/14 Report - Up To Ten Foot Surf Predicted For Treasure Coast. Beach Coin Accumulations. GoPro Drones.

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

Here is the tide prediction chart for the Fort Pierce area from Magic Seaweed.  They are predicting 6 - 10 feet a week from Monday.  Now that should do the job if the wind direction is at all favorable.

See the main page in this blog for the Magic Seaweed link to the surf prediction charts.

Trouble is, the seven to ten-day projections are not very accurate.  From what I've seen of their predictions, there is only about a 10 percent chance that the large surf predicted for Dec. 8 will actually be that large.  But if it is, combined with what has been happening and assuming nothing real negative happening before then, it could get good.

For now I'm sticking with my level 2 beach conditions rating.  I'm now calling level 2 "transitional."  It isn't poor, like summer conditions, yet it isn't good enough to call good. 

I'll be reassessing my beach detecting conditions rating tomorrow.  And I'll also be watching to see if the surf predictions from Magic Seaweed changes.

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Southern Digger has been metal detecting for a long time.  I've posted some of his emails before.  Here are some tips he recently sent me.

I have experienced these repetitive coin wash-ups on wet sand/dry sand beaches and have done well in the coin take. I have learned to read the beach vs wind direction and wind strength to locate these places. First, if the wind is blowing about 20 mph out of the NNE to NE or from the SSE to SE; and if the tide is incoming; I look for where the waves hit the cut. If the wind was NNE to NE, I follow the bluff southerly until it gradually discontinues into a sloping beach. Most coins that ht the base of the cut are quickly pulled back into the roiling surf and pushed in a southerly direction. Once the cut ceases into a sloping beach, the coins are free to be pushed up the slope and quickly covered by sand. The same holds true on a SSE or SE strong wind and the coins are deposited on the north end of a discontinued cut. My last experience occurred at Ft. Lauderdale Beach. I found coins on the washed beach slope some 50-75 feet south of the cut. Soon as I clean out the coins; I wait 5-10 minutes and all is replenished. I worked this continually-producing bank deposit for some 45 minutes until the rising tide and diminishing winds altered the physical conditions that initially provided the deposit. I don't recall how many coins I recovered that day but it was a net bag load.

Thanks for sharing S. D.

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This from the Fisher organization in Key West -  Although inclement weather has kept the boats in port through the last couple of weeks, the crews have been staying busy with preventative maintenance and up keep.

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GoPro Drone
Source: wsj.com link found in this post.

C Man sent me this link about GoPro developing a line of consumer drones.  I've talked about GoPro before.  They are used on some of the metal detector TV programs.  They can be mounted on headgear or on a detector rod.

These drones could be used to check out a long stretch of beach or other things.  Could be very useful.


http://online.wsj.com/articles/gopro-developing-line-of-consumer-drones-1417020883?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp

Thanks C Man.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net