11/16/19 Report - Recent Finds: Musket Balls and Ring. Great White Sharks Migrating. Bigger Surf Coming Soon.

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

Recent Treasure Coast Beach Finds.

Finds and photo by DJ

Here are some recent finds made by DJ. 

DJ had the following to say about the musket ball finds.

-Musket balls - pleased the Equinox found these so effortlessly. I think if there is a good target within 8-10 inches this machine will find it most times. 

-lots of lead bits, too small to identify. 

The musket balls were where one might expect; found on the 10th. The next day I went back and only found a small musket ball that was cut into a 1/8 piece. 

DJ wondered why some of the musket balls were cut down in size. What do you think?

He also found the following ring which he described as, Gold-ish ring - light weight ring and found in a large shell pile against the odds...

Ring Found by DJ.

The ring was found back when the shells were being thrown up, I hit 6 targets that sounded pretty good on the Equinox but each were the old pull ‘rings’. The 7th was this ring. I took it into West Bay for an opinion that turned out to be ‘not old’ I appreciate those folks opinions very much.

So I started to clean the ring, first soaking, then gently prying off the green, then 10% acid and when nothing else happened I tried electrolysis for an hour. Seemed to help and I was able to get enough crust off to determine a pattern engraved or stamped into the ring. So I began to use some (hand rubbed) light metal jewelry polish and broke it into four pieces.

Further reading I found a reference to 9k gold that was mixed with silver or brass and had gold applied to the surface. Someone else had a similar experience and thought that his gold and green ring was the base metal leaching out, giving it a green ‘silverish’ look. Hated that I broke but glad it was not a really old or valuable find. 

Ring Broken in Four Parts.

Photo by DJ

Thanks for sharing your finds and comments DJ!  Congrats.

---

A  great white shark measuring 9-foot-8 inches in length has been tracked entering Albemarle Sound—a large estuary on the coast of North Carolina...

OCEARCH has been tracking sharks off the North American east coast for several years, revealing how great whites often migrate thousands of miles from more northerly latitudes to the warmer waters off the coast of Georgia, the Carolinas and Florida during the winter...

Here is the link for more about that.

https://www.newsweek.com/great-white-shark-swimming-north-carolina-coast-1471951


By the way, I understand that the North Carolina beaches have had some good erosion lately.  But it is also cold there.

---

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

November beach conditions have been better than they were the past few months.  With the beach sand levels reduced in some locations, further erosion could get us down to some good hunting.

One thing I noticed a few days ago when checking out a cut below the Fort Pierce inlet, the eroded beach was curved, as you would expect, and while the sand in front of most of the cut was mushy, there was a spot that was less mushy and where more targets were found.  I don't think it was a coincidence that the firmer sand and better targets were at the spot where the beach curved most sharply.

If you walk along the beach front and find a firmer spot, check it out.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/10/19 Report - Local Artist Creates With Dug Items. Prussian Button. Megalodon Tooth(?). Lil Squirt Soda ACL.

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

Terri Martin With Creations.

Source: Portfolio-VeroBeach.com

An artist featured in Portfolio-VeroBeach.com created art using metal dug by a local detectorists.  That detectorist is Dan B., and the artist is Terri Martin.

Here is the email I received from Dan.

I mentioned briefly in a past email about donating some metal detecting finds to a friend. I have been sorting through my bins and have avoided scrapping metal due to the flat tires that I was getting at the scrap yard. I sorted out my remaining metal that I had no use for and gave it to a local artist named Terri Martin. I was delighted to see that she created an attractive piece with mostly things that were buried just a few years ago. I had already seen the piece of art, but today I saw a write up on her in the Vero Beach Portfolio magazine and I felt like sharing it with you. I can look at the piece she is holding and remember where I found nearly all of those things and their individual patinas. I haven’t had the chance to tell her personally, but I was really impressed with her style and how well it turned out. I would like the local readers to know that she is always looking for metal trinkets. If they wish to contact the blog, maybe you could provide them with her phone number or email information.

The magazine article is online at www.portfolio-verobeach.com There is no way to link the exact page due to their website layout, just wanted to share.

Sure, I'll do that.  

---

Here is the mystery button I posted yesterday. 

Mitch King says it is from the Prussian German Army, dating from 1870 to 1914.  

Thanks again Mitch.

---

It may be necessary to add another large nation of Native Americans to the list of peoples wiped out by the rapacious Spanish conquistadors after they arrived in the Americas. The location of the lost city of Etzanoa, found recently in Kansas, mystified historians for 400 years.

When the conquistadors arrived in the New World they wiped out civilizations and/or cultures, including the Arawaks (Taino) in the Caribbean, Peru’s Incas, Central America’s Aztecs and Maya, and populations along what became the Mexico-U.S. border.

The city of Etzanoa was described in historical documents but its whereabouts were unknown until an archaeologist with Wichita State University in the state of Kansas started digging in recent years...

Here is the link for more about that.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/possibly-decimated-conquistadors-400-years-ago-has-lost-city-etzanoa-021342

---

I posted a few unidentified fossil teeth the other day and haven't received any responses from readers yet.  I think the shark tooth is a megalodon.

Here is how AquaExplorers says you can tell the difference between Great White and Megalodon teeth.

And here is the link.

http://www.aauaexpl\orers.com/fossil_shark_teeth_diving.htm:.XSPFhndFxYc

Great White and Megalodon teeth are very similar.  The most evident distinguishing characteristic is the separation between the top of the tooth and the main body of the tooth.  Notice the black area that separates the top from the main body of the Megalodon tooth.  You don't see that on the Great White tooth.


I miss Fred Dengler.  He used to answer all my fossil questions.  Don't know what happened to Fred.  Hope he is well.

---

Here is an ACL bottle I found.  It probably dates to the mid 50s.  Usually the paint is gone or badly faded.  This one isn't too bad.

Squirt is a carbonated grapefruit drink created by Herb Bishop in 1938. Bishop’s intention was to make a soft drink that required less fruit and sugar than other sodas, due to the Great Depression. He started with a soft drink by the name of Citrus Club that was bottled in Phoenix, Arizona (which was quite popular in that part of the country).

Bishop’s experimentation resulted in a soft drink made from grapefruit juice and sugar that he believed to be the freshest tasting soft drink available on the market. He thought it tasted like a slice of grapefruit exploding in the mouth, so he called it “Squirt”.

In 1941, Bishop and his partner, Ed Mehren, created a character called “Little Squirt” to use in the marketing of their soft drink. The little tike encouraged people to “Drink Squirt”. He caught on right away with the consumers and sales increased.

The soft drink did well through WWII, because of its reduced sugar content, and in the 1950s, Squirt became a popular drink mixer. By the mid-1970s, Squirt was sold in Central and South America...

I believe it is still sold today.

Lil Squirt.

---

There were over 1200 page views on this blog yesterday.

After the United States, the country with the most readers is Russia.  Don't know why that is.

---

There is some weather that could form into a cyclone, but the chances at this point are slim.

Expect more of the same beach conditions.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

4/18/19 Report - Tumbaga Bar. Objects Migrating Along the Beach. Miss Costa the Great White.

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

Tumbaga Bar
Lot 194 in the current Sedwick Auctionl
See link below.

Here is part of the lengthy lot description.

Large tumbaga gold ingot, 1816 grams, marked with fineness V and three dots (5.75 karat, or 23.96% fine), also marked with R and S and several tax stamps of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, ex-"Tumbaga wreck" (ca. 1528), Garcia-Barneche Plate. Approx. 12-1/2" x 2" x 1". This the largest and arguably most significant of the very few GOLD ingots found on the "Tumbaga wreck," which is the only known source of such ingots, all of which are very low in fineness (marked between 5-3/4 and 8 karats). Of the thirteen pieces known, all but two are cut down in their time, the intact two being a long and skinny rod and the present lot, which is somewhat club-shaped with a wide diameter and one end bulbous, the rounded bottom showing small marks of fineness V (incuse) and three dots in a column immediately followed by an S-shaped mark in a box plus a single dot in a box, the flat top of the bar showing four partial tax stamps (which show parts of CAROLVS IMPERATOR) and one mark with an R in a box (formerly seen as a B)... 

XRF analysis on this piece reports it as about 39% gold, 56% copper and 5% silver, a fineness (9.32K) that exceeds what is marked on the bar itself (5.75K) by over 60%! Curiously, the exposed metal in the "bite" at the end shows more of a gold color, leading us to speculate that the surface was purposefully tinted to pass off a fraudulently low assay. In any case, this bar and its shipmates are true tumbaga in that they were made from native artifacts created from a mix of copper and gold...

And here is the link.

https://auction.sedwickcoins.com/Large-tumbaga-gold-ingot-1816-grams-marked-with-fineness-V-and-three-dots-5-75-karat-or-23-96-f_i33011507

The bar is just a touch over 64 ounces, and has a current bid of $37,500, with an estimate of up to $70,000.

Tumbaga is relevant to some of the other posts I've done this year.

I've only found one tumbaga item.

Tumbaga is a word used by the conquistadors to describe the copper and gold alloys used by the pre-Columbian natives.  It varies widely in composition and often contains other metals. The natives would use acid to accomplish depletion gilding so the surface of the item would be a more pure gold than the rest of the item.

I've described the  depletion gilding process before.

---

I did an experiment the other day that I tried to catch with my video camera, but the glare off the water was too bright and I didn't get it, so I made a drawing.  It is rough.

I colored some small washers in bright colors and place them on the beach where the water would reach them.  At first the water only got some of them, and washed those into the water.  Eventually they all got washed into the shallow water.

The waves were probably more towards the north than shown in my drawing, but they were not directly north.  They had a definite slant to the left.

Anyhow, I followed the colored washers down into the shallow water and along the shoreline until they seemed to come to a resting place.  I could see them for a while, but had to use my detector to find them a good part of the time.

If the waves and currents changed, I'm suspect they would have been moved some more.

That seems to be what happens with coins on the beach.  There were several places I used to metal detect in South Florida where people would congregate on the beach, but I would consistently find a good collection of coins and things n the shallow water to the south.

I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to show a video of exactly how the waves moved the objects.  It took a while anyhow.

---

Miss Costa, a Great White shark of over 1600 pounds, was recently detected off the Florida Panhandle.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/great-white-shark-florida-panhandle-researchers-say

---

The surf is only one or two feet, but we are having some nice high tides and negative tides now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

4/19/15 Report - Indian River Treasures. Steamboat St. Lucie. Pot Shard, Old Bottle & Fossils.

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



Picture of the Steamship St. Lucie
Docked Not Far From Jensen.

In the old days the Indian River Lagoon was one of the main highways on the Treasure Coast.  Boat traffic was used by early settlers.  Later there was steamship service.

Here is a picture of the steamship St. Lucie at dock near Jensen.  I haven't found the name of any others, but feel there must have been others.

If any of you know of other steamships that sailed the Indian River along the Treasure Coast, I'd like to hear or read about that.  I've done a little research on that but haven't found very much.

You will occasionally see old things along or in the river.  One day just walking along Indian River Drive I saw a check-stamped pottery shard.  That was a surprise. 

Back after the hurricanes of 2004, the west side of the Indian River was lined with bottles.  It really was amazing.  They were solid along the water line.

The bottles gradually disappeared.  There weren't any to be seen for a few years.  I didn't know if they would ever return because many of them came from the banks where people used to throw their garbage.  That, of course, was in the days before they had garbage service. 

After the hurricanes they put sheets of concrete blocks over the banks of the river to prevent Indian River Drive from getting washed out again.  I thought with all of that we might not ever see the bottles again.

Last year a few of them started to appear.  And in the past few months some of the older ones started to show up again in spots where there was erosion along the water line.

My guess now is that there are still tons of them covered by sand that will be washed up again some day.

Years and years ago an embossed blob top beer bottles was found in the sand down by where the steamship shown above was docked.  The dock is no longer there.  It was destroyed by a hurricane way back in the day.

The thing that revealed the bottle was a spot of moss in the sand.  The moss, or seaweed or whatever it was, was growing on the bottle.  That bottle was not along the water line but out in the shallow water.

There are still the remains of a few garbage burn piles that can be found on the banks of the river.  Not many though, because of the erosion control structures.

I've never gone out to hunt fossils along the Indian River but have twice seen fossils there.  The first was this nice Great White tooth found along the edge of the river

Great White Shark Fossil Tooth.

.When I first saw it I thought it was the corner of a buried bottle.  When I bent down I saw it was a shark tooth. 

It is a very nice example with sharp serrations.  It is over two inches long.

One other time I was walking along the river bottles and noticed a fossil tooth of an extinct horse.  That was a surprise too.  I didn't really think that would be what it was when I first saw it.

Even though the fossils are there, I think in most places they are very rare.

When it comes to metal detecting along or in the shallow water of the Indian River, it is very difficult.  There is a ton of trash on the banks and in the shallow water.

I did spot an old pair of ear rings in one old burn pile once.

Even without a metal detector you can find all kinds of stuff along the river.  Those that I've mentioned today include include pot shards, old bottles and fossils, all of which I have seen when not hunting them. 

----

The surf predictions and wave data is now found below the popular posts list.

This week we'll have very smooth surf and south winds.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

7/8/14 Report - Fort Harrel Found (?), Horse Shaped Cob & Biting Great Whites and Noseeums

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



Cob Shaped Like Horse
Source photo: Sewall Menzel's book
Cobs, Pieces of Eight, and Treasure Coins.

Cobs were formed in a variety of fanciful shapes.  Hearts are most common.  A Sedwick auction had an entire group of those. 

Besides hearts, or pomegranites, other cobs were shaped like horses, birds or arrows. 

The precise reason for these oddly shaped cobs is not known.   Some think they were special favors used as jewelry and some believe they were used for religious puposes.

Many had holes so they could be worn.

Sewall Menzel believes that they were not "made at the mint."   That doesn't seem right to me, but he knows a heck of a lot more about it than me.

He wonders if one example was made as a joke or at the whim of a public official.  This is one of those things that you can wonder about but will probably never know.




Section of Gold Chain Found

It is possible! If you do your research you can go out there and find a historic site that has been lost for a century or more.  That is what recently happened.

A high school chemistry teacher, a computer engineer and a U. S. National Park Service Employee recently found what could be the site of Fort Harrel in the Everglades.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-07-02/news/fl-historic-fort-found-20140702_1_everglades-fort-site-seminole-war

Reading can help.  You never know where you'll find that important clue.  Then they did some more reading and put in some hard time looking.

I don't think most detectorists do much research at all.  Many just go out to the beach to get some exercise.  Nothing wrong with that, but if you want to make new discoveries research will definitely help.

Here is an extensive list of Seminole War forts.

http://fortwiki.com/Seminole_War_Forts_List



You might take some insect repellant the next time you go to the beach.  The noseeums haven't been as bad as I've seen them, but they have been out there.   One got inside my ear phone cup the other day and chewed my ear up.   That was a first for me.   They've eaten me before, but not from the inside of my ear phone. 

They seem to be bad when the sand gets wet from rain.  And as you know that has been happening.

Watch out for lightening too.  We had a lot of lightening yesterday.


Here is an article about a fellow that got bit by a Great White.  Creatures can decide to take a bite out of you.  Beware.

http://nypost.com/2014/07/06/shark-attack-victim-it-lunged-and-locked-into-my-chest/


And here is an article about the NSA accumulating and saving messages by regular people who were not targeted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercepted-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html


The surf on the Treasure Coast is running around two feet.  The tidal change is modest.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/20/14 Report - What You Can Learn About Beach Detecting From Hunting Gold Nuggets, Great White and Magic Grapeshot

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


The higher surf didn't help conditions any.  It was hitting the beach straight on instead of at an angle, which resulted in more filling.  It wasn't that much higher anyway.

One Treasure Coast Beach Just After High Tide Monday Afternoon.

I showed this beach the day before yesterday.  There isn't much left of the cuts now.  Notice the sea weed, which indicates that the beach is filling.

Another Similar Treasure Coast Beach Monday Afternoon.

This one is filling in too.  Again, notice the sea weed.

It just goes to show once again that the direction of the surf is as important as the size of the surf.


I've often said how good it is to try different types of detecting.  Most people who read this blog detect beaches or shallow ocean waters a lot.  Although I know there are some, most of this blog's readers do not hunt gold in streams, however, if you ever get the chance or opportunity, try it out, because you'll have some fun, might find something, and perhaps most importantly, will learn something that will open your eyes to new opportunities and supply you with new useful skills.

There are many web sites dealing with hunting gold in or around a river or creek.   Here is a little one that in a few short paragraphs provides some helpful tips.

http://voices.yahoo.com/where-look-gold-streams-5724340.html?cat=11

I'll summarize a few of the key points from this article that apply to beach or shallow water ocean detecting.

1. Look around bends in the stream.  Why?   Because the water slows and gold will settle and collect there.  

Notice any familiar principles?   Yes, the same thing happens on a beach.  Where the water slows, gold and other heavy items will settle. 

Understanding the movement of water and where things will collect will help you on a beach too.

2.  Work the banks, not just the water.  Why?  The stream bed and water level will change over time and flood waters can drop gold on the banks.

That happens on a beach too.  The same basic forces are at work, the force of moving water, changing water levels, and don't forget gravity.

3.  Hunt around obstructions, such as boulders or cracks in the bedrock where gold will accumulate. 

Do the same in the shallow water or on the beach, especially in the wet sand or where the water has once been.

In the water or on a beach, rocks or other obstructions such as jetties or sea groins will also collect targets.

4.  The article also says, The most important step in panning a stream for gold is to develop a plan. Looking for gold in random place after random place can be frustrating and is an inefficient use of your time.

That is something I always teach here.  Randomly hunting is what many beginners do, but if you are going to become more effective, you'll develop a plan that guides your hunting.   As you hunt more, your plan should become more detailed and systematic.

I know the above web site is not the best site in the world for giving the details on how to find gold in a stream, but it quickly shows how one type of hunting can help you better understand forces and develop techniques that will help you become more productive no matter where you detect.


Here is a video of diver who encountered a Great White Shark off of Vero.

http://xfinity.comcast.net/video/Scuba-diver-takes-on-great-white-shark-in-Florida/260293699851/Comcast/TopVideos/?cid=sf_vidtray


Here is a web site showing the excavation of a 1700s pirate hangout up the Belize river called the Barcadares.   This is a new piece in LiveScience but is actually a rehash of previously published material.  Nonetheless, you might want to take a look.

http://www.livescience.com/15865-photos-pirates-caribbean.html


Magic grapeshot?   Archaeologists imagine that 18th century grape shot found buried in post holes under a foundation of a Caribbean plantation were magical in nature.  That seems unlikely to me.  What do you think?

Get the details here.

http://www.livescience.com/45696-artifacts-unearthed-in-caribbean.html


Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net