7/8/20 Report - Mel Fisher Expeditions and Finds. Quintessential Treasures. Digital Treasure.

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

Quintessential Treasures That Fortunately Were Never Lost.
See link below.

Not lost but still representing the kind of objects that any treasure hunter might dream of finding.  I'm sure that out there somewhere are lost objects that are as finely crafter and beautiful as these.

Click here to see more Sotheby's auction items like these.

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Down south, Mel Fisher's Expeditions are working on the the well-known Atocha and Margarita sites, but also the less well known "Lost Merchant" somewhere off the east coast of Florida, and another 1622 wreck that has yet to be found.

The Magruder went sifting for emeralds and then back to the area known as the Bank of Spain.  Their latest finds included a nice emerald, 1 complete silver candlestick, a piece of a silver plate rim, some pottery shards and half of a silver coin.

The Mel Fisher museum in Sebastian will be reopening on May 8.

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The nature of treasure is changing.  I guess it always did.  Wealth is becoming less tangible.  Most transactions no longer require coins or currency.  It is done digitally.  Digital currencies include cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, central bank digital currencies and e-Cash.  You've probably heard of bit coin for example.

And you know about the scammers that do their own form of illegal digital treasure hunting by mining the digital information that resides on our computers.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday warned Americans that the Chinese government’s theft of American information is taking place on so large a scale, suspected incidents make up nearly half of his bureau’s counterintelligence cases.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington, Wray said that Chinese thefts amount to “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” and that the American people are the victims...

See https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-wray-says-half-of-bureaus-5000-counterintelligence-cases-are-related-to-china

Yesterday I mentioned some of the products of our culture. If you thought China might be a place you could escape from our culture, the Chinese have been going to great lengths to become wealthy by stealing our Culture.  Can you believe they even have a Shanghai Disneyland Park?

Now that Crossfire Hurricane is over maybe the intelligence agencies can spend there time on more useful things.

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One great book that I think you'll enjoy is Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  It goes into the invention or evolution of the things around us and how we live today.   It is really an very exceptional book on the history of most everything we encounter in our homes and lifestyles.

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Source: nhc.noaa.gov

There is a 60% chance that the system up by North Carolina will develop into a cyclone in the next 48 hours.  It is expected to continue to the northeast though. 

Most days now there is something developing somewhere.  I think we are supposed to get 20 some names storms this year.  It was upgraded some the last time I saw the forecast.

Looks like the page view counter will hit 2.5 million later today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/16/17 Report - New 1715 Fleet Find By Crew of Capitana. Search For Lost Merchant. Attitudes Towards Historic Items and Artifacts.

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

Capitana Diver Grant Showing His Recent Find
Photo submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez

As you know, salvage season is in full swing.  The crew of the Capitana has been finding artifacts, including the scale weight shown in the photo above.

Congratulations Grant.  Great find!

And thanks to Capitana captain Jonah Martinez for sharing the great photos with us.

Bronze 4M or Marcos Scale Weight Found by Grant Photo submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez

I'll post more recent 1715 Fleet finds probably tomorrow.

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The crew of the Dare has been working 24/7 looking for the shipwreck code-named Lost Merchant.  After surveying about 220 nautical miles with both a magnetometer and side scan sonar.  A number of targets have been identified for further investigation.

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Three New Areas To Watch.
Soruce: nhc.noaa.gov

Hurricane Gert is now well north of us, but there is a parade of systems coming off of Africa.  It is too early to know if they will affect Florida.  I'll keep an eye on them.

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Never RememberSource: CNN News Video

This historic Confederate statue was torn down.  I wonder how far this will go.  Could there come a time when confederate or other historic artifacts from other times or movements be treated the same?  Is this a sign of things to come?  Could there come a time when the Washington Monument or other statues or monuments, or even dug artifacts, will be similarly regarded or erased from the landscape and history?

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/24/17 Report - Taking Another Look At An Old Find. History-Changing Archaeological Discovery. Search for Lost Merchant To Resume.

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

Old Find

Once in a while I go back and look through old junk finds.  Sometimes I put things aside without paying enough attention to them and I might have missed something interesting.   I'll mention one example of that later in this post.  Anyhow, I decided to look through some old items yesterday, and the item shown above was one of them.

It had some greenish corrosion.  That usually tells you the item is at least partly copper.  I cleaned a little of the corrosion off.

As you can see in the close-up photos above and below, there is some exposed copper.  The item is silver plated.  I probably acid tested the item originally, but I wasn't able to get such good photos back then.

The photo of the other side (below) clearly shows better where the plating wore off.

Other Side Same Medallion

When I put this religious medallion under the Celestron camera to take these photos, I also saw for the first time the word "ITALY."  You can almost see it at the dark spot on the left in the flat space beside the upper arm in this photo.

The ITALY mark is significant.  That tells you the item is not older than 1861 - the year when Italy was founded.

Although in this case, nothing significant showed up, it can be worth going back and looking at old finds.  Sometimes you will find something that you didn't notice before.  Maybe you have newer and better methods or technology or maybe you've learned something that will help you better analyze and appreciate your find.  Keeping good records will help too, although if you are like me, junk find will just be put aside.

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...After years of debate over the dating technology used on the mastodon, a group of researchers now believes that they can date it and the human tools to 130,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years earlier than the earliest humans are supposed to have made it to North America....

Interesting article.  Here is the link.

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/130000-year-old-mastodon-threatens-upend-human-history/

As you probably know, the Treasure Coast produced its own history-changing fossil.  If you aren't aware of that use the following link.

Check out the OVIASC web site by clicking here.

I've found mastodon fossils on a Treasure Coastbeach.  I also found one fossilbone  that appears to have be drilled and cut by man.

I showed that in an old post.  Here is that link.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2015/11/111115-report-fossil-artifact-and.html

Like the fellow that found the carved mastodon bone near Vero, I had that bone sitting around a long time before I noticed it was worked by human hands.

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Nine coins, a few ballast stones and another piece of silver were recently found on the Margarita site by the crew of the Sea Reaper.

The Dare will soon be replacing her mailboxes with search gear and going north to resume the search for the Lost Merchant.  Lost Merchant is a code name.

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There are now no tropical disturbances on the Atlantic map.

We are having a calm surf and some good low tides though.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/22/15 Report - WWII Bomb Found On Beach. Atocha Finds. Mitch King Video. Smooth Surf.

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

100-Pound WW II Photoflash Bomb 
Found On St. Pete Beach.

A 100-pound WW II photoflash bomb was found by a beach-goer on Sunday.  It was detonated by the bomb squad.

I think I see the Don Cesar Hotel in the background of the video linked below.  It has a long history.  It was opened in 1928 and members of high society played there including guests such as F. Scott Fitzgerald.  It was purchased by the U. S. Army in 1942.

Below is the link to the video about the bomb.

http://www.9news.com/video/4363574513001/1/World-War-II-Bomb-Washes-Up-On-Florida-Beach

Thanks to Doug for sending me that link.

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The crew of the JB Magruder uncovered a silver coin, musket ball, gunners dice, encrusted objects, a large barrel hoop fragment, two iron spikes and pottery. The Fisher organization believes that there is still at least $260 million dollars worth of treasure to be found on the Atocha site. 

The Dare searched over Lost Merchant 100 linear miles with side scan sonar and magnetometers in the search for the Lost Merchant.

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Here is a very nice video of Mitch King talking about metal detecting.

http://www.tcpalm.com/franchise/tcpalm-social/treasure-coast-metal-detectorists-looking-for-more-than-just-treasures_62822210

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The price of gold has been dropping.  Now it is down around $1100 an ounce.

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Treasure Coast Beach This Morning Near Low Tide.

Notice the same old flat beach created by the smooth surf we've been having for months.  That sand is very fine grain.

Sparkling Ocean.

I just happened to catch the sun reflecting off the water and thought it was neat.

There were good numbers of coins and junk jewelry this morning and a few better pieces.  Maybe with the price of gold going down more people will be buying gold again, but I doubt it.  I don't think the middle class feels good about the economy.

One thing about the smooth surf is that although nothing old is being uncovered, and that is more what this blog focuses on, recent items that are being lost in the water are not disappearing.  There are a lot of shallow coins that look like they haven't been out there very long.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/18/15 Report - 18K Dug Gold Ring. The Dare and Magruder. Newly Discovered Shipwreck.

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

Two Treasure Coast Beach Pictures From Friday Morning.

As you can see, only the smallest surf.  Beach detecting conditions remain very poor.  Nothing much except for modern recent drops.

18K White Band.

There are few targets.  This band was the first target I dug yesterday.  After walking about fifty yards using no discrimination, it was the first signal I got and the first target I dug.  Very often I would have moved on shortly after finding that and doing a little more checking around unless something promising popped up.  There are times to move on.  I only detected a very short time that day anyhow.

I could tell that other water hunters had worked the area not too long ago, and as I was on my way to the car another water hunters arrived and started working the same area.

Sometimes there isn't anything to discriminate.  I want to know when that is the case.  Not only does that mean that there is no need for discrimination, but it tells me something important when there is no junk in the area.  It can tell you something about detecting conditions and it might tell you if there have been other detectorists in the area and what they were doing.

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The Dare has begun to search the Lost Merchant area, and the Marguder finished up with Emerald City and will be working the Quicksands.

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Newly Disovered Wreck Off North Carolina.
Source of photo: link below.

Yesterday I posted a photo of an piece of an olive jar with handle that was found by Au Dreamers on the Cabin Wreck site.

Notice the jar with handle at the top right of this photo

Marine scientists from Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon discovered the wreck on July 12 during a research expedition aboard the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) research ship Atlantis...

Among the artifacts discovered amid the shipwreck’s broken remains are an iron chain, a pile of wooden ship timbers, red bricks (possibly from the ship cook’s hearth), glass bottles, an unglazed pottery jug, a metal compass, and another navigational instrument that might be an octant or sextant.

The wreck appears to date back to the late 18^th or early 19^th century, a time when a young United States was expanding its trade with the rest of the world by sea...

Here is the link for more of that story.

http://today.duke.edu/2015/07/shipwreck

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A couple days ago I posted some water hunting tips and tricks along with an illustration.  I wanted to follow up on that, but haven't done it yet.  When I get started on that, it might be pretty long.  Seems there is so much to talk about that I can't get it all in.  I'll pick up with that sometime soon.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/9/13 Report - Changing Seasons and Treasure Hunting Conditions, More on Shipping Detectors & More

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

14K and Diamond Treasure Coast Beach Find.

I was in Orlando yesterday and the number of cars from the north was amazing.  It seems very early for so many snowbirds.

I've also been seeing a lot of people on the Treasure Coast beaches lately.

The seasons are changing.  That affects beaches north of South Florida more than it affects the more protected beaches down south.

Of course as our water becomes rougher, the beaches should eventually offer some improved opportunities.

We didn't have much in the way of storms this summer, so hopefully the winter conditions will be an improvement for beach detecting.

The conditions up north, such as where the Lost Merchant search area is, has already become turbulent. The area where the Lost Merchant is being hunted is not protected by a barrier reef like the Atocha and Margarita sites down south.  As a result the Dare has returned to Key West and will join the hunt for the remaining 12 tons of silver bars, thousands of silver coins, bronze cannons and all the other treasure that remains from the wreck of the Atocha as well as the tens of thousands of coins still missing from the Santa Margarita.

While the Lost Merchant wasn't found this year, much of the search area was eliminated, so they should be much closer to finding her next year.

[Info received on these Fisher sites was received from the Fisher organization via email.]


A couple of days ago I talked about shipping detectors for repair.  You generally don't need to send the rod.

In a previous post I mentioned that sometimes you can save money by using a flat rate priority postage box.  That was the case when I shipped on detector half way across the country.  But sometimes, especially if you are not shipping very far, such as to another destination in Florida, regular priority mail can be much cheaper than a flat rate box.

A few days ago I had a detector packed in a flat rate box ready to send it for repairs.  I took it to the post office and asked what the cost of regular priority mail would be.  Since the package was just being shipped in Florida, I saved almost half by using regular priority rather than the flat rate box.  It was a good nearly half, so look into the alternatives before shipping.

One thing nice about priority mail is that you get some insurance free and also free tracking.




Learn more at SedwickCoins.com.


Karen is gone, but there is a new system coming off of Africa with a 30% chance becoming a cyclone.


Coastal erosion is threatening many Canadian archaeological sites.

Here is the link to read more about that.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/province-s-archaeological-sites-threatened-group-says-1.1894757


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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net