6/3/16 Report - Lost, Found and Returned Necklace by Warren D. Sacred Heart of Jesus. Problems Related To Antique Shipwreck Ceramics.

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

Necklace With Gold Coin Pendant
Find and photo by Warren D.

I received the following email from Warren D. yesterday.

Yesterday I was detecting the wet sand behind the a major hotel in Indialantic with my White's TDI pulse detector when a woman approached me and asked if I could help her and her husband. I said sure and she pointed up the beach to a neighboring hotel where a man in a orange shirt was scraping dry sand. I told her my name and asked what did they lose. She said a necklace with a gold charm on it. As we were walking there she said she took the necklace off and laid it on a beach chair and they forgot about it. When they left they just folded up the chairs and walked to the parking lot and put the chairs in the trunk of the car. I said I hear that happens a lot and it made me think this could be a little more complicated than I thought. I met with her husband and said I'll do a big box search and drag my foot and trace their steps to the staircase. I kept asking them if I was staying in the general area OK. After about an hour the woman followed me and I gave her a running commentary about targets and some were too deep to be a recent drops and the distance was about 60 yards from the chair spot to the steps.

I found a tungsten ring, a quarter and bottle caps and was moving kind of fast to cover the area and I sensed they were leaving soon and Susan said they were flying out that day. I said give me your contact info and if you want put it on Craig's list lost and found and someone may find it. Well she and her husband decided to go in to the hotel and prepare to check out and I continued hunting about another 15 to 20 minutes and I got a hit. It was about midway between the chair location and the stairs and I assume the charm/coin must have fell down on edge and didn't lay flat. Coming from a different direction my coil got a hit. I brought the White's TDI with the Sierra T-foot coil 18" by 5" because my plan was to do wet sand and go deep. But this was hunting for a shallow target but the size of my coil gave me good coverage.

I got it in one scoop, it was shallow maybe under a half inch of sand. All balled up the chain was very fine. Luckily it was hidden or it would have been a eyeball find for somebody. 

I pulled out my phone and their contact info and I said Susan, I got it come back to the beach. They came back out to the beach and they were holding hands. Her Husband Rocky tried to hand me a bunch of bills and I said no thanks, I like the challenge. I said have a good vacation now and I bet you lost a lot of sleep last night. 

They're back home now and they just sent me these pics. The charm or coin is a Gold coin, $10 or $20 piece.

Warren D.

As you and I know, that kind of thing happens all of the time.  Tourists or locals lose things and get them back because of a friendly detectorist.

Thanks for sharing Warren.  I'd like to tell more of these types of stories.

You might remember how Warren returned a fine ring back a while.

Notice that he found another ring while searching for the necklace.  That happens a lot.  You look for one thing and find something else.  Things are lost where things are lost.  One is a good sign that there could be another.

If a coin is on edge, it will often give a much less of a signal when you sweep over it in one direction than if you sweep over it another direction.  Try it out for yourself with your own detector.

Stick a coin in the ground and sweep over it one direction and then at a 90 degree angle and notice the difference in the signal.  The difference when using some pulse detectors might not be as great, but you should experiment so you learn exactly how your detector responds to a coin like that.

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In some old posts I posted information about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, including information relating to heart-shaped reales.   Laura Strolia did a great article on the heart-shaped reales that I posted in my Nov. 8, 2015 post.  You can find other posts mentioning the subject in this blog too.

June is the month of the year that the Catholic Church dedicates to Sacred Heart of Jesus. But just what does a devotion to the Sacred Heart mean? Here is one article on the subject.

http://epicpew.com/8-facts-sacred-heart/

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Here is a good article on some problems relating to antique ceramics found on shipwrecks.  It provides a few helpful reminders for dating shipwrecks as well.

Here is one excerpt.

Let us take for example, the small models of boys portrayed wearing blue aprons and seated with arms and legs outstretched. A number of these were recovered from the Nanking Cargo (1752). This fitted the dating theory well, as the group had always been attributed to the mid 18th century. The same figures appear also to have been found on an unpublished wreck from about 1730 – 1740. By comparing them closely, it can be seen that the 1730 – 1740 figures do indeed relate to those on the 1752 Nanking Cargo.

When similar models were discovered on the Tek Sing (1822) it was assumed by some that they were mid-18th century “antiques” on board a 19th century ship. However , after closer study, slight differences were found in the large group of 1822 Tek Sing figures. They are not “antiques” at all, but simply later examples of an enduringly popular model.

Here is the link.

http://orientalceramics.com/index.php/shipwreck-ceramics/

The pictures do not seem to show up on the site.  Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of the article.

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Expect a good flat surf through the weekend.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/24/15 Report - Surf Decreasing and Beach Conditions Rating Dropped. More On Returned Ring. Conquest of Mexico.

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

Ring, Charm and Coins Found by Warren D.
Photo by Warren.

I awarded Warren Dennison the TBR Detectorist of the Month Award in yesterday's post.  I wanted to follow up on that a little today.  There were a few things I wanted to emphasize.

After eight hunts, Warren found the ring "at low tide, low on the slope on the wet sand after following a trail of old coins..." He also found a piece of a charm.  It is not unusual to find coin lines low on the slope in the wet sand.

I talk about finding coin lines not so much because I want to find the coins, but because they can lead to other things, such as rings.  This is a good example.

It is good for all of us when someone does a good deed like Dennis did.  It happens more often than we hear, so I wanted to thank Dennis for telling us about it.

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I am going to drop my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Rating back to a 1.  That is a difficult call for me because conditions for finding old shipwreck items are still better than they were a couple of weeks ago and all summer.  It hasn't been a definite reversal with the beaches all filling in.  Still I am predicting that fewer cobs will be found now than earlier in the week, and it won't be as easy to find those few that remain.

Of course my ratings are based upon my best evidence.  There is a lot of guess work involved.  It isn't like getting on a scale and reading your weight.  Still, from all of the corroborating evidence that I've been able to gather over the years, including the results of the polls that I've conducted in the past as well as reports from other people, I'm convinced that my ratings have been fairly accurate.

As I've explained in the past, my five point scale starts with a 1 instead of a zero, because there is always some chance.    I'm willing to bet that a few more cobs will be found this weekend, but I'll also bet that it won't be as easy now.  There probably will be more people out this weekend.

For the most part, I would not expect the good holes to be getting replenished now.  Some beaches are filling a little, but that is not the only factor.  Another factor is that the easy finds have mostly been made.  One way you can improve your chances is to get away from the beach accesses and the most heavily hunted areas.  You might have to walk a mile or two.   '

For one example, if you walk south from Turtle Trail, you'll come to one flag pole, but if you keep walking, you'll come to a second flag pole.  After reaching the second flag pole, look way down towards the bend where you will see one tall palm tree with a small top sticking up above the others. You could try detecting the area down by the palm tree.  I'm not saying to do that now, because it has been checked now, but that is the type of area that will normally not be one of the most heavily detected.

There are a few ways that new coins can pop up in old hunted-out holes.  One is when someone comes along and does a better job of detecting.  Another is when just an inch or so of sand is move off the hole  in one direction or another.  It doesn't take a lot of sand being moved for a borderline detectable coin to be brought within range for a person that is detecting carefully.

Coins that were previously masked by something like perhaps a heavy streak of black sand can be more easily detected when the black sand is moved.

The thing to realize is that coins can show up in old worked-out holes after you might think they have all been removed.

And of course, when conditions are right, old holes can be replenished again and again and again.

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Several days ago I posted a link to an article about a Spanish convoy that was destroyed.  Larry G. sent me the following email recommending a couple books about the conquest of Mexico.  Here is what Larry said.

If you haven't read it yet, I must recommend to you the books, conquest of Mexico, and conquest of Peru, by William H. Prescott. The remains from the slaughter of the Spanish convoy that is being excavated now is documented on p.498, though no mention is made of the Spanish women. The place was Tezcuco, which translates as "Place of Rest." Reportedly, the Tezcucans skinned the Spaniards and hung the skins, along with their accouterments, in their temple, but that the bulk of the loot, which included looted treasure, was sent on to the Aztec emperor.

By the way, the sacrifice of Spanish captives (as with all battle captives), and the eating of them, was something the Spanish would become very familiar with before the conquest was completed. The Spanish convoy above were certainly not the only Spaniards so treated, they are the exception only in that they were utterly destroyed,  the only Spanish force I can think of during the conquest that was annihilated.

When Cortes returned to the city, he made it his headquarters for the conquest of the capital and the heavily populated valley with numbers of large cities. Tezcuco itself was a very large and beautiful city, Mexico being a heavily populated land at that time, with thriving markets, trade, and industry, highly organized, with large police forces to keep the peace in the major cities. The Mexicans were especially fond of flowers, and the cultivation, sale and display of flowers was big business. The Aztecs maintained large parks, and gardens in their cities and their suburbs. The Spaniards were astonished by the beauty of the urban and suburban areas, of course with the grand architecture of the great temples dominating the scenes. Sadly, much of this was destroyed in the conquest,the lakes were drained. forests felled,  and salt leaching destroyed the soil and the great expanses of cultivated land in Mexico valley became wastelands. Populations dwindled to a fraction of their former number, right up until the 20th century.

The books give pretty precise information as to the location of battlefields around Tezcuco, and it would be very interesting to metal detect  and generally poke around those locations.

Thanks Larry.

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Like I said, I don't expect the hunting to be as good this weekend as earlier in the week, yet I do expect a few cobs to be found.  The surf will be decreasing throughout the week.  That means the cliffs won't be eroding much more, but on the positive side of things, it might give you a chance to detect a little farther out on the beach than you could before.

The really good news is that the beaches haven't completely refilled yet.  In fact they've only refilled a small amount.  Hopefully they won't completely refill before the next period of erosion comes along.  And if we are really lucky, the level of sand will remain down all through the winter.  We had such a long period of accretion, now maybe we'll get a long period of decreasing sand levels.  It could happen.  At least we can hope.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net