3/7/19 Report - Some Sand Moved By Yesterday's Front. Huge Historic Hoards. Big Artifact Database.

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

John Brooks Beach Today Near Low Tide.

I didn't get out to look at the beaches yesterday, but I did today.

The cold front moved a little sand.  At John Brooks there was a little erosion in front of the old bigger cut.

John Brooks Beach Thursday Near Low Tide.

There were a couple detectorists at John Brooks today.

There were lots of people down by the water in Fort Pierce.  It was an absolutely beautiful day.

Another View of John Brooks Beach Today.

Frederick Douglas Beach Thursday Near Low Tide.

The sand was not firm until you got close to the water line.

Frederick Douglas Beach Near Low Tide Thursday.

There was one detectorist in south of Frederick Douglas.

Fort Pierce South Jetty Beach Thursday Near Low Tide.

There were no parking spaces at Fort Pierce South Jetty.  The snow birds are in town.

They also had some heavy equipment and large rocks at the nest entrance to the south.  I don't know what they are getting ready to do now.

I didn't get to any other beaches so have no idea what the cold front did to any of those beaches.

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Location of One Hoard Discovery.

Source: See the GovMint.com link below.

I found an article on the GovMint.com web site that summarizes seventeen hoards that were discovered from around the mid nineteenth century up until near the present.  These are large hoards and are probably not representative of the average hoard, if there is such a thing. Some of them are huge.  None of these hoards were discovered by a metal detector.  Most were discovered before metal detectors were used.

I went through the summaries and tried to see what I could learn from that.  The areticle doesn't provide a lot of detailed information, so it would require more research on each hoard to do a thorough study.

The hoards were large.  One consisted of six tons of bullion and 100,000 coins.  Another was 600,000 coins, and another was 100,000 coins.   One was wooden boxes full of coins.  Some were in kegs or bags.

Two were associated with railroad stations.  One of those was under a loading dock. One was in a specially constructed underground vault.  Two or three were in old bank vaults. Some were in basements.  One was dug up in a farm field.  The Saddle Ridge Hoard, as you know, was exposed by erosion.

You might want to visit the web site and do more research.

Here is the link.

https://www.govmint.com/coin-authority/post/discovered-buried-treasure/

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I received this email from Scott S.

Not sure if you have seen this database on artifacts, but here you go. I use it sometimes to try to identify a mystery object or just to see other finds from our friends across the ocean. Takes a little time to go thru all they have but its pretty helpful. Just thinking you might enjoy.

https://finds.org.uk/database

This is a super database published by the Portable Antiquities Scheme.  I think I mentioned it some years ago and I thought I put it in my reference list, but I couldn't find it there, so I I just added it along with the manual for cataloging buttons that I mentioned a few days ago.

Thanks Scott!

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It looks like we'll have a two or three foot surf for a few days.  The tides are moderate.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/24/18 Report - Diving Great Lakes Shipwrecks. Useful Artifact Database. Increased Surf Next Week.

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

Occasionally I get an email asking if a find might be a meteorite.  That is something I don't know much about.  Fortunately I know a person that hunts meteorites and can give some good information on the subject.  I'm talking about SuperRick

SuperRick recently sent me a link to a web site that has a good finds database including everything from coins and buttons to clay pipes and pottery.  You might find it helpful.

http://www.glevumdetecting.co.uk/

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Below you'll find a story by Steve in Sebastian about shipwreck diving in the Great Lakes.  I put the title on the article.  The rest is by Steve.

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Making Memories Diving Shipwrecks 160 Feet Down In The Great Lakes

My friend Ken is over in England on a Metal Detecting Holiday. He has found some wonderful old Roman hammered coins already.

But I also reminded him that no matter how good he was... no matter how fertile the ground under his feet... that he would never, ever beat my oldest coin that I found! My 200-400 BC Roman Silver Denarius! Ok...I cheated a bit...it was rolling by inside a cuff link...definitely adding to my ability to spot it. Otherwise on its own... probably too tiny to spot in the dull gray silver color. Unless the tiny coin had the glint of gold! You get an eye for the glint of gold down there, in your very bright lights. You see the "little guys" the $1 U.S. Gold Pieces... tumble on past you! Then you have to turn around, and go chase them down... most of the time you find them!!!

Better yet I reminded him that I got my Denarius coin --with my naked eye- in 160 feet of water, as I laid on the deck of a passenger and freight steamship from 1865, up in the Great Lakes...watching a 2 foot deep vertical cut wall of debris, breaking up for the 1st time in over a century, in a cloud of rotting, organic detritus that swirled on by me...as I fanned the leading edge of the pile. My light held up high in my left hand, angled down on the debris pile, and a modified ping pong paddle fanning the leading edge of the pile in the right hand.

It took many years, more correctly decades, to have the intestinal fortitude to hit the deep in 160 feet of water...in total darkness, and sometimes 38-40 degree water, bleed the air out of your dry suit, and "settle in heavy" on the deck. Literally laying out on the deck, resting on your knees and your fins flat on the deck, to hold position. And do this for 20 minutes, but with the decompression needed to arrive on the surface without the bends, stops were required at 20 and then 10 feet, having a total dive time of 52 minutes. Then 4 hours out to bleed off some nitrogen, relax, warm up, eat lunch, and then back down for the afternoon dive of 15 minutes, with the same 52 minute profile. Day after day after day...weather permitting. When the wind blew and the waves rose...you did shopping, laundry, and maintenance on a huge amount of diving equipment

Honest, hard, dirty, grueling work... NOTHING IS FOR FREE....that is what made a professional salvage diver different than a sport diver who just swam around "sight seeing" and looking over the ship.

I did this for over 30 years in 4 of the 5 Great Lakes on over 100 different shipwrecks of all types. My diving in Central and South America, and the Philippines we'll talk about another time... if The "Boss" here so wishes.

I recall one year when I got up there awful early in the beginning of June, and the water was just a few degrees above freezing, 20 miles offshore. June is summer, right??? I had the finest of regulators made for the cold and deep water, but they would still freeze up by the time I hit the deck in 160 feet. So do I sit around down there waiting to see what my regulator was going to do, or do I get down to work? __Time was as precious as the gold I sought__. You were always careful to never take a breath while adding air to your suit. We all know the physics of how air cools or freezes as pressure is released. But even with the best of care, on very cold water days...I would hit the deck with a very slow but steady free flow...just a "blub, blub, blub...about 1 "blub" every 5 seconds. But the -next- breath would be... twice as fast... and on and on. Within 30 seconds you would have had a totally -life threatening- massive free flow, the air roaring out your regulator, quickly emptying your tank!!!

So there I am... setting up to start my work, and first... I had to switch out my regulator for my "pony tank" regulator! Yup...on the deck at 160 feet, I would pull the regulator out of my mouth, and replace it with my spare. Just another day on the job! But the little "pony tank" (for emergencies) held only 12 cubic feet of air. Only a few minutes at that depth. But never the less... I got down to work in the swirling mud, using the pony tank, wait a couple minutes for the main regulator to defrost, and then stop my fanning, and put the main regulator back into my mouth!!!

Sounds insane...almost to me after all these years later...but it was just what you --needed to do--. Period. There was no alternative. And so you did....

Once while down on the deck at 160' with very cold water, I felt a ball of ice in my mouth. I thought..."Oh boy, this ain't good" the regulator shot me out a lump of ice from in its frozen 1st stage. One mistake and I will gag on the ice chunk that I could feel was way bigger than a pea, almost a marble size.

So I stopped what I was doing, and very carefully worked the ice ball around in my mouth, to the exact point I thought I could best swallow it. (Kind of like when you need to swallow a big medicine pill). It had to go, and evidently the cold air passing by was not melting it! I knew if I failed at swallowing the ice chunk, I would involuntarily -Gag- and -Gasp- and Spit out my Regulator!!! This was no laughing matter!!! This could be easily...life or death at that depth.

So when I had it just perfect in my mouth, I gulped it down. All went well, and man...was I ever relieved! But when I got up on deck after the dive... I came to realize that it was not ice, --but that I had bit off one of the two "tangs" inside the regulator mouth piece that you bite down on--!!! So far worse than ice... I swallowed down a big lump of rough ripped off rubber!!! Another of my "nine lives" gone!!!

Stay warm in your beds....it's a lot safer there... but you will surely die of boredom. Live...take risks...calculated risks, enjoy life, take the trip you think is a little risky, or that you cannot afford to.... and know this...you will never, ever look back on your life and say..."Oh, I wish I had not taken this vacation or that adventure." •You will love and cherish each and every memory•. Because when you are old... those memories might be all you have to sustain you. God Bless.

Steve in Sebastian

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An increase in the surf is predicted for next week.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/1/15 Report - Five Ways Coins Move On A Beach. Leather Adornment & The Round Mystery Item. Plant Clues. Artifact Database.

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

New Picture Of GoldNugget's Mystery Item.
Back Side.

I thought I'd list the ways that I've seen coins move on a beach.

1. Fall out of an eroding cliff, cut or dune.
2. Slide down the face of a cliff or dune.
3. Move within a rush of water.
4. Roll down a slope.
5. Flip,

I don't know if that is all the possible ways, but it seems like it must be close to it.

I've seen a cob and other coins fall out of an eroding cliff right in front of me as I detected. They fell out of the cliff and stayed on the flat sand in front of the cut or cliff until a strong enough rush of water came to move them again.

I've also detected cobs and other coins on the face of sloped dunes and cuts,  I've seen them, some times on a slab of sand, sliding down the face of the slope.  They'll often slide a little at a time.

Coins that are moved by a wave or rush of water on the beach are sometimes easy to track and sometimes difficult to track.  Coins that move with a relatively small rush of water and only move a few inches, can be seen as they move.  They remain flat while moving.  However those that are moved by a more forceful rush of water, can't normally be seen as they move point a to point b.   I don't know exactly how they move, but one second they will be at one spot and the next second they will be found again a foot or even several feet away, often getting covered by sand, and not always quickly found again.

The direction of coins moved by rushing water on the beach can be either up the slope, down the slope or sideways or a combination.

I've tracked coins moving with rushing water on a beach many times.  I don't know if they stay flat, flip or what while in the rushing water.   I sometimes throw coins down just to see how the water moves them.

I've also watched coins roll down the slope, sometimes all the way back into the water.  Rings also do that sometimes.

I've also seen coins flip.  To me that is one of the more interesting ways that coins move.

I've seen coins flip up onto the flat berm just behind a cut.  That one is surprising, but I've seen it happen a few times when a wave hits the front of the cut.

I've also seen coins flip down the slope as water rushed over top of the coin.  I don't exactly know what the situation has to be for a coin to flip that way.  I guess I'll have to do some experiments.

Coins might also step down a slope like other larger items.  I've written about that before, but have never seen it in action with coins.

Coins moved in rushing water could possibly be flipping, or maybe just sliding along.  I don't know.

More often than not, coins move down the slope and towards the water, but not always.  I'd say the net effect is down.

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The really great thing about having an unsolved puzzle is that the longer it remains unsolved the more you learn.  At least that is the case if it arouses your curiosity enough to stay on the problem.



As a result of looking into  GoldNugget's round mystery item, I've learned a lot and hope you have too.

GoldNugget sent me another email with this additional information.

It is completely flat on the front and back. The back has the same design as the front, On the back each Ray show a pattern of dots from the Cross in the circle to the end of each Ray, On the front I do not see the dots.

I think the small differences in observed pattern on the front and back might be due to corrosion.

As far as the front and back showing the same design and being flat, that completely changes my feelings.

Above is an example of a bridle rosette.  Notice the bar for attachment on the back.  That is lacking on the item under consideration.  There would also be no reason for the same design to be on the back of a rosette.  The new information helps a lot.

One of the things I found out is that at one time bridle rosettes often featured a design that looked like a rose, some very realistic, so the name makes sense.

Even though it now appears the item may not be horse related, I'm glad that I learned more about horse adornment while doing the research.  That information will undoubtedly be useful at some time in the future.

I have found some horse related items, including crotal bells, horse shoes, etc.  That is not uncommon from older sites.  Now I'll be better prepared to identify other items such as those shown immediately below.

Source: http://ilaria.veltri.tripod.com/overviewbards.html

Always look for the slightest sign that something might have broken off of a find.  It is not uncommon to eventually discover where a pin, eyelet, or something was at one time attached but broke off.  Corrosion can wear off  remaining stubs or any remaining signs of broken parts, making identification very difficult.  Cleaning and close inspection, including magnification, will sometimes reveal small marks or clues.

While doing the research, I found a really great paper with the title A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF 17TH- AND 18TH-CENTURY LEATHER ORNAMENTS FROM MARYLAND.  

Here is one paragraph from that paper to give you the idea.  

Leather ornaments are decorative metal items with two or more tines on the back that are designed to pierce and then fold around leather to hold the ornaments in place. These artifacts are found on sites across Maryland, but they generally do not occur in large quantities on any one site, and they have received little attention from archeologists. As a result, leather ornaments are often misidentified, and even if they are properly identified, a lack of consistent terminology in catalogs makes it difficult to study them. Leather ornaments might have appeared on personal items such as pouches, belts, firearm slings, and sword straps, but their use on clothing became unpopular by the early 16th century (Egan 2005), so it is likely that most examples found in Maryland represent fittings for riding and harness horses.

Here is the link if you want to read more.

http://www.jefpat.org/Documents/Rivers%20Cofield%20Article.pdf

And that paper led me to the Maryland Database of Diagnostic Artifacts, which you might want to look at.

http://www.jefpat.org/diagnostic/index.htm

It is a small database, but you might enjoy it or find it useful.

Well, the additional information we obtained helped rule out some ideas and I don't know that I can say what it is with 100% certainty yet, but I learned a lot in the process.  Thanks much to all contributors.  Your contributions help me create better posts.

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Native Americans and European settlers planted certain types of plants and removed others.  If you know the plants of an area, that might help you identify old sites.

A new study by University at Buffalo geographers explores how humans altered the arboreal make-up of Western New York forests before European settlers arrived in large numbers.

The research looked at land survey data from around 1799-1814, and used this information to model which tree species were present in different areas of Chautauqua County, New York, at that time.

The analysis placed hickory, chestnut and oak trees in larger-than-expected numbers near the historical sites of Native American villages...

Here is the link to read more of that study.

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2015/05/048.html

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/17/14 Report - Shipwreck Gold Nuggets, Gold Nuggets In General & Black Sails

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

1.5 Centimeter Long Gold Beach Nugget

Yesterday I posted a gold nugget that was found on the Treasure Coast near a 1715 wreck site.  Here is a better picture.  It is just over 1.5 centimeters long, and is fairly thin.  It could easily be missed by a detector.

The quartz and pyrite could throw you off a little if you just saw the nugget and weren't very familiar with gold nuggets.

As you can see, it is not an alluvial nugget.  Nuggets from streams etc. tend to get smoothed out.  This one is very rough.

In the picture above, you can see the quartz in the depressions on this side.  The other side of the nugget has even more quartz.  There are a few spots of pyrite too.

I looked through the Mel Fisher artifact database (http://www.melfisherartifacts.com) and found pictures of gold nuggets that were found on the Atocha and Margarita wreck sites but none from the 1715 wrecks.  It does not seem that the database is very comprehensive though, and I get the feeling it hasn't been updated for years.

But maybe it was simply dropped by a school kid carrying around part of his dad's collection.  You never know where things come from when they are found on a beach.

Most of the nuggets in the Fisher database are smoothed out, obviously alluvial, but below are a couple rougher ones shown in the database.  The last one shows some quartz and pyrite.

Nugget Shown in Mel Fisher Artifact Database
http://www.melfisherartifacts.com/

The nugget showing heavy quartz and pyrite is from
http://www.goldrushnuggets.com.

Nugget Showing Heavy Quartz and Pyrite 

The goldrushnuggets web site is a very nice web site that you might want to look at.

They sell nuggets but also have provide a number of helpful and interesting articles.

One of the the articles on that web site was about how to identify fake gold nuggets.  Like anything of value, they are faked.  Here is that link.

Here is the link.

http://www.goldrushnuggets.com/howtoidfagon.html

Nugget Shown in Mel Fisher Artifact Database
http://www.melfisherartifacts.com/

I
















All of the relevant tests have been done on this nugget now.

Someone asked about the purity of gold placer nuggets on the following site.

https://www.kitcomm.com/showthread.php?t=69103

If you look through that discussion you'll see this response by Old Miner that reads as follows.

All placer gold (gold nuggets) varies in fineness, in my local area it usually runs 87% gold, 11% silver, 1% copper and 1% other. Plus or minus a couple percent. This combination makes for a pretty color of gold. A hundred miles away another area I mined ran 57% gold 9% silver and a lot of copper, and the nuggets were pretty ugly. A friend has claims that he says average the low 90's fineness and the gold does look very good. The fineness is usually pretty stable by local area, but can vary between 50% and 90+% gold over the world. That does not include the quarts or other rock that may be in the nugget, we just call that smelt loss or character depending on who is buying.




If you have the Starz channels on Comcast, you can watch Black Sails, a program that chronicles pirate life in the Carribbean.

You can watch it online here.

http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/watch/Black-Sails/5911369482906607112/full-episodes?cmpid=FCST_hero_tv#episode=5650591923249177112


On the Treasure Coast it looks like we'll have one more day of very small surf and then a possible increase up to four to six feet.

We still have a south wind this afternoon.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net