8/7/18 Report - Diamond Ring Find. Important Bottle Dates. Good Links for Good Info.

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

Beach Find.

There are always good things to be found on the beach.  I've said this before, but there is always some place to hunt and something to find.  

I've been talking a lot about Spanish shipwreck treasure and other old finds lately, but the beaches are always being replenished with new items.  Here is one nice 14K gold and diamond ring find.  While I know very little about diamonds, this one seems to be cut very nicely.  There are a lot of facets and they seem to work very well together.

Not only is the central diamond nice, but the surrounding diamonds aren't bad either.

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I have three different threads going lately.  For a while I'll be on one, and then I'll jump to another.  I might be on one topic for a day or two or three and then change.  One of my recent topics has been how to determine the age of items.  My list of factors is general and can be applied to almost any type of find.  That, of course, includes bottles.

One type of mark you'll find on many bottles is “FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS SALE OR REUSE OF THIS BOTTLE.” This law went into effect in 1935 and was repealed on December 1, 1964.  So that gives you a fairly specific date range, although the mark can be found on bottles that were distributed later than that date.

Here are some other important dates that can help you determine the date of a metal detecting site.

• 1934: Colored labeling makes its soft-drink-bottle debut. In the original process, the coloring was baked on the bottle.
• 1952: The first diet soft drink—a ginger ale called "No-Cal Beverage" produced by Kirsch—was sold.
• 1957: Aluminum cans for soft drinks were introduced.

• 1959: The first diet cola was sold.
• 1962: The pull-ring tab was invented by Alcoa. It was first marketed by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 1963: In March, the "Pop Top" beer can, invented by Ermal Fraze of Kettering, Ohio, was introduced by the Schlitz Brewing Company.
• 1965: The resealable top was invented.
• 1970: Plastic bottles for soft drinks were introduced.
• 1974: The stay-on tab was introduced by the Falls City Brewing Company of Louisville, Kentucky.
• 1979: Mello Yello soft drink was introduced by The Coca-Cola Company as competition against Mountain Dew.
• Those and other dates can be found by using the following link, which will take you to a site about soda pop and other carbonated beverages.
• 
  
• https://www.thoughtco.com/introduction-to-soda-pop-1992433

Here is a link to a great web site for information about beer and soda bottles.  It will ask you a bunch of questions about your bottle to come up with a date range. It does requires some previous knowledge of bottle terminology.

http://www.sodasandbeers.com/SABDateGlassBottles.aspx

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Here is a nice little web site about the basics of archaeology.  It talks about a lot of the same type of stuff that I've been discussing lately such as the difficulty of evaluating artifacts.

Here is a brief excerpt.

After establishing all of the scientific data about an item, the archaeologist must begin to direct higher level questions at the object such as: who made it? Why? How was it used? Who used it?

Deductive reasoning rather than laboratory analysis better answers these questions. Once the archaeological eye leaves the university microscope, it quickly refocuses on scanning an overview of all of the hard, physical evidence in order to deduce answers to the philosophical questions. Here is where interpretation begins to become mistily subjective...

Here is the link if you want to read more.

http://www.archaeologyexpert.co.uk/ArchaeologicalInterpretation.html

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Time Travel.

There are no weather systems of special interest right now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/2/14 Report - Pre 1900 Beer Bottles Found On Treasure Coast. Bottle Research Links. When To Not Discriminate. Bertha Closer.

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


Pre 1900 Beer Bottle Find.

I've been doing a lot of detector tests lately and haven't mentioned other types of treasure much.  I did show some stone tools a few days ago, but that was the first for a long time.

Today I'll show a couple of 19th Century beer bottle finds.

The one shown to the left, as well as the one below, has an applied lip.  Both date to around the end of the 1800s.

The top arrow on this picture points to a seam where you can see the lip was applied. 

The middle arrow points to an elongated bubble in the glass (you can see it faintly in the photo), and the bottom arrow points to a vertical mold seam.

These things indicate a probable early date, but the bottom tells the story.

The bottom of the same bottle is shown below.

Notice the mold seams on the bottom.

It reads I. G. CO. L.  16.

That might not tell you much, but fortunately there are some very good sites that will help you find out what that means.

Here is a great web site on the marks used by bottle makers.

http://www.sha.org/bottle/makersmarks.htm

If you look up I. G. CO. L., you'll find that it indicates that the maker is the Ihmsen Glass Company Limited of Pittsburgh, PA




Bottom of Same Bottle.

Here is a small part of what the web site says.

The Pittsburgh directory listings show this company included the "Limited" in their name from 1878 to c.1896.

... Bottles bearing this mark can definitely be attributed to this company...

So we now have a good idea about when and where it was made.  The same web site has much more detailed information on the company. Like I said, a great web site about bottles!





The following beer bottle was also found on the Treasure Coast but was made by another company around the same time period.

This bottle is very much like the one above.  It has an applied lip and the same type of mold seams.  The biggest difference is the color and what is embossed on the bottom.

Another Pre-1900 Beer Bottle Find.

Bottom of Aqua Bottle.

The bottom of this one reads A B G CO. 8.

What do you think that means?

Anheuser Busch?

Nope.  It is Adolphus Busch Glass Co.

The date range would be 1886 to 1893.  

There you have two very similar beer bottles made around the same time that were found on the Treasure Coast.

You can explore the following web site for much more detailed information on this one too.

For the main page on bottles, use the following link.

http://www.sha.org/bottle

This is a great site, which I just added it to my reference link list. 


As I said yesterday, I used the Whites Surf PI Dual Field at the beach.   When I read the reviews on this detector, everybody says don't use it in the dry sand.  I have used it in the dry sand and used it in the dry sand some yesterday.

You know how I am about discrimination.  I preach against it.  I'm not saying that you should never use it, but it is used way too much. 

Some people run around using discrimination when there is nothing to discriminate.  Yesterday when I was in the wet sand - there was not a thing but coins, two rings and a fork.  There was no junk.  No pull tabs.  And no bottle tops in that wet sand.  That place is usually has tons of junk.  It wasn't there yesterday and I wouldn't have know the difference if I automatically used discrimination.  I wouldn't have found out that the beach conditions were different than normal there. 

At least start out without using discrimination.   You'll see what if anything there is to discriminate, and then you can decide if you need to discriminate.  And you'll have a better idea of what is or isn't  there. 

I use junk to tell me about beach conditions.  Junk can provide very useful information, and it can help you find where the good stuff is.

The PI Dual Field has no discrimination.   But don't decide to never use that detector in dry sand despite what everybody says.  Some beaches, even in the dry sand, don't have junk - at least not enough to worry about.   Some beaches have been cleaned up very well, but by using your PI you'll be able to detect the deeper items that others have missed. 

You'll never know where you do or don't need discrimination if you always run use it.  Don't assume that you always need it.  Check first.  You just might not need it.

One more thing.  You can learn to identify many targets by sound if you don't use discrimination all the time.   Like they say, "A brain is a terrible thing to waste."

NOAA Image.

Tropical storm Bertha is getting closer, but still looks like she'll stay far east of us.

On the Treasure Coast today the surf is up a little to around 2 or three feet.  It was higher in he evening yesterday.

I'd sure like to see some serious sand get moved.  There is so much of it to be moved.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net