1/30/18 Report - Big Tides and Super Blue Blood Moon Jan. 31. Tumbling Coins. An Excellent Beach Illustration.

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

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park Monday
Photo by Gaylen C.

Gaylen C. sent in these great photos of South Jetty Park.  They show the different zones of the beach and how different types of material get piled up in different areas.  The same thing happens with coins and other objects.  They are distributed according to density, shape and the force of water as it increases and decreases at different locations.

South Jetty Park Monday
Photo by Gaylen C.

Here is how Gaylen described it.

Went to check out Fort Pierce again. This was a completely different look as far as the beach went . Very wide low tide, there was a long trough running down the beach that was probably the first drop off under the waves yesterday. A long, wide band of shells ran near the waters edge. A couple of really big scalloped areas to the south, which started an increasing south to north flow in the trough as the tide started to come in. Lot's of debris, a couple of the black sandbags. The dunes had been cut back to vertical and 7-8 ft again at the north end near the jetty, but looked more filled in ,or collapsed, going south. saw one other detectorist in the north corner. I went first to the trough, then the shells at the waters edge. Sand was like quicksand along most of the ocean side of the trough. Really soft dark sand. 

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park Monday.
Photo by Gaylen C.

Thanks for sharing Gaylen.  Great photos.

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Nearly Antique Tumbler With Newly Cleaned Coins.

Above you see an old tumbler with a load of newly tumbled coins.  I don't know how long I've had that tumbler.

Be careful about the coins you tumble.  If a coin is encrusted or something so that you have no idea what it is, don't just throw it in the tumbler.  I once made the mistake of tumbling an old 1715 Fleet pendant that looked like an encrusted coin before it was tumbled.  Good idea to check the coins frequently too.  No use in over tumbling.  For clad you just want them clean enough to inspect and spend.  You don't want to tumble nice old coins or other objects.

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For the first time in 150 years you will have the chance to see a Super Blue Blood Moon on January 31.

...The last Blue Moon occurred in July 2015 and in 2018, we'll experience two of them, a phenomena that won't happen for another 19 years. The second Blue Moon is slated to occur in late March.

The Blood Moon occurs because the Earth is passing between the Moon and the Sun, which gives the Moon a reddish tint to it. It's caused by light bending around the Earth because of gravity passing around a portion of the atmosphere, more commonly known as a lunar eclipse.

A Blue Moon combined with a Supermoon (when the Moon is at its closest point to Earth and appears to be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than normal) the rare phenomena is called a Super Blue Blood Moon happens. Supermoons generally only occur once every 14 months and will not happen again until January 2019...
Here is the link for more information about that.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/01/29/super-blue-blood-moon-2018-what-when-and-where.html

Along with all of that, we are going to have some big high and low tides.  You can see the nice low tides that have already started in the photos today.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/2/18 Report - Meteorite or Meteor Wrong? Meteorite Worth $30,000. Very Good Chance of Beach Detecting Conditions Improving.

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

Treasure normally doesn't just fall out of the sky and hit you on the head. although I guess it theoretically could.  Every once in a while I get a question about meteorites.  I might have dug one up at some time, but if I did, I didn't know it. 

Florida isn't a great place for finding meteorites and I know nothing about them, but there is a fellow that hunts meteorites and gold nuggets on a regular basis, and he also visits the Treasure Coast to detect, so I was able to ask him when I recently got a question about a possible meteorite being found on a Florida beach.

First, here is the question and a couple photos of the unidentified item that I received from Joe D.


Hi, my name is Joe from Merritt Island.  Your website I great.  I look at it every day  I purchased a metal detector about a year ago.  I haven't found anything worth a lot of money but I really enjoy the time on the beach.  Last week I was north of Sebastian when I came across what I thought was a rock.  My detector was going off on it so I took it home.  I figured it was a EO so I broke it apart where there was       a crack.  There was nothing inside.  A couple of days later I started thinking it may be a meteorite  Has anyone seen something like this?  Thank you.

3.5 by 2.5 Inch Unidentified Object.

Find and photo by Joe D.

Same Object Opened.

The fellow I asked about the item is a super guy who uses the handle SuperRick.  I posted some of his finds before, including a meteorite that I showed in my 5/31/17 post.

Below is SuperRick's response concerning the above object.

It's hard to tell from the photo but I would say no. There is only one type of meteorite that looks like charcoal and that is a  carbonaceous chondrite! Those meteorites are extremely rare!
I went to Sutter Mills when that meteorite came in and have a very small piece of it.

Here is a photo of the one that I missed because someone was cutting the grass in a park that we stopped to hunt! That part of the meteorite was found by a school teacher that sold it for over $30,000.00 Here is a photo of it.

https://s17.postimg.org/btbg5yfsv/IMG_20120426_162854.jpg

I hope that this helps you out.  I would throw it away without sending a small sample to a university if you can find one that will look at it because when you say that you found it on the beach it's going to throw up a red flag!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutter%27s_Mill_meteorite

Thanks for the help Rick.  I'm sure it helped the person that asked the question  It also helped me, and I'm sure it helped many of the readers of my blog.  It is always good to know something about different types of treasures

Thanks much for your help.  I'm glad I have so many readers who are experienced and informed in a wide variety of types of treasure and are willing to help others.

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Continuing with my list of top ten most popular posts from 2017, number three on the list is the 4/27 post about the Cooper's Treasure TV show and the salvage lease process in the Bahamas.

You might remember the controversy caused by the TV show.  I don't know what happened to it.  They seemed to drop it.

The link for that post is immediately below.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2017/04/42717-report-more-on-coopers-treasure.html

The top two posts of the year actually made it into the top ten all time list.  That is especially surprising because they were posted late in the year.  In fact the number two post of the year was posted in December, less than a month ago.  It was the post about the find and return of the 1937 class ring of Fairleigh Dickinson Jr. that was recovered on a North Florida beach by Chris N.  The same post also showed a silver reale found on a Treasure Coast beach.

Below is that link.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2017/12/12617-report-ring-of-well-known-person.html

And finally, the # 1 post of the year, the 9/10 post about how the best conditions are not always caused by the strongest storms.  I talked about Irma and Jose.  The title of that post was For Metal Detecting You May Have Missed the Big Deal. More To Come.

Here is the link.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/search?q=missed+the+big+deal

I didn't think it would take so long to do the top ten.

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There is a lot going right.  The tides are big;  the surf is going to be something like 6 - 10 feet Tuesday; the wind turned Monday evening and should continue from the north through Tuesday.  That all goes together to suggest a very strong chance of improved beach hunting conditions 

Here are the surf predictions.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to check some beaches tomorrow, so I can show you what is happening.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/2/17 Report - Art Hartman's Anchor? Tools From the Age of Sail. Fid or Marlinspike. Difficulty of Identifying Some Finds. Big tides.

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

Recovered Rusted Remains of Anchor
Find and photo by Darrel S.

Darrel S. dug this anchor years ago.  One of the all-time top treasure salvage guys of the Treasure Coast got excited when he saw this anchor because he remembered the time when Art Hartman lost an anchor in the same area.

If you know much about Treasure Coast treasure salvage, you probably know something about Art Hartman (deceased Dec. 24, 2015, sorry to say).

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The dating game can be very difficult. I'm not talking about trying to meet a member of the opposite sex.  I don't know how you know what is the opposite sex any more.  According to what I've been hearing, there are a dozen or more other sexes.  You've probably heard about the LGBTXYZ... whatever.   Anyhow.  In the past things weren't thrown away like the are today.  Broken objects were repaired or the parts or materials were reused.  A tea kettle, or example, would be repaired time and time again, and then when it was beyond repair the copper would be used to make other things.  I saw pictures of finds from one old fort site that yielded at least twenty different types of items made from the copper from old kettles.  Items were repaired so many times and were used for such a long time that it could be especially difficult to put a date or age on the item.

I often remind people that old items are being lost everyday.  That is another thing that can be confounding.  I've found coins just after they were lost that were hundreds of years old.  People still wear or carry old stuff at times.

Deciding what a thing is can be difficult too.  Some things could be used for a variety of different purposes.  Just think about a rock.  It could be a building material, a weapon, a weight, a hammer.  How it was actually used, can be a difficult thing to determine.  And some items were used in more ways than one.

How about the item found on the Treasure Coast by Gayle C that I showed yesterday?  John L. thought it might be a fid.  That was one of my first thoughts.  It could certainly be a fid or something very similar.

Brian M. sent this photo of a similar item he once found at a land site.  His is a bit longer and thinner.  Note the eye at the one end of Brian's item.

Find by Brian M.

The fid was the traditional tool of the sailor from the dawn of sailing all the way into the beginning of the last century.  It was used to loosen and tighten knots.  It was used to separate the strands of rope for splicing.  The fid was used as a club and a temporary pull handle.  It was used to shape hand sewn grommets in sails and clothing.  After the knife, it was the sailors most important tool.  The fid was often a handmade affair and was sized according to the size rope that was being worked.  Wood, bone and antler being the predominant choices.  Its an easy tool to make for yourself and can be made from just about anything you have available.   This simple tool had a good long run and is still of use to those who work with traditional ropes and cordage.  As ships began to transition to mechanical power and rigging was replaced with wire cables, the fid fell out of favor.

That text is from the pirateking web site.  Here is the link.

http://www.thepirateking.com/historical/marlin_spikes.htm

It seems that some people use the terms "fid" and "marlinespike" interchangeably, but I think "fid" more often refers to an object made of wood and used to work with ropes, while "marlinespike" more often refers to a metal object which is used to work with wire cables.

Here is a description of a Marlinspike.

Below is a picture of a variety of pointed sail-making tools.

Variety of Sail Making Tools.

I lost the sources for the last two pictures.  If you know where they came from, let me know.  I'll post the sources as soon as I find them.

I once posted a similar find that I made (See following link.).  I thought it could be a fid or an awl.  Hard to tell.  There were a lot of good uses for pointed objects on sailing ships.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2016/08/81216-report-south-hutchinson-island.html

And here is the link to a very good web site that shows a wide variety of old sailing ship tools.

http://www.ageofsail.net/aosbt.asp

I think we have yesterday's mystery find narrowed down as well as we can.  Gaylen now has the job of cleaning and preserving his find.

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I can tolerate cold weather and snow when putting up Christmas decorations, but I find mosquitoes and fire ant bites especially annoying and something one shouldn't have to put up with at this time of year, but that is what I got.


We're getting close to a full moon and the tides are now big.  The surf will only be 2 - 3 feet though.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/12/17 Report - Ships' Fastenings: Spikes and Things. Atocha and Margarita Finds. Bigger Surf and Tides.

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

Source: See link below.

I recently talked a little about spikes. Spikes and other fasteners are among the more common shipwreck finds. If you know something about spikes and other fasteners used in shipwreck construction, it can help you identify the age and type of a ship.

The photo above, from the maritimearchaeology.com web site, shows a variety of types of fasteners for old wooden ships.

Besides the metal fasteners, treenails (wood pins) were also plentiful.

This is a good article which you might find very helpful.

http://www.maritimearchaeology.com/information/reference/fastenings/

They also describe roves and the details of how the fasteners were used.

If you find a piece of shipwreck wood, you will often see square and round holes as well as other interesting clues.

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A variety of finds were recently made on the Atocha and Margarita sites.  The Dare found an eight-foot timber length of timber, ballast stones, and what could be  silver rim to a platter.  The Sea Reaper found numerous pot shards, some EOs, sword blade fragments, lead sheathing, Research indicates a second Margarita site that was worked in the 17th century.

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Ships' Fastenings: From Sewn Boat to Steamship by Michael Mccarthy looks like an interesting book.  I previewed the chapter of carvels online and found it very useful.

Here is the link.

https://books.google.com/books?id=g273FGUNIFQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

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Somebody commented that I haven't been talking about hunting modern jewelry much lately.  That's true.  My posts tend to shift from one type of topic to another, but sometimes when I get on a topic, I tend to stay on it for a while as one thing just leads to another.  There are times when I get on the topic of how sand and items move, how detectors work, hunting strategies, bottles, coins, tokens etc. etc.  Sometimes it is because of what I've been finding or what I've been hunting or the research I'm doing or because of the comments or questions I've been receiving.  Sometimes I'll see or hear something that just sets me off on a topic for a while..  Sometimes I intend to talk about one thing and then something else just comes to mind.

No matter what I'm talking about there is a lot of overlap.  Old coins and jewelry move on the beach and in the water according to the same principles as modern coins and jewelry.

I sometimes talk about erosion when I talk about beach hunting, but many of the same principles apply when hunting the Mountains of West Virginia  In both locations erosion is something I look for.

I never know what my topics will be next week.  Sometimes I plan something and then I end up doing something else.  One thing I'm sure of is that my posts will change from time to time and I'll be doing some posts on jewelry hunting in the future.  It just haven't been doing much of it lately and it hasn't been on my mind.  That will change sooner or later.

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Today we'll have a three to five foot surf and big tides.  There will be some good high tides and negative tides.  I'm hoping to get  good negative tide to check out a washout where I spotted  vintae bottle yesterday.

Tomorrow and Saturday we're supposed to get a 5 -8 foot surf.  That is big enough to improve hunting conditions if other things are right.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/10/14 Report - Emerald City, Battle of Blair Mountain, Gem Stones, Vintage Costume Jewelry & Bigger Tides Today

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

Artifact From Battle of Blair Mountain
Source: See link below.

As you might know, investors in the Mel Fisher operations down in the Keys are allowed to go out and dive with the salvage crews.   Investors that were diving with the crew of the JB Magruder in an area called Emerald City recently found 8 emeralds. 

You might remember the emerald from the Treasure Coast that Captain Jonah recently showed us.


 Here is a good article about gem stones.  It talks about which gems are popular and how prices are determined.

http://www.gemselect.com/other-info/gemstone-prices.php

Vintage costume jewelry can bring surprisingly high prices, sometimes hundreds of dollars.  Unfortunately, like coins, vintage costume jewelry found on a beach  has often been there a while and is probably in poor condition.  

Here is a great web site for researching old costume jewelry.  It gives information on designers, makers marks, patents, etc.

http://www.illusionjewels.com/costumejewelrymarks.html#art


Here is an article on a dig at a Revolutionary War prison camp site. 

http://www.eveningsun.com/local/ci_26412077/eighteenth-century-artifacts-including-british-half-penny-found?source=rss


Some of you will consider this off-topic, however I thought it was interesting.  It seems that mysterious cell phone towers have been appearing and no one seems to know who they belong to.  Are they being built by criminal organizations to hack or obtain information or is a covert government operation?  No one seems to know.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/02/who-is-putting-up-interceptor-cell-towers-the-mystery-deepens/


Unless you are from West Virginia or are familiar with the history of labor relations, you might not know about the the Battle of Blair Mountain, which occurred near Charleston WV in 1921.   The Battle of Blair Mountain involved more than 10,000 men and was the country’s largest civil conflict besides the Civil War. Though the battle is little known outside of union and historian circles, it was a key moment for the American labor movement.

Detectorists helped to determine where the skirmishes actually took place by scanning the area for gun shells and artifacts.  Now the historic site is in danger of being destroyed by mining operations.

Here is an article about the second largest civil conflict in US history.

http://archive.archaeology.org/1201/features/blair_mountain_coal_activism_west_virginia.html


If you ever had the opportunity of detecting a battle site, you might have found that the artifacts really speak to you.  Things like buttons, bullets, or gun parts all seem to make you wonder how they got lost and what happened to the person that once used them.

The first time I had a chance to hunt a battle site it was like that.  I found my first military button there, my first gun flint, my first musket part, my first grape shot, and a few other firsts, however, each and everyone of them seemed to be accompanied by an image.  I thought about sailing ships, soldiers and sailors hundreds of miles from home landing on a strange island, and attempting to climb up a very steep embankment to reach the fortified canon emplacements while being shot at.  There was evidence of hand to hand combat on that steep cliff.   I thought those images were nothing more than my imagination, but could they have been something more.  I doubt it, but it sometimes felt like a faint ghostly reenactment materialized in the air.



Seems the weather is finally getting a little cooler.  It has been one hot and rainy summer on the Treasure Coast..

There is a little weather system over the Bahamas that is headed our way.  Doesn't look like it will cause the surf to increase much though.  Also a system crossing the Atlantic headed towards the West Indies.  That won't affect us this week.

The tides are nice a big now.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@Comcast.net

8/11/14 Report - Two-Box Detecting. Storing & Maintaining Finds. Metal Detecting ID Test. Fossil Sand Dollar. Super Moon Tides.

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

2-Box Detector

If you ever want to hunt aunt Mary's buried silver tea pot, cache, septic tank, or some other larger buried object, you could use a 2-box detector like the one shown here.

The top picture shows the two boxes in closed position for transport, along with the collapsible rod.

The bottom picture shows each of the two boxes, which would go on each end of the length of rod.

You would hold the rod in the middle slightly above ground and when you go over a buried object you will get a signal.

This is one I've used a few times.  One time was to locate a septic tank, which I quickly did.



The link to the story about the old house and silver coins wasn't working for a while yesterday.  I think it is now fixed.

 

Florida heat and humidity can be hard on all kinds of things.  If you like old things, keep them carefully protected. 

You probably already know that if you have iron objects, especially those that have spent time under salt water, they will fall apart unless they are carefully conserved and protected.  Take a look at the old canons in the park along US 1 in Fort Pierce.  They are seriously corroded and damaged.

But it isn't only iron.  If you have fire arms, especially nice old firearms, they have to be properly cared for and maintained.  It is best if they are kept in a humidity controlled environment.  Dehumidifiers are available for gun safes.  You don't want that antique gun to be damaged.

Papers and books do not do well in hot humid Florida environments either.  If you have old maps or books, they need to be kept out of bright sun-light.   Do not keep them in basements or garages either where they will get mold or mildew or in hot attics.  Bugs will also damage not only paper pages but will ruin nice old colorful book covers.  

Leather needs to be maintained too.  It will also mildew.

If you have HO model trains, for example, the band drives will melt in Florida heat.  Rubber parts on anything, including antique cars, will quickly deteriorate.

This is a tough place to keep old things nice.  It is easier in colder and less humid environments.

And one thing I've said before, don't keep finds made of different metals together.  Metals such as silver and pewter will discolor and corrode if they are stored touching other metals.  Silver seems especially vulnerable.  Don't just drop your finds in a box mixed together if you care about them.  It is best to store each item separately wrapped.

I have also found that the more information you store with finds the happier you will be when you dig them out in the future and wonder when and where they were found and what they are.  Don't depend upon your memory.  You might think now that you will remember, but in a few years you might wish you wrote it down.

As usual I'm speaking from experience and have learned most of these lessons the hard way.

If you have some items that you really like but aren't able or willing to maintain properly, you might think about selling them and sending them to a good home.  It can be real discouraging to find out that you let something old that you really liked get damaged by lack of care.

One more thing.  Keep valuable finds and items in a bank safe deposit box.

Here are three I objects I used in a little test.

I used the Ace 250 to detect these objects.

The knife was identified by the detector as iron.

The small vintage toy gun was identified as a penny.

The watch also was identified as iron.

These are the kinds of test that I recommend if you have any interest in detecting items like this.

Do you really want to pass over knives and watches?  That is a question you have to answer for yourself.

Here is a nice fossil sand dollar.  The matrix is still attached to the back.



I mentioned the unusually big tides yesterday.  Sunday was the closest full-moon of 2014.  If you check the tide charts you'll see how big the tides were.

Here is an article about the moon and tides.

http://news.yahoo.com/sundays-supermoon-full-moon-really-super-132856515.html?pt=BureoF3GVB

I'll be checking some beaches after the big tide.   If the water got up to any dunes, that might be interesting.  I don't know if it did.   I can think of one place that I'll check for sure.

The weather coming off of Africa that I mentioned yesterday still has a 10% chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours and is still far far away.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net