2/25/14 Report - Florida Coin Shooter's Dream Come True! Reader Of This Blog Finds 335 Silver Coins On One Small Lot!

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



Silver Coins Dug By One Reader At One Small Site.
Look at that parade of Walking Halves!
Photo rights reserved.

Finally!  I've been itching to tell you about this for months now.  Finally I can do it. Remember, you got it here first, right here on the Treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.

Back in April of 2014 a small run-down condemned bungalow built in Florida in the early 1900s was condemned and demolished. Old silver coins spilled out of the walls - 60 pounds of them. But that is not what I'm going to tell you about today.  I'm going to tell you about what happened when one of this blog's readers, who will remain anonymous, followed up on the story.

Here is what he had to say.

 

When I read the news of the hoard and the method it was discovered, I thought some of the silver coins might have made it into the ground.  I was cautiously optimistic, but when I heard that the demo work had occurred months before I thought surely the area had been scoured since it was an open secret amongst the city workers, as there were multiple workers on site when the coins were initially discovered.  I worked out a deal with the current owner to split my finds 50/50.  I found one coin in the first half hour (a 1906 Barber dime unrelated to the hoard) before finding a large concentration of coins.  In about 3 hours I found 125 silver coins, many of them halves.  In one expanding hole I found 30 silver coins!

Silver Coins Found First Day On The Site.
Photo rights reserved.

 

The search was made much more difficult because 6-8 inches of fill had been spread on top of the site after demolition.  Many of the coins were deep and gave marginal signals.  There was also a huge amount of trash.   After searching the area over eight visits using every method that I could muster, including different swing directions, different coils, trash removal, digging all questionable signals, searching after hard rain, and even blind digging in spots, I found thirty more coins after having 4-6 inches removed with a Bobcat (I have a family connection and how I wish I had access to that Bobcat all the time!).

Silver Coins Found Second Day On Site.
Photo rights reserved..

I searched carefully for buried jars, but no luck with further caches.

My total silver count for the site was 335 coins.

One other quick note.  A city worker who was on-site the day the coins were discovered during demolition said that their project manager was impatient and did not want to delay the demo job for long while the coins were collected.  They carefully picked up all they saw, but scoops of dirt and debris had already been loaded in the dumpster prior to discovery.  The worker pulled out a few handfuls of dirt…and found silver coins.  The site manager did not want to search that dirt so it was hauled to the dump!  After hearing this story, I made some effort to find out the exact location the debris was dumped but, since it occurred several months prior, the search was fruitless.  I guess silver coins are still being lost!

 

Congratulations!!  And thanks or sharing.  It is always good to see people do so well. 

 

Back when the project started the detectorist commented to me on how going back over the same ground in different ways was productive.

 

There are some good hints in that story.

 

In that number of coins, and they look to be in very nice condition, there have to be some good dates and maybe even some error coins.

 

I was invited to be in on the project from the beginning, but tried to give what advice and assistance I could via email.  I missed a lot of fun, but I'm happy about the outcome nonetheless.

 

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

 

 

12/2/10 Report - What a Difference a Day Makes - Sometimes.

Beach South of the Fort Pierce Inlet This Morning.


I stopped here yesterday morning and was surprised once again by how many coins you can find on some of the Treasure Coast beaches. There are so many detectorists out there and some of the beaches are detected to death, but other beaches evidently aren't hunted that much.

Yesterday I stopped by John Brooks to see what was going on because I got a report and wanted to see it for myself. When I got there I could see that conditions weren't good at all but detected for a little while anyhow. I think it's a good idea to test your ideas every once in a while, because sometimes you'll find something strange and other times you'll learn something new.

By the way the beach conditions at John Brooks deteriorated even more last night.

Anyhow, after spending just a little time there yesterday, I moved on, and on the way home decided to stop at the spot shown above. Some old finds were made there in the past (both shipwreck and WWII) and found what I would describe as a large (both wide and long) coin line.

You may remember some of my posts on coin lines from the past.

I wish I had my camera then, because it would have made a great illustration. Not only was the line easy to see from my holes, but you could also see my scan pattern because there weren't any other tracks in the sand. other than mine. You could clearly see my path and the holes that I dug. Maybe I'll try to draw an illustration of that when I find time.

I didn't want to detect long or hard since I strained my back a couple of day before and wanted to take it easy. Well, I ended up digging almost continuously for a little over an hour and almost all of them were deep enough that I had to take at least three or four scoops in packed wet sand. That wasn't exactly what the doctor ordered for the back, but I hate to leave a coin hole or coin line without cleaning it out. This time I probably left a few because I didn't want to push my back any more.

Speaking of testing your ideas - I found that this line was upside down. In most ways it was classic, but the quarters and nickels were at the top of the slope and the zinc pennies at the bottom of the slope. That is not typical. The zinc pennies were also buried deep - and the quarters were relatively shallow. That is also sort of unusual in my experience.

There was two layers of densely packed sand, the top more coarse and loose than the second, and then there was a third deeper layer of shells averaging about seven inches deep but varying to as much as twelve or more. Many targets seemed to be laying on the top of or near the layer of shells.

As much as I hate to leave a coin line or hole unfinished, I'm sure I left some items behind this time.

One reason to work out a coin line is that sometimes something more interesting pops up in between the coins.

One thing to take away from this is that there are places out there still holding a lot of modern coins even when conditions are not good for finding shipwreck coins on the treasure beaches.

Now the reason for the title of my post today. I went back to Fort Pierce today figuring that I would see how much I left yesterday. Well, there was several feet of new sand on top of the layers that I was working yesterday. There were still some quarters and nickels at the top of the slope near the dunes. I was surprised how much sand built up there last night though.

Sometimes good holes last only a few hours and sometimes the erosion and hunting conditions continues to improve at a specific spot for days or weeks.

Forecast and Conditions.

Even though conditions aren't good on most of the treasure beaches, there has been enough movement of sand to produce useful erosion in some places like the one I found yesterday.

By the way, did I mention that they are planning to renourish Indian River County beaches again very soon. That is the report that I got.

Right now, look for places where there are just to the south of any obstacles to the natural flow of sand, such as south of jetties, inlets, rocks, walls, etc.

Yesterday the beach at Fort Pierce was eroded almost all the way back to the sea oats. A few of the sea oats might have even been washed out too. Yesterday that beach provided a very good example of how you might find some decent hunting where there is simply some sort of obstacle to the flow of sand.

I would suspect you might be able to find some other spots like that out there somewhere.

The wind is now from the north/northeast and the high tides are still coming up nice and high. Seas will only be about f feet today and then decrease for a few days.

I'd then be looking for some nice low low tide areas.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net