7/11/16 Report - Local Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions and Photos. 19 Amphoras of Coins Found in Spain by Construction Crew.

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

Small Part of Hoard Found in Spain.
Source: See link immediately below.

Construction workers laying pipes in a park in southern Spain have unearthed a 600kg trove of Roman coins.

The bronze coins dating from the late 4th Century were found inside 19 Roman amphoras, a type of jar.

Here is the link.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36172538


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I went out to the beach this morning to do a little detecting.  I was surprised by how few people were at the beach this morning.  I've seldom seen fewer at this beach.  Of course, it was early and I would guess beach goers would be showing up later.

Another View of the Beach This Morning.

As you can see, it was near low tide.  The beach front was built up.  Beach conditions were poor.

With all of this small surf we've been having, sand and not much else, not even anything other than small shells, has been washing up onto the beach front.

The shallow water was also very sandy.  There was a little bit of a dip in front of the beach, but hardly any at all.  Even the dip was shallow and had a lot of fine sand in it.  It was very sandy and shallow for many yards out.

The entire beach had very few targets, including the dry sand, which had been well detected.  Although targets were very few, there were some good ones, which were deep and difficult to recover.

Wet Sand Area This Morning.

This sand is fine and very packed.  You can see the ripples in the photo above.  There was also some black sand there. Getting maximum depth required some adjusting. 

There were some targets in the dip where sand was accumulating at the water line.  Targets were difficult to recover there.  The silty sand made deep targets very difficult to recover.  I left a couple.

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Close-up Of Small Piece of Coral Found This Morning.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/23/15 Report - How Did The Escudos End Up Where They Were Found. A Few Thoughts. Tropical Storm Danny.

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

One of the Cobs Recently Found By the Captiana Crew.

Just a picture of one of the escudos on display at the press release Thursday.

The press release was at Captain Hiram's Resort in Sebastian.   The 1715 Fleet Queens Jewels guys talked about their recent finds and their experiences. There were a lot of TV cameras.  You probably saw clips from the release on the local news.  I heard one video clip from the release on the radio Friday morning when I was in the car.

There are some guys in the metal detecting community that try to make it all about themselves.  For them it is all me, me, me.   That is how they sound.   You know the type.   The P. T. Barnums of metal detecting.  Those are the same guys that have to resort to dirty tricks to sabotage other detectorists.  Unfortunately we have some of those.

That is the exact opposite of what I saw at the press release Thursday.  The Capitana guys are treasure rock stars, but they don't act like it.  They are some of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

There was no arrogance.  No bragging.  There was no, We were successful because we were smarter and better than everybody else.  They told their stories with humility.  I wouldn't mind if all treasure hunters and detectorists were like them.  It would do us good.  Those are the kind of guys that you like to root for.  I know they'd be rooting for you too.

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I've shown a lot of treasure in the last few days.  I showed gold cobs of different sizes and types, and I showed a video of the guys finding those gold cobs.

There is a lot to take in and think about.  It is time to play Sherlock Holmes.  Let's see if there is anything we can learn.

Let's start with the cobs.  What did you notice?  One thing I noticed is the remarkable lack of scratches or other damage.  I didn't inspect the escudos carefully when I did get to see some in person.  Mostly I've seen photos, and that just isn't the same.

Gold is a relatively soft metal.  It can be easily scratched, yet the escudos seem to show very little damage of any kind.  Not even many scratches.

From the video we can see they were found among rocks, and they were found near shore where the breakers crash. You might think that combination would bang them up.  But you don't see much of that.

If you watched the video you also saw that many were found in crevices and cracks and dips where they would be protected.  Any covering sand would protect them too.

Yesterday I showed an escudo that was lodged in a crack of a rock.  And in the video we see that some of those pot holes were maybe two, three or four feet deep, and sometimes the space between the rocks was very narrow.  Once they got into a place like that they would be well protected.

Divers Finding Escudos In Dips Between Rocks.
Source: Video provided by Jonah Martinez.

Over the years I've found a lot of clad coins in the shallow water that were bent like those shown in the picture here.

Penny and Nickle Bent As Found

The picture shows just a couple examples of coins that I've found bent up, and some were bent almost in half.

If you try to bend a coin like that you'll find out how difficult it is.  That takes a lot of force.

I don't know exactly how it happens, but all the bent ones that I've found, if I correctly recall, were found near the water's edge or in shallow water. They were also found in areas where there were a lot of loose coral rocks.  I would see the rocks piled up at the edge of the water at times.  Sometimes you'd see them and other times not.  I'm sure the rocks got moved around, and sometimes piled up, and other times buried.  My guess is that the coins got trapped between rocks in rock piles and got bent when the rocks got shifted and buried.  That is my best theory at this point.

I see no evidence of anything like that on the recently recovered gold cobs - not even scratches.  What we see in the video is large rocks that would not move.

It appears to me, rightly or wrongly, that the gold cobs were well protected protected during the three hundred years they were lost,  Even hurricanes failed to damage them.

I'm guessing that these escudos did not drop immediately onto uncovered rocks when they were initially lost. I think either they were lost on the beach or in the water, but on sand, and then gradually settled as the sand moved.

There is the possibility that they were once in bags or boxes.  I know of no evidence of that though.

I think they gradually settled down into the rock crevices. Once covered by sand, even just a little, they would be well protected.

It is also possible that they didn't settled all of the way into the dips until sand was moved by the blowers. That is a possibility I want to look into. I have some experiments planned.

Once coins settle into the cracks and crevices and pot holes in the rocks, I think there is very little chance that even a hurricane would move them onto the beach again.  Those would certainly be protected from most, if not all violent water movement,  And they wouldn't move until the covering of sand was removed first.

If the escudos were lost on the beach or in deeper water or on sand over top of the rocks, they could settle deeper when the sand was moved.  I believe it would be possible for cobs to be lifted and even thrown, but in my opinion that would be very unusual and unlikely if they were protected by narrow crevices and deep pot holes.

There is still a lot to learn about how those escudos got to where they were found, but I think we may have at least started the journey.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

There are a lot of variables, for sure.  It seems near impossible to figure out all of this, but in the past year or two I've learned a heck of a lot that took me a few decades to learn.  For example, it took me a long time to understand and appreciate what I call "trigger points" and "drop points" and how that determines how items are sifted and sorted. For me, that was a big leap, and it just occurred in the past couple of years, and only after decades.

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Tropical Storm Danny
Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Tropical storm Danny is now headed towards the Dominican Republic.  As you can see things are heating up in the Atlantic.  There are three there other disturbances out there.

Danny will soon be downgraded to a depression.  I don't think it will amount to much by the time it gets close to us.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/22/15 Report - A Hand Full Of Gold Cobs. A Gold Cob In Hiding. Hurricane Danny Heading Towards Puerto Rico.

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

Freshly Discovered Gold Cobs.
Photo by Fred Banke

Lately I've mostly been showing the recent finds.  We all love to see what has been found.  We love to see a piece of our history, especially local history.  Not many people will actually see it once the state takes it.

Seeing things like that gets people excited and motivated, but motivation will quickly fade if your only motivation is images of nice shiny things.  I don't doubt that there will be people who go out and buy a new detector and go metal detecting because of what they saw lately.  If those exciting images is the only thing motivating them, they'll quickly get hot, tired, frustrated and quit before long.  It doesn't help that beach conditions are so poor now.

For some, the excitement will only carry them through about two hunts before they quit.  It isn't quick and easy.  It can take a lot of time.

There are times when someone gets lucky.  I know of one lady that found a gold cob on her first time out with a metal detector.  That is like hitting Power Ball.  The odds are very very long against it.  People often go years or decades or even a lifetime without that kind of luck.

That is not what I started to talk about.  I just thought it needed to be said.

I started to say that I've been taking a lot of time showing what was found because it is historic and important, but all the fun doesn't stop with the find.  That is where a lot of the fun begins.

Like words, artifacts have meaning.

After Captain Jonah sent me a photo of all the musket balls they found, I thought he was probably close to the gold.  I remember that I actually drafted a brief email two times, but before hitting the send button I killed the emails before sending them.  It was nothing more than hot air anyhow, even though I thought I had reason to believe what I was going to say.  But the point is that I thought the musket balls were a good sign.

A find starts a whole new process of discovery.  What does the find mean to the hunter?  What does it tell us about history?  What does it tell us about the wreck?  What does it tell us about how things are distributed? What does it tell us about hunting techniques?  What does it all mean?  What does it tell us about ourselves?  What can be learned?  If you want good answers, start with good questions.

For me, metal detecting is very much about thinking, analyzing and learning.  My motivations changed over the years.  At first it was very much about what I could find and how much I could find.  Later it became more about learning and discovering.  I wanted to figure things out.  That kept me motivated, both when I was successful and maybe even more when I wasn't.  Now, I'm not really much impressed by finds - not even big finds.  It is more about meaning.  What does it mean?  What can we learn from it?

After showing and celebrating these historic finds, I'll be getting into more of the analysis of things in the future.

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A few days ago I did a post on rocks being what I called the ground floor.  That is mostly true, but not entirely.

Did you know that coral can grow at up to 4 inches a year?  Lets say that we select a much more modest rate of growth - say .5 inch a year.  At that rate, in three hundred years the coral would grow 150 inches.  That is well over ten feet.  Are you seeing where I'm going with this?

A 300 year old shipwreck could have many feet of coral on top of it.  Same for artifacts.  That is why I am now saying rock is not "always" the ground floor even though it often is.

I've seen sand coalesce into sandstone or at least a sandstone-like comglomerate in a matter of just a very few years.

The point is that some old shipwreck items may be covered by coral or rock.  It can be a lot of rock too.  

I think I know of one place on the Treasure Coast where the rocks have encapsulated a wreck.  Maybe its just pieces of a wreck that formed the base for a reef.

I've seen old iron sticking out of the rocks there not too far from the water line.  If that is what I think it is, some artifacts would be permanently entombed.

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Gold Cob Hiding In Crack.
Photo submitted by Jonah Martinez

Here is a very cool photo.  There is a gold cob or two, or maybe even three, hidden in that chunk of conglomerate.  You'll see rocks like that on the beach some times.

Very nice picture.  And something for you to remember.  Thanks once again Jonah!

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Yesterday I posted a Lima gold cob being held by Fred B.  The cob was part of the recent haul made by the Capitana guys.  The cobs shown at the top of this post are also being held by Fred.  I'll take a more detailed look at some of the newly discovered cobs in the future.

One additional tid bit - One of the oldest. if not the oldest escudo of the newly discovered group. was an Old World cob.  That means it was minted in Spain and then traveled to the New World, where it was in circulation for a good time, and then was on the way back to Spain when it went down off of our Treasure Coast.  Quite a journey!  Brent Brisben told about that at the press release Thursday.

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The state should photograph the finds, including those they claim as well as those they don't, and they should make the information available in a database and make it available to the public.

It is time that the history that is being saved for the public should actually be made accessible to the public.

If that was done items would be viewed more, studied more and more would be learned.  \

We are now getting open access scientific journals.  It is now time to have open access history.

You don't need a high level archaeologist to do all of that, all you need is a graduate student or trained monkey.  Nothing against graduate students.  Just thought that was funny.   I was one - in fact three times in three different fields. Not a monkey, a graduate student.

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It appears that hurricane Danny is headed towards Puerto Rico. It is predicted to decrease in strength by then.  At this point it doesn't look like we'll get much from it, but who knows.

This is my fourth post on the recent 1715 Fleet Treasure Coast Finds, so you might want to look at the previous posts.

Happy hunting, 

Treasureguide@comcast.net

1/8/14 Report - Cold Front Causes Little Erosion, Upcoming Coin Shows & A Closer Look

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

 One Beach Beginning to Cut Yesterday After High Tide.

I went out to see what the beach was doing yesterday afternoon just after the high tide.  As I suspected there was a little erosion beginning at the same beaches that eroded when the last cold front came through.  We were having a strong North wind.

The erosion wasn't very pronounced when I looked at it and it didn't look like it would do a lot more.   The cut that I saw was less than a foot even though it ran a good distance.

Another beach that I looked at was not cutting.  The sand was mushy at both beaches.

It was cold yesterday out there in the wind.  I didn't see anyone else on the beach.  The wind was blowing the sand.  It looked a little like snow drifting.  It feels a good bit warmer today.  Less wind too.

The wind was so similar to how the previous cold front started, that is why I expected the beaches to erode the same way.  I'm not expecting as much today.

Tomorrow the surf will be a touch higher.  Things are not coming together real good.  I'm not expecting to be able to upgrade my TC beach conditions rating.

Targets were scarce where I was.  Didn't see any shell piles either.

Here is a quick video clip showing the surf and beach yesterday afternoon.

I received the following news by email from SedwickCoins.

Sedwick Coins will be at the FUN show in Orlando beginning Jan. 8 and at the New York International Numismatic Convention beginning January 9.

FUN (Orlando, FL), at the Orange County Convention Center, Hall NB, North Concourse, 9899 International Drive, Orlando, FL. The largest show of the year and a huge draw for treasure material (January 8-12).

NYINC (New York International Numismatic Convention), at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 301 Park Avenue, New York, NY. The most prestigious show of the year for world and ancient coins (January 9-11).

They will also be at the Treasure Coast Coin Club's 48th Coin and Currency Show, January 18-19 at the Vero Beach Community Center, 2266 14th Ave., Vero Beach, FL.

So there will be some good chances to see what they have or show them anything you might want to consign.


Did you look at the video from James F. in the 1/4 post about the competition hunt?    I thought that one little guy was a hoot.


Joan T. thought the white chalky looking stone in the silver charm that I posted recently might be mother of pearl.  I think that might be right.  The surface layer was probably deteriorated.

Close Up View of Arrow Head Surface

In my 7/3/13 report I showed a white arrowhead that was found on the beach.  Somebody mentioned that it might be coral.  I think it might have been William M.  Anyhow since I got some equipment that takes very good closeup photos, I think I've confirmed that it is coral.  Take a look at this close up of part of the surface of the arrowhead.

Looks like coral to me.

I think it is worth taking a really good look at your finds.  You might be surprised to learn what you have.

A jewelers loop is one thing that will come in handy.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net