Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| 5th Century Gold Coin and Ring Finds. Source: thelocal web site link below. |
My main topic today is the recently completed blog poll. The conclusions are limited for a variety of reasons. I was not able to post a long detailed question because of how the blog poll app works. As a result I could only ask one question, and I could not get very detailed or specific.
Not long ago some one suggested that I conduct a poll something like this one. The question they posed was a little different though. It was something more like, "How many treasure coins have you found at the different shipwreck beaches in the last five years?" That is a very different question than the one I posted. At first glance it might seem more similar than it really is. There are reasons that I decided to do it the way that I did.
If I were to do this poll again, I would probably use some other time period than the five-year period that I chose. This time around a ten-year period would probably have been better. The five year period unfortunately put Hurricane Sandy, one of the productive times during that time span, not clearly in or out of the five year period. Not remembering specific dates, some people probably included Hurricane Sandy finds while others did not.
The locations listed in the poll were not defined in a precise manner either. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation. For example, the area defined as "between Turtle Trail and Rio Mar" might be considered to begin at the Turtle Trail access, or it could include a mile or two to the south of that. It is not clear how respondents looked at that.
I didn't want to ask where people found the most treasure lately. Most treasure hunters do not want to give away their hot spots. I thought that by going with the five-year period, that would reduce that concern since people wouldn't be telling where they made their most recent finds. That really didn't relieve the desire for secrecy concerning where people have been finding things. Some people told me straight out that they didn't want to give that information out to the general public. I understand that completely. That is undoubtedly whey so many of the respondents were people who had not found any treasure coins. They had nothing to hide.
Understanding all of the limitations of this poll and the limitations on the conclusions, it still wasn't a waste. Perhaps it was most informative for less experienced detectorists and those that haven't made that first treasure coin find yet. The poll results say one thing very clearly: treasure coins can be found a lot of places, including on the Treasure Coast and elsewhere.
You have to realize that the poll numbers do not indicate the number of coins found at each location. The numbers indicate the number of people who found coins at each location. That is a big difference.
As a previous blog poll showed, if a person finds one cob, it is very likely that they found more than one.
Given the short-comings of the poll itself, along with response bias, you can't take too much from the poll results. There is no one beach or location that really sticks out as being a real hot spot. The range of vote or responses for any one Treasure Coast location was 0 to 4. That is not a wide range, and considering the limitations that I've already mentioned, you can't make much out of the fact that one location has more votes than another.
From the poll results we can see that a good number of treasure coins were found outside of Florida and outside the country. With our heavy focus on the Treasure Coast, we might forget that there are other important areas where shipwreck treasure is found. In the U. S., there are places like North Carolina, Texas, and other areas of Florida, including the West Coast.
As I mentioned before, I know of finds from areas listed in the poll that had no responses. In other words, there were known finds that were not reported in the poll. So, like I said, the voting was suppressed and can only be accepted very generally.
Here are the final numbers from the poll question, "Where did you find gold or silver shipwreck treasure coins or cobs in the last five years?"
54 (72%)
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3 (4%)
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0 (0%)
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0 (0%)
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0 (0%)
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2 (2%)
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4 (5%)
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1 (1%)
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0 (0%)
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3 (4%)
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2 (2%)
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3 (4%)
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7 (9%)
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Votes so far: 75
Poll closed
Poll closed
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| Treasure Coast Fossilized Bone Find. |
I found it about three weeks ago. I just got the picture downloaded.
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Concerning the 5th Century coin and ring finds shown at the top of the post, here is a brief excerpt.
The coin was made in honour of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III, who ruled between 425 and 455. The emperor is depicted on one side of the coin, with his foot resting on the head of a barbarian – a common motif in coinage from the period. A similar coin commemorating Valentinian III was found three years ago...
Here is the link for the rest of the story.
https://www.thelocal.se/20171011/gold-coin-sheds-new-light-on-5th-century-swedish-island-massacre
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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
Here is the link for the rest of the story.
https://www.thelocal.se/20171011/gold-coin-sheds-new-light-on-5th-century-swedish-island-massacre
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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
