2/19/18 Report - Examples of the Lost and Found Service Provided by Detectorists. Lions Club Eye-Glass Program.

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

Nearly Five Gallons of Lost Keys.

Have you ever lost your keys?  If so, you are not alone.  I've found tons of keys.  Those shown above are a small portion of those that I've found.  Today I'm going to talk about just a few of the things that were found and returned to the original owner.  People don't hear about many of the items that are found and returned by detectorists.

People often ask detectorists what is their most valuable find.  One answer I give is this one about the time I found some keys.  I was in the Florida Panhandle doing some consulting for the Naval Air Station and after work went out to a remote beach to do a little metal detecting.  I encountered a family just leaving the beach.  No one else was around anywhere.  When they got to the car, they discovered they had lost their keys.  I won't tell the whole story because I told it before.  But they told me they lost their keys, and I followed their tracks to where they had their blanket and found their keys in short order.  This is in the days before cell phones, and if I wasn't there to find their keys, I don't know how long it would have been before they could have got a locksmith or whatever.

I remember only two times that I received a reward for finding an item for someone.  I never asked for a reward and usually don't accept a reward even if it is offered, however there was this one time when I was offered fifty dollars if I could find the keys for the beach concession business at the Fountainbleau hotel.  The fellow lost the keys before he opened the business that morning.  It was a big bunch of keys.  He was out of business until the keys were found.  It didn't take me long to find them, and I received the fifty dollars.

Many of the hotel keys have been replaced by magnetic cards, so there aren't as many keys out there to be found.

Of course there are other kinds of things that I've found for people. Over the years I've found buckets  of eye-glasses too.

I was metal detecting in the shallow water in front of another resort one day when a fellow told me he lost his eye glasses.  He was a tourist staying at the local hotel.  I looked for the glasses and found them.  The surf was rough, and it took some time though.  The fellow offered to buy me a drink, but I thanked him and declined.

Tourists don't realize how easy it is to lose their glasses to an unexpected wave.  And glasses are light enough that they'll drift along the bottom in a rough surf.

Here is something you should know about.  Eye-glasses can be recycled.  The Lions Club has boxes at various locations where you can leave used eye glasses that they will pick up and recycle.  I dropped the eye-glasses that I found into a box at a local hospital.  They have a web site that tells how they can use your old eye-glasses to provide sight for people in need.  Here are a couple sentences from their web site.

If you have used eyeglasses you no longer need, you can donate them now. Lions accept prescription and reading glasses, sunglasses and plastic and metal frames. Children's glasses are especially needed. 

You can use the following link to learn more about the Lions Club program and how you can donate used eye-glasses to help someone in need.

http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/how-we-serve/health/sight/index.php

Sometimes the lenses will be scratched up from the sand.  I don't know if they can regrind those or not.  It doesn't matter if the frames are messed up.

I've been asked to help find a lot of things.  One day I was asked by young girl if I could find her dental retainer that she lost in the water.  That is something I knew nothing about.  I asked her if it had metal on it and she said yes, so I gave it a shot but was unsuccessful.

As you know, people also lose coins and jewelry.  I'll talk about some of those some other time and give some additional tips.

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With the beautiful weather and snow-birds in town, there is a good chance you'll be able to find something for someone.

The surf remains around two feet.  There will be a moderate low tide.  The wind is coming out of the east/southeast.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/3/17 Report - Dug Silver and What It Looks Like. Antique and Collectible Keys Web Site.

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

Object Found on Beach.
You might be surprised what it is.

Someone asked what silver coins and objects look like when they come out of the ground.  It isn't easy to answer that because it varies so much depending upon a number of factors.  Generally silver turns a darker grey to black when it has been on a beach for a while, especially if it has been in salt water.  Above is an example of a piece of silver found on a beach.

It is difficult to identify this coin from this view.  It looks something like a corroded silver cob.  Below you can see the other side of the same object.

Other Side of Same Object.

Can you tell what it is now?  It is a silver Roosevelt dime.

From the appearance, you could easily think that it might be something much older.  When you hold the above object, you can't really see the design very well unless you have the right kind of lighting.

Roosevelt dimes were made from 1946 to 1964, so I don't know how long the dime was on the beach, but it can't be more than 71 years, which might sound like a long time to some of you, but it isn't anything like a Spanish cob, which might have been out there for three hundred years.

Here is a new Roosevelt dime.  It is not silver, but you can match up the images.

New Not-Silver Roosevelt Dime

The older silver dimes were 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper.  The newer dimes are a "sandwich" of pure copper inner layer between two outer layers of cupronickle (75% copper, 25% nickel) alloy giving a total composition of 91.67% Cu and 8.33% Ni.

If you look at edge of one of the newer dimes, you can see a strip of copper.

You might remember when I suggested cutting a silver dime in halves or quarters and using the pieces as test objects for reales.  I said if you can detect piece of a silver dime, you can detect a small silver reale.  They are really very much alike.  In fact some reales from Potosi were assayed and found to have about 10 percent copper content like even though they were not supposed to have that much copper content.

Silver can be encrusted or discolored, depending upon where it has been.  It is really difficult to give a single answer saying what silver will look like when it comes out of the ground.  You can, however, with a good amount of experience, learn to identify silver most of the time from just looking at it, no matter how badly corroded it might be.

Like I said above, the appearance of silver will vary depending upon where it was found.  The silver coins I found in a cold water lake in Minnesota were more of a bluish tint, for example.  They did not corrode much at all compared to those found on a salt water beach or around mangroves.  Salt water beaches and acid soil are both very hard on silver.

For the person that asked what dug silver looks like, you'll find many examples if you read back through the old posts.  Some are shown before and after cleaning.  You can also see Spanish reales in various states of cleaning.

I also found that you can almost always tell a silver coin from the sound it makes when you drop it on a ceramic tile.  Try it.

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Hotel keys used to be very common beach finds.  That was before the more modern key cards.  I found gallons of hotel keys.  Some were the nice big ornate brass keys, while others were smaller and had those large plastic tags bearing the name of the hotel and room number.

I found this very useful web site about antique and collectible keys.

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/tools-and-hardware/keys

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There is nothing much to watch in the weather right now.  There is one disturbance just coming off of Africa, but it is too early to pay it much attention.

We're in for more one to two foot surf on the Treasure Coast and south winds.   That means hot weather.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net