6/17/17 Report - Amazing Treasure Coast Beach Find!!! Beach Conditions and Tropical Disturbances.

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

Diamond Gold and Amethyst Ring Find.
Find and photo by Warren D.

If you have been reading this blog, you've read about Warren Dennison before.  He has found and returned some valuable rings.  The stories were covered in the news and here.  Warren stored up a lot of good karma.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Different View of the Same Ring.
Find and photo by Warren D.

This find is a very exceptional one-of-a-kind item.  Research could reveal the owner.  It has been identified by no less than Robert Marx and Karl Fismer as being a probable 1715 Fleet item.  A cob was found nearby.  It was found on a Treasure Coast beach, and is obviously shown uncleaned.

There is a WESH2 News video with Warren showing his find that you can probably find on the internet.

Congratulations Warren!  Super great find!

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John Brooks Beach Saturday Morning.

You can see the sandy conditions and the nice smooth one-foot surf.

With these summer conditions, you have to be alert to rare opportunities.  Some of those occur are very localized situations. As you can see, the prevailing beach conditions are poor, but there are always those little spots ( some man made and some natural ) that provide opportunities.  They are rare and not always easy to find, but they are out there.

Nieves Site Saturday Morning.

You can barely see it, but the small dot is a salvage boat working in the distance.

Seaweed Covered Beach Saturday Morning.

Seaweed is generally a bad sign, but there are rare occasions when a layer of seaweed can cover a newly exposed good spot.  In this case, under the seaweed was newly accumulated sand.

Down the beach was a spot where there was no seaweed.  Some older items were found there - mostly iron.

I also found some very old fossils.

There are still a couple tropical disturbances on the map - one near Yucatan and the other way south in the Atlantic.  The second is organizing and has a long way to go before hitting land.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/16/17 Report - Small Gold Artifact Found. Gold King Mine Disaster. Shipwreck Wood on Beach. Two Tropical Disturbances.

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

Animas River After Gold King Mine Disaster.
Source: See Daily Signal link below

In August 2015, an EPA crew inexplicably dug out the rock and rubble “plug” to the long abandoned Gold King Mine, triggering a massive blowout that flooded the Animas River with 3 million gallons of acid mine drainage and, according to the EPA, over 550 tons of metals...

Click here to read more about that.

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Things have been going well down south.  The Dare recently recovered three silver coins on the trail of the Atocha.

The Magruder found a small gold artifact said to be a pendant.  It appears to be gold wire with a gold two-piece filigree bead and with a pearl near the end.  A similar one was found in 1985.

Here is a picture.

Small Gold Artifact Found by Margruder
Source: Personal email.

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Shipwreck Wood Washed Up on Beach.
Source: See Daily Astorian link below.

CANNON BEACH — What at first glance looks like one of the many logs that line Cannon Beach may be an uncovered keel of a boat from a possible shipwreck.

The wood object, which measures about 18 feet long and several hundred pounds, was found Wednesday afternoon on the beach close to the Taft Street access by Jeffrey Smith of Portland. Looking for a place to rest after walking with his wife, he noticed rusty square nails, notches and square cutouts in the log and decided to call the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum...

Here is the link for more of that story.

http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20170615/possible-shipwreck-debris-uncovered-in-cannon-beach

Cannon Beach!  Pay attention to place names.

Shipwreck wood occasionally washes up onto Treasure Coast beaches too.

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As I've been saying, "Its time to start watching for tropical weather."   There are two disturbances out there now.  Neither will likely affect the Treasure Coast much, but keep watching.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/28/16 Report - 1715 Fleet Gold Rings Found. Tumbaga and Depletion Gilding. A Diamond Ring, Gold Coins and Stinky Cheese. Two New Tropical Disturbances.

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

Gold Rings From 1715 Fleet Just Found.
Submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez

I just received this photo of the latest 1715 Fleet gold ring finds. Amazing finds! Great job guys!

The clasped hands motif is very common. I have seen it on a variety of 1715 pieces.

The clasped hands signifies friendship and love. That design motif has been used on antique jewelry since Roman times and continues to this day.

I wonder if the bird shown on the top ring is another reference to the pelican of piety that my friend Laura Strolia wrote about.  It very much looks like it could be.

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Yesterday I mentioned tumbaga and how they used a procedure to get a relatively pure gold on the surface of the item.  I didn't remember the exact process at the time, but here is paragraph that describes the details.

The surface color of the objects could be modified by a process called “depletion gilding” (miseen-couleur), a gold surface enrichment. The cast copper-gold alloy figurines were treated chemically to remove the base metal from the surface of the object giving the finished piece the appearance of high purity gold. Either mineral salts or acidic plant extracts could have been used for this procedure. Depletion gilding produces a well bonded but porous and spongy layer only a few microns thick, which was then burnished. A higher copper content would result in a more reddish color and a higher gold content produced a more yellowish color.

That paragraph is from the web site found through the following link.

http://resources.conservation-us.org/osg-postprints/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/02/osg012-06.pdf

Here is another web site showing a variety of tumbaga artifacts.

http://www.sbai.uniroma1.it/~giovanni.gigante/Lavori/10.1007s00339-013-7738-8.pdf

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A diamond ring, 14 gold coins, and you guessed it, 340 year-old stinky cheese, was found on an old shipwreck site.

Here is that link.

http://www.thelocal.se/20160727/old-stinky-cheese-found-on-swedish-17th-century-ship

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There is now a tropical disturbance, two in fact, coming off of Africa.  One has a 20% chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours and the other has a 30% chance.  When you see them start to line up like that, they sometimes keep coming.

They are too far away now to have any idea where they might go or what they might do, but keep watching.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/27/15 Report - History of "Money Digging." Tropics More Active. Rare Coins On Auction.

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

A Couple Fine Coins From An Upcomng Sothebys Auction
Source: See Sothebys link below. 

Have you ever heard of money diggers?  That is how they described treasure hunters in the early days of our country.

Treasure hunting was much practiced in the U. S. long before there was a United States.  Religious and other leaders of the day participated, as well as the common folk. Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, was a money digger.

I found an article about the Joseph Smith's treasure hunting activities.  The article talked about Joseph Smith, but it also tells a lot about the history and superstitions associated with money digging.

Thetitle of the article is The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting.  It was written by Ronald W Walker, and was originally published in BYU Studies, back in the 1980s.

Here is one paragraph from that lengthy paper.

From colonial times to at least the age of Jackson, Americans dug for magical treasure.  There were hundreds and probably thousands of these "money diggers," all seeking troves of fabled coins, mines, jewels and other valued prizes. They worked from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi hinterlands, and in a few localities heaped up tailings that rivaled those of the later forty-niners.  Yet for all this prodigious toil their finds were as rare as Merlin's transmuted gold.  What made them persist, relying on an immemorial but now forgotten world view, the money diggers placed faith in conjuring, elemental spirits, thrice spoken dreams, seeric gifts and enchanted treasure that could slip and rumble through the earth as easily as a fish moving through the deep.  The modern age will probably never fully understand the diggers strange compound of treasure seeking, religious feeling and intense psychological devotion to an old but fading way of life.  Theirs was another world which we can speak of but hardly enter.

 Here is the link if you want to read the entire article.

https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/BYUStudies/article/viewFile/5447/5097

Treasure hunting is an activity that inspires superstition.  Treasure hunters seek the unseen.  They depend to some extent upon luck, no matter how scientific and thorough they are.  Intuition can be a  big part of it,  Guesswork is also a part of it.  Despite all of the hard work and diligent effort, the outcome is uncertain, and success and failure begs for explanation other than pure chance.

Few of us share the superstitions common among the money diggers of the 18th century.  There are some that still use dowsing and other methods that do not have the support of science.  For the most part metal detectors have replaced dowsing rods, but many treasure hunters still experience the hunt as being somehow mystical, if not religious.

As Ronald Walker's paper details, treasure hunting has a long and deep history in America.  No wonder!  It is as instinctual as curiosity.  It is as natural as work and progress.

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If you watched TV the last few days it would have been difficult to miss the throngs of people that gathered excitedly to see the Pope.  It just goes to show how much of a hunger there is for the virtues characterized by the Pope and the Faith.

People of all faiths, as well as those of no religious faith at all, had good things to say about the Pope.  Many were moved to tears.  Congress, where leaders often rail for separation of church and state, seemed to have forgotten about their common cry for that separation.  Politicians of all stripes appeared to be deeply moved by the Pope's character and presence.  None had anything bad to say about him. News anchors, who usually are either hostile or at the very least show no friendship to religion, were also moved.  Nobody that I saw had anything critical to say about the man, including the aetheists, anti-religious, and those that are typically against religion.

It seemed to me that I was seeing a different side to the world.  Not in the Pope, He did not surprise me.  Nor did those of faith.  It was the politicians and media that surprised me.   It was those who make decisions for us and present the world to us.  It was also the unanimous, or what appeared to me to be the unanimous, interest, excitement and over-whelmingly positive reaction to this religious leader.

It appears to me that there is a deep world-wide hunger for authenticity and virtue and leadership. For a few days, on the TV news at least, conflict, hate and evil did not dominate.

Security was evident at every turn.  That shows that there is still evil in the world.  Maybe it was crowded out for a time - at least off of the TV screens that present so much of what we take to be the world.  Maybe what they normally present, with their continual emphasis on conflict and tragedy, gives us a lop-sided view of things.  I'm sure it does.  Maybe the imbalance swung the other way for a few days, and we'll soon be back to normal.  My hope is that it was not an illusion, and that in some small way we and the world were permanently changed for the better.

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I recommend spending some time with the https://www.windyty.com/?swell,30.477,-80.112,6 web site.  Not only will it give you a animated map showing the wind, but also the swell and waves.  Also if you place the cursor on any specific location it will give you detailed information for that location.  Give it a try.  Great  tool!

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Here is a site where you can see some great photos of some great coins.  The two coins shown at the top of this post are from this web site.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2015/stacks-bowers-rarities-auction-n09385.html?cmp=email_N09385_1015_2_CATexample1_event

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The past couple of days, I did a little detecting on a flat beach and found a good number of coins.  I didn't test any of the steeper beaches.

There are now two tropical disturbances in addition to Ida.  Ida doesn't seem to want to go away and is lingering out in the Atlantic.

There is one disturbance in the Gulf and one East of the Bahamas.  The one in the Gulf has a 10% chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours, and the one out East has a 20% chance.  Both are affecting our wind patterns.

For the next few days we'll be having something like a 3 - 5 foot surf.  There is a chance we will eventually get some significant beach improvement.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/12/15 Report - Oldest Mission In America Investigated. 3 Tropical Disturbances. Metal Detecting Believe It Or Not.

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

Henri disappeared, but there are three tropical disturbances in the Atlantic now.

The one closest to us isn't expected to become a cyclone in the next 48 hours.  The others have a small chance.

Seems like it has been forever since there has been anything to stir up the Treasure Coast sand very much.

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I ran across a thread in a metal detecting forum when I was looking for information on a specific topic in which one person asked if anyone ever found a Mason jar filled with silver coins.  At least one of the participants was wondering if it ever really happened.  Many of those participating in the thread said they probably wouldn't dig a signal from a Mason jar lid.  I know that is true.  Many people would not dig a signal like that and from what I read in the forum and from what I've heard from people myself, the vast majority would not dig such a signal.

That is one thing I always warn about.  If you don't dig those types of signals there is virtually no chance of making that kind of find.  You very much limit your opportunities by how you hunt.  If the things you are missing might be things you'd really like to find, you need to make some adjustments.

I talked to one person who found such a cache before they found it.  We discussed the situation, and they were aware of the possibility because of the situation and hunted accordingly.  Good detecting is thoughtful and strategic.  Goals, possibilities and probabilities are considered.  Methods are selected intentionally and strategically.  Too many people hunt the same way all of the time.

Sometimes, and I've discussed this before, the first stage of a hunt might be a quick scan.  The results of that first scan might help you get a better understanding of the situation.  You can then use that information to adjust your methods.

The way you hunt, will determine what you get, and just as importantly, what you will not get.  Like a lot of things, I learned that the hard way.

Review your finds.  Is there something missing.  Is there something that you never found that you think you should have found?  Are there any conspicuous absences?

Metal detecting is very situational.  By that I mean that the situation will determine a lot.  You are not going to find a lot of Rolex watches at an old settler's camp.  Likewise, you typically aren't going to find a lot of old stuff around a bunch of new condos that have been filled and landscaped.  How much and what you find will largely be determined by where you are, as well as how you hunt.

If you have your detector set up to discriminate everything but coins, that pretty much limits what you are going to find.  That is good if that is what you want, but it could also be bad.

I'm not surprised that not many people have found mason jars full of silver coins.  There might not be many of them buried, but there are other reasons too.  Reading the thread in the forum clearly showed one big reason.  Most people would not dig it if they walked right over it.

Another thing I got from briefly reading that thread is something that I learned before.  It is that detectorists have a tendency to judge what is possible from what they have personally done.  Likewise, they draw conclusions about what is not possible based solely upon what they have done.  There is a tendency to not believe people that do a lot better than them.  I've seen this many times.

 If they've not found a mason jar full of coins, the tendency is to think that mason jars full of coins just aren't found.  Right long with the doubt about such finds ever being made, were very clear statements of one big reason whey they are not often made.  Yes, those things might not happen real often anyway, but the people in that forum were clearly saying they wouldn't dig them anyhow.   Many people are reluctant to think that somebody else is finding stuff that they would like to find but haven't.  Many people (not all) will refuse believe that other people can find much more than they do.

I know of more than one person who has been involved in a metal detecting club and month after brought in new finds that were ten or twenty times more numerous than anyone else in the club.  The rest of the club members started suggesting that the person bringing in all the finds was cheating somehow.  They started saying that the person was bringing in old finds and things like that.  There was an obvious resentment.  After a while they wouldn't even look at the numerous new finds.  They would just ignore them.  There was an obvious emotional reaction.

I haven't attended many club meetings in my many years of detecting but have attended a few.  I've seen the same thing happen in more than one club and to more than one person.  It seems all too common.  The other club members, instead of finding out how the other person was doing so well, wanted to think that it was impossible that somebody was doing so much better than them.  They thought there was some kind of cheating or deception.

It isn't magic.  It isn't all luck.  Much of it is situational.  Some of it is the shear amount of time and effort put in.  And some of it is knowledge and technique.  That is what the other club members should have been looking to learn, but their ego got in the way.

The older I get the more I see that people are their own worst enemies.  Restrained ego and objectivity is one good treatment.

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Here is an article about the oldest mission in America.  The title of the article is " UF Archaeologists Discovered 17th Century Church.  That seems to me to be a little misleading.  The site was known about for a long time.  It was even investigated by an amateur archaeologist decades ago.

Anyhow, here is the link.

http://www.wuft.org/news/2015/09/10/uf-archaeologist-discovered-17th-century-mission-church/

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I'm still working with a little back-up computer.  Don't have all the features that I normally have.

The surf is supposed to be one to two feet on the Treasure Coast this weekend.  Monday will be smoother.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/31/15 Report - Which Amazing Half Million Dollar Shipwreck Treasure Will You Soon Be Able To Buy? More On The Classification Process. Two Tropical Disturbances.

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

Gold Chalice Found On The Site of The Atocha

On August 5 Guernsey's will team with Invaluable (an online auction marketplace) to auction sunken treasure from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha that sank in 1622 after sailing into a violent hurricane. American treasure hunter Mel Fisher discovered the sunken treasure. To mark the thirty-year anniversary of this astonishing discovery, Guernsey's will auction off items from Fisher's Collection. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Michael Abt, Jr. Have a Heart Foundation, which works to provide Automatic External Defibrillators (AED) to schools nationwide. 


This auction starts at 7:00 PM EST on the 5th, and will feature a selection of 126 incredible treasure lots. On July 20, 1985 Fisher’s perseverance paid off: over 40 tons of silver and gold were located at the site of the wreck off the Marquesas Keys. Including more than 100,000 Spanish silver coins known as "pieces of eight," gold coins, the finest Colombian emeralds, silver and gold artifacts, and over 1,000 silver bars.

Crest Found On Chalice

The gold chalice, estimated to bring around $500,00, is one of the lots in that auction.
Since its discovery, the chalice has undergone conservation efforts lead by marine archaeologists, who also removed a layer of white, calcareous concretion. The rim of this gold chalice is etched with scroll work, images of animals, and there is a crest in the center of the cup that remains in pristine condition. Although experts have not linked the crest to any of the ship's passengers, there is a helm above the engraving that could signify its owner as having been a Duke or a Baron. The gold shines radiantly with a deep hue and is of a high karat weight. A portion of a tax stamp is visible on the edge of the base, and another is present on the bottom of the cup. The base is threaded onto the bottom of the chalice and it turns as if it were made yesterday.

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With all of the treasure news breaking lately, including the million dollar Treasure Coast finds and that amazing 8-escudo Royal and the finds of the Capitana, I had this ready to post back some time ago with some other posts on beach dynamics and classification, but I put it if off because of all of that news.

The following chart provides a good illustration of what some call "classification."

You'll hear some of the same myths repeated by every book and half the articles on shallow water metal detecting.  It concerns how objects are supposedly classified or sifted and sorted.  I won't take the time to address those myths right now, but I think these illustrations will help you visualize how classification (the sifting and sorting of objects in a beach system) works.

Basically, with different amounts of force, different things get moved.  That is nothing new.  I've discussed that plenty.  And I've also discussed how different things will stay in motion longer than others.  Those objects will not drop out of transport as quickly as some other items.

To make this more relevant for us detectorists, imagine where coins or gold rings might fit in.  Coins and rings can be very different.  Coins come in different sizes and rings come in a variety of shapes.

Shape does make a difference, along with density.

Even different types of sand gains move at different times and in different ways.  That is what accounts for the different layers you will see on the beach.

With low flow speed, silt, sand, and maybe some gravel will be moved.  It will take a good bit to move a gold ring.  Gold rings will require more flow or force to move than gravel.

The illustration above shows a one-way flow.  On the beach, you often have a two way flow.  The waves wash up and then back, so you have to take that into account too.  When something washes up onto the beach, will it also wash back down?  That depends on a lot of factors.  In the case of a big fat class ring, it will often roll back down, if there was enough force to wash it up to begin with.

I just thought that would help you better visualize the classification process.

When the silt and sand gets moved from a specific area but not class rings, the class rings will settle lower.  If the flow reverses with a similar force, the class ring will then be buried again.

Once buried, the ring will stay buried until the sand on top of it is removed.  After the sand is removed from over it, the class ring can be moved too if there is then enough force.

Of course the sand and the ring can be moved at the same time, but one will likely be moved slower and less far and will be dropped off sooner as the force decreases.

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There are two tropical disturbances in the Atlantic right now.  Neither are expected to affect us much though.

Expect a one to two foot surf this weekend.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net