12/6/17 Report - Ring of Well Known Person Found After Being Lost On A Florida Beach For Decades. Another Reale Find On The Treasure Coast.

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

Some Nice Coins and a Ring Found Sept. 25.

Finds and photo by Chris N.

Below is a message I received from Chris N. who found the items shown above.

I found this ring belonging to Fairleigh S Dickinson Jr of New Jersey. He was an avid fisherman, adventurer, businessmen, New Jersey Senator, and instrumental in laying out the plans for the Meadowland Complex along the Hackensack River in East Rutherford New Jersey. Also note His father was Farleigh Dickinson Sr. who help start Becton Dickinson Medical formally in that area as well as the University in Rutherford, NJ.  He attended the New York Military Academy in Cornwall,New York, and the Ring was dated 1937. .And was in the United State Coast Guard in the 1940's.

With help of the Police departments in New Jersey and a little research,we were able to get the ring back to the family, who were astonished that we went through all this trouble to get it back to them. They were surprised and happy that Metal Detector Enthusiast do their best to try and return items. "Thats what we do"

He passed away in 1996, and I was informed that they had no idea the ring would ever be found. We can assume that "Hurricane Irma and the Nor'Easter shortly between each other exposed the original hard pack in which we were able to pick it up on the Metal Detectors September 25, 2017. {Using a Garrett AT Pro, and Mine Lab Sovereigns  GT}

Extensive erosion inadated the Northern Florida coast where ring was found. 

Amongst other items found were old coins dated 1895 and later to Modern Clad, other Jewelry Items, Copper Sheeting, Ballast Rocks, but no Spanish Coins!!! Yet?

Found Ring With Name Clearly Inscribed Inside
Find and photo by Chris N.

Thanks Chris for all of the good work involved in getting it back to the family and providing some more good PR for the metal detecting hobby.

Congratulations of the great finds as well!

Florida beaches have long attracted people from around the country and around the world.  That is one thing that makes detecting here so interesting.

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Below are some items found by Darrel S. not long ago. 

Fused Bolts.

Photo by Darrel S.

Darrel S. sent me the above photo of the two dug fused bolts or spikes and then the picture below of the same items after they were cleaned.

Bollts After Cleaning.
Photo by Darrel S.

Here is something else he found with the bolts.

Thanks Darrel.

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We''re still having some big tides on the Treasure Coast, including a nice negative tide in the early AM hours.  The surf is going to be only around two or three feet.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net

12/14/17 Report - Beaches From John Brooks to Palm Beach. EO Mystery Find. New Post in Top Ten.

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

John Brooks Beach

Joe D. sent me these beach photos going from John Brooks to Palm Beach.  They were taken just a day or two ago.

Thanks much for the great photos Joe.

Ignore the little triangles in the middle of the photos.  That is the result of the way I snip them when I'm in a hurry.  It isn't Joe's fault.

Frederick Douglas Beach.

Jupiter Beach.

Juno Beach.

Palm Beach.

Palm Beach.

I haven't been out for a while so I especially appreciate the photos.  Thanks again Joe.

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I talked a lot about EOs yesterday.  Here is one found by Nancy M.  She was wondering if anyone had any ideas about what it might be.  I had no idea.  

EO found by Nancy M.
Photo by Nancy.

She has started to clean it off and saw some amount of detail. She thought it might be a part of a musket.

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The 12/6 post telling about Chris N's find and return of the Fairleigh Dickinson Jr. ring got a lot of attention.  Nearly a thousand readers checked that post in a single day.  It is now one of this blog's all-time top ten most popular posts.

Congratulations to Chris on the nice ring find and the good deed or making the return.

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The surf on the Treasure Coast will remain small for a few days. 

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

2/20/18 Report - WW II Ring Found in Saipan Returned to Surviving Family Members Located by Treasure Hunter 20 Years After the Find.

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

James Clooney's 1943 Maine Maritime Academy Ring 
Found by Dan C. in Saipan and Returned to Surviving Family Members.

 This is what we do.  The treasure hunters that I know do great things.  I've reported before on how this blog's readers have reunited lost objects with the people that owned them, and sometimes with  surviving loved ones.  It can take a lot of time and effort before the reunion takes place.  I posted about how the ring of Fairleigh Dickinson Jr. was found after being lost for many years and then was returned to the surviving family members.  What I am going to tell you about today is similar in some ways.  Dan C. from Orlando told me about finding a 1943 ring that was lost in Saipan during the war, and after many years and much research, he was able to return the ring to the family and provide them with some family history they never knew.  I'll let that fellow tell you in his own words.

Below is the email that I received from Dan C. describing how the ring was found and returned.

Your article on returning lost items was a good read and reminded me of my “best” find returned, but it took 20 years to locate the owner:

I located a class ring from Maine Maritime Academy, Class of 1943, with the owners name inscribed inside the band.  (See photo above.).

The ring was found at the island of Saipan where one of the most massive WWII battles was fought. The 10k gold cleaned up OK, but the synthetic Onyx dye had leached out of the stone after 51 years or so underwater.

I re-dyed it with a black sharpie pen.

That was in 1996. In 1997 I got my first computer and one of the first things I did was look up Maine Maritime Academy and found that it was still in operation. The academy trained merchant marines and prospective Naval officers during WWII, so my thought was the ring was lost by a Navy officer during the war. I was excited to get it back to its owner or surviving kin. I emailed the academy looking for information on the gentleman whose name was inscribed on the ring, telling the story of how it was found.

I never got a reply back. I put the ring away in a small box of mystery items and other finds and forgot about it for years. Then in 2016 on a whim I decided to rekindle my search. By this time the internet had matured and I was able to find some MMA yearbooks posted online, and sure enough, there was Mr Cooney’s photo. Now I had his full name. From there I searched the internet using his name and found his obituary – he had died in about 2006- but it listed his surviving kin. From there I learned from further searches that his younger son had also died but that he had another who was a doctor in New York. Knowing the doctors name led me to a website for a hospital where he was the head of surgery, and the one thing I needed - his office telephone number. I called and spoke with a secretary and pleaded for her to listen carefully, to not hang up on me, as I was not crazy. I asked her to please tell Dr Cooney that I had found his fathers ring which had been lost at Saipan, proving the validity by naming MMA class of 43 and his fathers full name.

An hour later she dialed me back and said the doctor would speak to me. I spoke to him excitedly telling him the whole story. He told me that his father never spoke of his WWII experience, but only that he was an officer on a ship during the war in the Pacific theater. He had made his sons swear to him never to enlist in the military. His widow was in assisted living at that time, so the plan was for her to be presented with the ring during her Christmas visit with the family. The letter below was sent via email to Dr Cooney shortly after our phone call, and the ring was sent to him a few days later along with an aerial view with the exact spot where the ring was found marked on the map. I later received a card and a small box of edibles as a thank you but never heard how their reunion went. I suppose that in many ways it’s none of my business.

“ DR Cooney,

It was great talking to you today !

This brings closure to something that started 19 or 20 years ago. 

As I mentioned, shortly after finding the ring, I had contacted Maine Maritime Academy seeking their assistance in locating your dad. I received no reply from them. Recently I decided to rekindle the search and after some time scouring the internet, here we are.

The ring was found about 200 feet offshore of the present day Hyatt Regency Hotel at Saipan.

Of course, the hotel was not there in 1944 and 45 when the USN was using the island as a staging area for further attacks on Japanese held islands.

The town of Garapan and nearby Tanapag harbor at that time were bustling with activity with warehouses being built, floating docks for offloading the battle supplies, a field hospital for the injured, ships being repaired out in the harbor anchorage, and Navy and Marine forces getting a little rest between deployments on Saipan's beaches.

The ring was found in about 1996 shortly after a typhoon moved some sand out of the area, exposing the long buried ring.

It was in about 4 feet of water, and probably under 2 feet of sand before the typhoon.

I found it with my submersible metal detector which I still own although it is undergoing repairs at this time.

As I recall, the ring was under about 10 inches of sand and coral debris.

My hobby at that time was finding lost jewelry from the Japanese tourists that now frequent Saipan.

So, by my estimation, the ring was buried in the sea bed for 51 years.

Your fathers name is as clear as the day it was engraved inside the ring.

He could have been part of USN Task Force 58, which was responsible for the capture of Saipan in June of 1944.

It would be great to learn which ship he was on.

But Saipan was also used as a staging area for the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, as far as I know.

So there may have been another Naval Task Force there after the initial capture of the island.

I will be sending a map and a detailed statement similar to this one in the upcoming days, and wish that the ring will be in your hands by Christmas, and that your mother will be in a lucid state to receive same.

You will hear from me soon !

It has been an honor speaking with you,"

Thank for sharing Dan.  Great work!

It is one thing to rescue an item like that and wonder who lost it and under what circumstances, but it takes it to another level entirely when you learn more about the owner and can return an item to those to whom it means the most.  It is very fortunate when an item is so clearly marked with a name or other identifying information.

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I'm working on a couple other posts and will address one archaeologist's article on why they are unable to convince the public.

I will also post some more personal detecting experiences.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/2/18 Report - Meteorite or Meteor Wrong? Meteorite Worth $30,000. Very Good Chance of Beach Detecting Conditions Improving.

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

Treasure normally doesn't just fall out of the sky and hit you on the head. although I guess it theoretically could.  Every once in a while I get a question about meteorites.  I might have dug one up at some time, but if I did, I didn't know it. 

Florida isn't a great place for finding meteorites and I know nothing about them, but there is a fellow that hunts meteorites and gold nuggets on a regular basis, and he also visits the Treasure Coast to detect, so I was able to ask him when I recently got a question about a possible meteorite being found on a Florida beach.

First, here is the question and a couple photos of the unidentified item that I received from Joe D.


Hi, my name is Joe from Merritt Island.  Your website I great.  I look at it every day  I purchased a metal detector about a year ago.  I haven't found anything worth a lot of money but I really enjoy the time on the beach.  Last week I was north of Sebastian when I came across what I thought was a rock.  My detector was going off on it so I took it home.  I figured it was a EO so I broke it apart where there was       a crack.  There was nothing inside.  A couple of days later I started thinking it may be a meteorite  Has anyone seen something like this?  Thank you.

3.5 by 2.5 Inch Unidentified Object.

Find and photo by Joe D.

Same Object Opened.

The fellow I asked about the item is a super guy who uses the handle SuperRick.  I posted some of his finds before, including a meteorite that I showed in my 5/31/17 post.

Below is SuperRick's response concerning the above object.

It's hard to tell from the photo but I would say no. There is only one type of meteorite that looks like charcoal and that is a  carbonaceous chondrite! Those meteorites are extremely rare!
I went to Sutter Mills when that meteorite came in and have a very small piece of it.

Here is a photo of the one that I missed because someone was cutting the grass in a park that we stopped to hunt! That part of the meteorite was found by a school teacher that sold it for over $30,000.00 Here is a photo of it.

https://s17.postimg.org/btbg5yfsv/IMG_20120426_162854.jpg

I hope that this helps you out.  I would throw it away without sending a small sample to a university if you can find one that will look at it because when you say that you found it on the beach it's going to throw up a red flag!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutter%27s_Mill_meteorite

Thanks for the help Rick.  I'm sure it helped the person that asked the question  It also helped me, and I'm sure it helped many of the readers of my blog.  It is always good to know something about different types of treasures

Thanks much for your help.  I'm glad I have so many readers who are experienced and informed in a wide variety of types of treasure and are willing to help others.

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Continuing with my list of top ten most popular posts from 2017, number three on the list is the 4/27 post about the Cooper's Treasure TV show and the salvage lease process in the Bahamas.

You might remember the controversy caused by the TV show.  I don't know what happened to it.  They seemed to drop it.

The link for that post is immediately below.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2017/04/42717-report-more-on-coopers-treasure.html

The top two posts of the year actually made it into the top ten all time list.  That is especially surprising because they were posted late in the year.  In fact the number two post of the year was posted in December, less than a month ago.  It was the post about the find and return of the 1937 class ring of Fairleigh Dickinson Jr. that was recovered on a North Florida beach by Chris N.  The same post also showed a silver reale found on a Treasure Coast beach.

Below is that link.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2017/12/12617-report-ring-of-well-known-person.html

And finally, the # 1 post of the year, the 9/10 post about how the best conditions are not always caused by the strongest storms.  I talked about Irma and Jose.  The title of that post was For Metal Detecting You May Have Missed the Big Deal. More To Come.

Here is the link.

http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/search?q=missed+the+big+deal

I didn't think it would take so long to do the top ten.

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There is a lot going right.  The tides are big;  the surf is going to be something like 6 - 10 feet Tuesday; the wind turned Monday evening and should continue from the north through Tuesday.  That all goes together to suggest a very strong chance of improved beach hunting conditions 

Here are the surf predictions.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to check some beaches tomorrow, so I can show you what is happening.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net