Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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1977 Silver Jubilee One Crown.
Reminder of Mistake.
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Aurania Resources Ltd. is pleased to report that vestiges of an old road have been found in the central part of its Lost Cities – Cutucu Project (“Project”) in southeastern Ecuador. The road was discovered by Aurania’s field teams while searching for Sevilla de Oro which was one of two gold mining centres described in historic manuscripts from Ecuador, Peru, Spain and the Vatican. These records describe the Colonial Spanish operating the two gold mines between approximately 1565 and 1606. The road discovered by Aurania’s exploration teams is believed to be the one that linked Sevilla de Oro to the other gold mining centre ‘Logroño de los Caballeros’ as described in the historic manuscripts...
Aurania’s Chairman and CEO, Dr. Keith Barron commented, “The historical record names the Treasurers of the “Caja Reales” – the Royal Treasuries – in Sevilla and Logroño, so we know that the gold produced was cast into crude ingots for transport to Quito...
Here is the link for more about that.
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A couple days ago I mentioned that I had been thinking back over some of the mistakes I made. I was thinking of mistakes that were made after the item was located, and in some cases recovered. I talked about one of those and plan to talk about the others.
We all know that we should be careful when digging up an item, but we can still get careless. We can get careless because we dig up a lot of coins that don't matter much, and we can get in a hurry, and a single scratch can dramatically reduce the value of a fine coin.
In my first year of metal detecting, I found one very nice coin that would be graded in near mint condition if it did not have a single big scratch that I caused with my scoop.
It was in the habit of hurriedly digging up modern coins, when I was surprised by seeing a silver 1977 Isle of Man Silver Jubilee crown (shown above) in my scoop. It isn't anything real valuable, but it was the most interesting coin that I had dug up to that time.
That was back in the day when I was trying to find as many coins as I could. I showed some of my records from those days in this blog before, and remember telling Jerry at the Pot of Gold, the store where I bought my detector, that I more than paid for my Fisher Aquanaut with the modern coins I found in just a few months. I was finding a lot of coins, but I never expect to find something like the silver crown and still wonder what it was doing on Hollywood Beach. Judging by the conditions, it couldn't have been there very long.
For those of you who know Hollywood Beach, it was found just a few feet away from the shower in front of the Pizza shop by the handball courts. The handball courts weren't there then, but that is where this coin was found. It was such surprise for me at the time that I remember it well to this day.
The coin is almost perfect except for that one big scratch from my scoop, which to my surprise, doesn't seem to show in the photo. I still have that coin,, which should act as a reminder, but I'll probably still get careless at times. I've scratched more and better coins since that one.
My main point today is that you never know what you might be digging up, so be careful while doing it. A pin-pointer is a good idea, but a pin-pointer won't guarantee not scratching or breaking finds.
I could tell a lot of stories about items ruined by careless digging - not all of them by me. For example, in Fort Pierce at the site of the old fort, Kevin Reilly (now deceased) of Reilly's Treasured Gold, stuck his digger right through a nice silver Seminole head band.
See http://www.nativetech.org/seminole/silverwork/index.php to see some nice examples of Seminole silver ornaments.
A lot of items are damaged when the detectorist get in a hurry, but hopefully this reminder will save one or two good finds.
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We had a strong south wind yesterday. Today the wind is calm and the surf is down around two feet. However the tides are nice and big.
The weather forecast is showing only a 40% chance of precipitation today.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net