Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
Leo Kimble, a job foreman on Ford's restoration of Michigan Central Station was high atop a scissor lift, about to strike a cornice with a hammer when one of his coworkers, Lukas Nielsen, told him to hold his swing. Nielsen spotted something: a bottle, wedged upside down behind a piece of crown molding. They stopped working, carefully removed the bottle, and examined it.
Stamped on the side was the date "7-19-13," a date matching the opening year of Michigan Central Station; 1913, of course. More interestingly, the glass container wasn't empty. The beer that once filled the vessel was long gone, but taking its place was something much more interesting. Stuffed inside was a rolled-up slip of paper—a literal message in a bottle from more than a century ago...
... it says "Dan Hogan & Geo Smith stuck this ceiling of Chicago, July 1913." This might not have been their first beer seeing as the station is in, y'know, Detroit. It pretty much just says "me and my friend stuck this bottle here for fun," and my [Ted Ryan's] guess is they were from Chicago. Seems like something someone might stick in a wall today...
Here is the link.---
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| Miscellaneous Morning Finds. |
Thursday evening I moved some logs and cut limbs so I could detect an area that was previously covered. I found nothing but small pieces of iron wire and rusted metal. I got out again Saturday morning and started off very slow. I went into an area of the site that hadn't been cleared at all and had a tough time. I had to crawl through, over and under limbs, branches and vines, and could hardly dig when I got through it all. My headphones kept getting caught and ripped off and the shovel and detector kept getting caught every time I tried to move. It wasn't easy, and I didn't get much for the effort - only small iron junk and a little modern junk all of which took me tons of time to recover, partly because of the conditions and the lack of anything heavy enough to cut the roots. That is the north side of the lot where I've found a lot of modern junk in the past.
Finally I got to the area I was originally intended to detect. The last time there I was chased out by nearby lightning strikes. But I made better finds at that location. Included was the iron file shown above, which is about fifteen inches long, a couple long spikes, washers and some other miscellaneous items along with some unidentified items.
The spikes are each ten inches long, are made of something other than iron, thin and have small heads.
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| Head and Point of Two Spikes. |
The heads look almost like hexagonal bolts, but that doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand those spikes. They are very different from the rail spikes.
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| The Same Spikes. |
I'm only on what I would call stage 2b of my search on this lot. On a site where you have many years of accumulated leaves and other detritus, most old coins will be pretty deep.
The two pieces of glass I dug this morning (also shown in the photo) looks 1940s or 1950s. I'm better at estimating the date of glass than a lot of other things. The green piece is pretty thick and the other piece looks like it might be from a round milk bottle. I'll look at them better later, and probably do a little more digging around there to see if there are some buried bottles there. I know I haven't covered that small area well yet. Recovery is very slow on this site.
Anyone know more about those long spikes with the small heads?
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Have you ever heard of a coin called a celeston?
On December 20, 1948, James Thomas Mangan gave birth to Celestia, "claiming all space in the sky as its sovereign territory." While some may have viewed Mangan variously as a crackpot or visionary, Mangan (or First Representative Mangan, as he was known in the Nation of Celestia) was quite serious in his administration of the nation and his belief in the validity of his claim.
The Nation of Celestial Space is believed to have become defunct with the death of its founder, leaving as its only surviving legacy the series of stamps and silver and gold coins issued by Mangan from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. Those coins are rare today. The obverse of this 1961-dated piece features the figure of Mangan's daughter Ruth as "Magnanimity." MS63 or better.
For the Nation of Celestial Space, a fictitious currency was established. This monetary system saw 100 Ergs equaling 10 Joules, which equal one Celeston – basically imitating cents, dimes, and dollars. A total of three different coins were produced with a complete set being nine coins with all dates, varieties, and strikes. These coins were the Celeston, being .900-fine gold and weighing 2.2 grams and the Joule in sterling .925 silver weighing 4.15 grams. The coins feature Mangan’s daughter, Ruth, with her bust mimicking designs of Liberty on classical United States coinage and wearing a crown declaring “Magnanimity”.
Here is a link for more about that.The Coinage of the Nation of Celestial Space (coinweek.com)
In 1977 a Celeston coin sold at auction for $130. At that time the coins was less then twenty years old.
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No interesting tropical weather yet, and no significant changes in beach conditions.
Sooner or later we'll start to get some tropical storm activity. Keep watching.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net