Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
A box of baubles was purchased at a flea market in 1987 for 10 pounds. Decades later when the box was knocked over and one ring fell to the floor catching the light, it made the owner wonder if it might actually be worth more than she originally suspected. She had it appraised and eventually sold it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
At an enormous 26.27 carats, the cushioned shaped jewel, with a colour grade of I and an impressive clarity grade of VVS2, was a spectacular example. Once Sotheby’s had the diamond confirmed as genuine by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the story of the car boot sale find – suitably nicknamed the “Tenner” diamond – went viral, making international headlines. When it went under the hammer in Sotheby’s London showroom, the estimate was £350,000.
In fact, the frenzied bidding ultimately saw the stone sold for an incredible £656,750, a life-changing sum for the owner who has described the experience as “a real-life Only Fools and Horses story”...
It remains a mystery how such a stunning diamond came to be sitting amongst trinkets on a car boot sale table that fateful day, but Sotheby’s Jewelry have been able to posit a few theories about why the ring might have gone unnoticed.
Firstly, the dark and tarnished mount was the last backdrop to show off the true potential of the jewel. And secondly, the cut of the diamond did it no favours. In the 19th century, when experts believe the jewel originated, it wasn’t common practice to cut diamonds to emphasise their brilliance, as they are today. As Jessica Wyndham, Head of Sales for Jewelry in Europe, explains, “with an old style of cutting, an antique cushion shape, the light doesn’t reflect back as much as it would from a modern stone cutting.
Here is the link.
A Rare & Coveted Diamond Discovered at a Car Boot Sale | Jewelry | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
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Today I'm going to begin a discussion on the benefits and risks of using discrimination. It will probably take several days. Today I'll just get it started.
Some people say dig everything and others recommend using discrimination because digging everything is a big waste of time. But reducing the question to such a simplistic binary decision ignores many significant factors.
In the past I've recommended digging everything. People are more likely to discriminate too much rather than too little. It is natural for people to use discrimination. They don't like to expend effort on junk. It is natural to try to avoid that, so you don't have to tell them to discriminate. They will do it on their own, so there is little gained by telling them to discriminate, but there is much to be lost by using too much discrimination. There are other reasons that I so often recommend digging everything though.
First, I was usually talking about hunting on a beach. As we all know, unless you are hunting in the dry sand, the water sifts and sorts good targets and there are some spots that are much more productive than others, so when hunting old coins or jewelry on a beach where there is so much area to hunt, the first task is to find the most productive areas. Unless you go to the beach with prior knowledge that gives you reason to hunt thoroughly a very specific limited area, your first job is to gather information on where to focus your efforts. Even if you are very good at reading beaches, it can help to validate your conclusions by doing a little sampling.
Junk provides good information. I've said that before. If you start finding aluminum pull tabs or lead sinkers, for example, you are gaining important information about the distribution of targets on the beach. That information can help a lot.
If you do not have good information on the likely distribution of targets when you begin the hunt, you might first want to gather information by doing a little sampling. I've called it sampling. You might think of it as prospecting. After gathering that initial information, you might then well decide to turn up the discrimination after gathering that information. Or you might decide to not use discrimination. There is little to be gained and possibly something lost by discriminating where there is very little to discriminate. Don't just do it by habit. Check first. Information is important for making good decisions about whether you should discriminate and how much you should discriminate.
There are a number of factors to be considered. The size of the accessible search zone, time available and the number and distribution of good targets and junk are just a few.
When I talk about the likely distribution of targets as determined from prior research, past experience and/or sampling, it would be much simpler if all good targets had the same value, but we know that some good targets are much more valuable than others. You might want to dig all coins, for example, but some coins are much more valuable than others. Or you might want to dig all gold, but even gold targets can vary widely in value. Not only is the number of good versus junk targets an important consideration, but so is the value of various targets and the distribution of targets of various values.
The value of an object is somewhat subjective. When digging targets you might not know the value of some finds until long after the find has been made, yet you have a feeling about the objects you dig.
Your personality and your goals will have a lot to do with your decision to discriminate and how much. Some people hate digging junk. If they have to dig a lot of junk, they rather not hunt. Never mind that they might be skipping over some very valuable finds. You have to take your personality and goals into account. Some people have less patience and less frustration tolerance. Nonetheless, in the future I'll try to discuss the relative benefits and risks of discrimination in an numbers-based risk versus rewards fashion.
I've told this story before, but it is especially relevant for this discussion. When I was focusing on gold rings down south, for a while my goal was to find as many gold rings as I could. One easy measure of success I used was the number of gold rings found in specific period of time. I knew my average for a month and how long on average it took me to find one. That was a measure that I didn't use as much when I began to take into account the value of finds. One ring could be more valuable than many other rings.
At that time I'm talking about I was using the Fisher Aquanaut 1280, and finding good numbers of gold rings, but I wondered why men lost so many more gold rings than women. At that time I was finding a lot more men's rings than women's rings. I later learned that it wasn't that men lost so many more rings. I was finding the bigger rings rather than the smaller women's rings because I was using discrimination. When I quit using discrimination, I started to find more of the smaller gold rings with valuable gem stones. How many did I miss before turning down my discrimination? I'll never know. As I recently explained, you can miss a lot without realizing it. You can feel good about what you found and not know what all you missed. You might conclude that there was simply nothing good to be found. I learned something important when I learned that I was missing the smaller rings because of discrimination. Your behavior might be more affected by the pulltab you saw rather than the valuable item you missed.
I need to quit there for today, but in future posts I'll get more into the affect of different decision strategies for using discrimination.
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The tides are moderate.
The surf is one to two feet today, but increasing slightly tomorrow.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
I'm still digging iron and things on the Indian River Ridge site. Nothing exciting, yet I continue to learn from the experience.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net