Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
 |
| Gold Religious Pendant Found by John Berrier and Duke Long in 1989. Source: Treasure Magazine, June 1990. |
The above picture appears at the beginning of an 1990 Treasure Magazine article about a Fort Pierce Treasure Museum. The caption states that it held 54 pearls.
The treasure museum was a Mel Fisher museum that was at 2282 N. US 1. I don't remember ever seeing that museum. I guess that it was moved to Sebastian at some point.
Anyone remember the Fisher museum in Fort Pierce?
The article says that Fisher always wanted to have a museum in Fort Pierce because it is where he first started treasure hunting 1715 Fleet treasures in Florida. He moved to Fort Pierce in 1963. The upper part of the museum had an exhibit and the lower part contained a conservation lab.
Going back through these old magazines and research materials brings back a lot of memories.
Among those things was a book by Roy Volker and Dick Richmond, In the Wake of the Golden Galleons, published in 1976.
It is an interesting book that discusses some of the early treasure hunting along the Treasure Coast, Keys and elsewhere and how Roy got into diving and treasure hunting.
Roy Voker published a little map that was supposed to give the best beach metal detecting locations to find treasure coins. I think he lived in Texas at that time, but I saw an ad in a treasure magazine and purchased one. It didn't come and I called him up and told him I didn't recieve it. He promptly sent another.
When I got it, it wasn't very detailed, but it was helpful. It consisted of only five or six photocopied pages in a light card stock cover. It pointed to John Brooks or Frederick Douglass (I'm not sure which, or if it was both), Turtle Trail, Seagrape Trail, Wabasso, etc. I think I can still find it if I look for it.
It wasn't extensive, but if you can put yourself back in 1988 or thereabouts when you didn't have the internet and all of the information you have today, for a person that didn't live in the area, it was helpful enough just to know where the treasure beaches were, even if there wasn't a lot of details. I think I knew about most of the treasure beaches at the time, but on my first several trips to the Treasure Coast didn't find and shipwreck coins and was not sure that I was a really on the right beaches, so Roy's map was a help. I eventually found my first shipwreck silver at John Brooks beach, but it took a lot of trips. I didn't have nearly as much knowledge about the Treasure Coast or those beaches back then.
I can still remember that first silver found at John Brooks beach. It was near the high tide line not far from the beach access. I picked it up and my wife took it out of the scoop, looked at it and was ready to throw it away. I hollered "Wait, don't throw that away."
I couldn't tell if it was a reale or not. It was black and didn't show much, if any, detail, and not have handled any beach dug reales, I wasn't sure about it, but I did take it home and did a acid test to determine that it was silver. I wonder how many pieces of blackened silver got thrown away.
I remember some years later, after I was more experienced, I was hunting John Brooks and a couple fellows came along with a Garrett detector. I was using probably a Steve Noga or Herb MacDonald modified Nautilus. I used those detectors for a long time and they were very good. But the other guys had never found a reale and asked me some questions. I had been finding some half reales, once again, along, the high tide line, and showed them what a half looked like. They looked puzzled. It didn't look like the shiny silver eight-reale they were expecting. I don't think they were very impressed, but I told them where I was finding some, and they ended up finding a half reale. It was their first.
So, besides finding a lot of research materials in the box of stuff my wife found in the basements, I found a lot of memories. A lot of the people and events mentioned, have gone the way of the wind and have been forgotten about until I read something that brings them all back.
---
Gold prices have been high, but fell back a little in the past few days.
 |
| One Year Gold Prices. |
Above is the one year and most recent gold price.
Below is a five year chart to give a little more perspective.
 |
| Five Year Gold Price Chart. |
And below is a hundred year chart.
That gives the long term perspective, but you have to take into account the lower purchasing power of the dollar. A dollar today has a lot less purchasing power than a dollar ten, twenty or a hundred years ago.
---
 |
| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
The tides are pretty flat, but we'll be having a little higher surf. The wind has switched today.
---
I can't believe what is happening to Ukrainian women and children. That has really saddened me. And that is why I haven't been saying Happy Hunting. It seems so trivial and insignificant when such things are going on.
Pray and act.
Make your voice heard and do what you can.
Treasureguide@comcast.net