Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Union of North America Amero Coins. |
JamminJack recently sent me pictures of some Amero coins. It seems that a private individual (David Carr) produced some of these as early as 2005. On his web site he said the reason he produced the coins was to draw attention to the possibility of such a union and he wanted to give people the opportunity to voice their opinion one way or another. He said he was against it. It seems to me that his intent could have been to sell coins, and he does indeed have a web site to do that.
Of course, there are conspiracy theories, and I have no idea if there have been any serious official discussion of such a union or not. Some sources, such as one radio program, claimed that such coins have been produced by the U.S. Mint, however I have found no convincing evidence of that.
I think others have produced similar coins, and I read somewhere that China has obtained images of the coins and might well produce them just as they produce counterfeits of so many other coins..
While I do not consider Wikipedia to be the best of authorities, here is what they say about the Amero coins.
Amero coins[edit]
In August 2007, rumors and conspiracy theories began circulating across the Internet regarding alleged United States Treasury-issued amero coins.
The inspiration behind these rumors may have been the posting of images of medallions created by coin designer Daniel Carr.[1] Carr, who designed the New York and Rhode Island 2001 statehood quarters, sells medals and tokens of his own design on his commercial website, "Designs Computed" (also known as "DC Coin").[1] Among his designs are a series of gold, silver and copper fantasy issues of amero coins ranging in denomination from one to one thousand.[1] The medallions have the legend "Union of North America" on the back with his company's logo, a stylized "DC",[24] in small type.[25] Concerning his amero designs, he mentions on his website:
At this point I would consider amero coins to be fantasy coins despite whatever conspiracy theories may be circulating.
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It is much better to learn how to use your metal detector at home or in practice sessions instead of trying to learn on the fly and wasting your field time.
I mentioned that the Equinox is one of the only metal detectors that I've used mostly in a discrimination mode rather than an all-metals mode. In fact, I used all my previous Minelab detectors mostly in all-metals mode.
You might well wonder why anyone would operate in all-metals mode. There are places where I would not use all-metals mode, but on the beach you can often use all-metals to advantage.
You might find that you will get a couple more inches on coins by using all-metals mode. It will take time to learn how to identify signals from mineralization as distinct from signals from real targets, but with practice you can do it. Dont' expect it to come easy, especially if you are accustomed to discrimination modes. All-metals mode is different and requires new skills.
If nothing else, make sure you learn the basic icons and adjustments. If you are using an Equinox detector you should be sure to know these icons.
Pressing the first will give you access to the other adjustments. Pressing it once will allow you to do the noise cancel. Pressing the settings icon again will move you on to the next of the seven adjustments each time you press the setting icon.
I won't go into each one. But you should definitely know how to use these, although you may not use them all.
My main point is that you will be far ahead if you take the time to learn basics like these before going out to hunt. It doesn't matter what metal detector you are using, practice, practice, and practice with a selection of targets at home.
If you do use all-metals mode, besides possibly gaining some depth, you should realize that a fast sweep speed will not allow the detector to recover between targets. As I've said in the past, practice to learn the optimal sweep speed.
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I went looking for bottles once again Sunday afternoon. Once again, it didn't look very good. I didn't see much glass, but did manage to find a couple older bottles. They were not easy finds. Both were in murky water and mostly covered by seaweed. I cleaned a lot of the seaweed off of the Watkins bottle for the photo.
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| J. R. Watkins Bottle. Probably 1920s or 1930s |
The J. R. Watkins Company began in 1868 as a small home-based business in Plainview, Minnesota, founded by entrepreneur Joseph Ray Watkins.
Watkins distributed many different types of household products including cleaning products, food extracts and flavorings, cosmetics, home remedies, and other products. (They did not actually make the bottles in which these products were contained.) As business increased, in 1885 the company operations were moved from Plainview to Winona, Minnesota.
The very first bottles sold are assumed to date as far back as 1868, but I doubt that the very earliest containers were actually embossed with the “Watkins” name, but would have likely been “generic” hand blown bottles with a paper label affixed to indicate contents. (If anyone has more information on this, please contact me!)
By the very early 1870s, as business continued to expand, it is likely that bottles were being embossed with Watkins or “J. R. Watkins Co.” The earliest versions of the Watkins bottles were made in aqua glass, were handmade (with a tooled lip) and have the lip fashioned for a cork closure. Later versions (I don’t know the exact year, but probably by the 1920s or early 1930s) have a threaded-style lip for a screw-on lid.
There are probably hundreds of slightly different Watkins bottle mold variants in existence that have been used over the last 140 years, with a variety of differences in font style, exact wording arrangement, size and shape of the bottle, and I imagine it would be a monumental task to find just one example of every single one of them.
Many of the bottles from the 1920s-1940s are quite common, and are usually in clear glass and rectangular in shape. Sometimes the embossed company name is in a cursive font, and sometimes in a plain “block style lettering”. White milkglass salve or “ointment jars” were also sold.
Here is the link.J. R. Watkins Company, Winona, MN ~ vintage glass bottles ~ Information. (glassbottlemarks.com)