Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
An amateur metal detectorist in Denmark has unearthed a rare gold ring that may have belonged to a previously unknown royal family with ties to the Kingdom of France.
Lars Nielsen discovered the large, ornately decorated gold ring, set with a red semiprecious stone, while exploring Emmerlev, a parish in Southern Jutland, Denmark, according to a translated statement. The ring dates to the fifth or sixth century.
Here is the link.So what is the relevance forTreasure Coast detectorists?
Take a good luck at that ring. Look at the setting for the stone. That isn't how they set stones these days.
When you look at something like this and you have a date and know that the item is very old, look at the details and put it away in memory so the next time you are wondering if your ring find is old or new, you have some examples to go by. If you study a lot of examples of items of different ages, you might be able to better estimate the age of some of your finds.
There are always lessons to take away from the articles I post even if I don't always spell them out.
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Do you know how to figure out how much the gold in a find is worth? I know that a good number of you do, but there are some that don't.
Take the class ring I found a couple days ago as an example.
First of all, as you probably know, 24 karat gold is pure gold. For lower karat gold, alloys have been added.
10K is 10/24 or 41.7% gold.
14K is 14/24 or 58.3% gold.
18K is 18/24 or 75.0% gold.
22K is 22/24 or 91.6% gold.
The class ring I found a couple days ago weighs 0.186 troy ounces. Not avoirdupois but troy ounces.
Your scale might give you the weight in avoirdupois ounces, troy ounces, grams, penny weight, and maybe some more. My scale gives oz. and ozt. for avoirdupois and troy ounces.
If the item is not 24 K, only a portion of the weight is gold The rest will be the weight of the alloys.
The class ring was marked 10 K, which means it is only 41.7 % gold. So multiplying the weight of the ring, by the percent that is gold gives you (0.186 ozt. times 0.417) gives the gold weight as 0.07756 ozt.
The spot price for gold this morning, according to APMX, was $2028/ounce.
So 0.07756 ozt. times $2028 gives the value of the gold in the ring, which is $157.28.
You can do that a lot of different ways, but basically get the weight of the item in troy oz., adjust for the purity, or karat of the gold, and multiply by the current spot price of a troy ounce of gold.
Alternatively, you can google the price of 10 karat gold and cut out one of the above steps. I did that this morning and the price for an oz. of 10K gold was given as $845.09. That will change through the day as the price of gold is bid up and down.
But if you googled the price of 10K gold instead you don't have to get the spot price for an ounce of gold and then adjust for the karat value.
If you start with the googled value of an ounce of 10K gold ($845.09) and multiply times the weight of the gold in the item (.186), you still get $157.
Since they want to make a profit on the transaction, a pawn shop or jewelry store might give you only eighty percent of the value of the gold, which in the case of the class ring would be about $125.
For something like a class ring, though, you would do the research and return the ring to the owner instead.
I know that a lot of you already knew how to do that, but not everybody.
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Below are a couple Canada Dry bottles I found. The larger, pint sized, bottle has Canada Dry Bottling Co. of Florida embossed around the heal. The smaller bottle doesn't have that, but has a maker's mark on the bottom.
I'm trying to figure out the age of these bottles. So far, I haven't found matches. I've seen ACL bottles but haven't found bottles like these.
If you can find information on these bottles, I'd appreciate your help. They are undoubtedly 20th century.
I'd say they are ginger ale bottles, and the pint bottle probably a little older than the smaller bottle.
The crown cap closures were patented in 1887.
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| Large Canada Dry Bottle Showing CANADA DRY twice on shoulder and CANADA DRY BOTTLING CO of FLORIDA INC and CONTENTS 1 PINT 12 FLUID OZ around the heal. |
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| Pint CANADA DRY bottle (left) along with smaller CANADA DRY bottle |
The entire surface of both bottles is textured, which doesn't show well.
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| Smaller Bottle without embossing on heal. |
Thanks for your help.
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| Surf Chart from SurfGuru.com. |