3/4/24 Report - 800-Year-Old Toy Horse and Other Artifacts Found. Two New Mystery Objects and Some Other Finds.

 

Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

800-Year-Old Toy Horse Found During Demolition.
Source: See MSN.com link below.

An 800-year-old toy horse (shown above) was among a trove of artifacts unearthed beneath a firehouse during a dig being conducted as the result of a demolition.

Within the first hour of the firehouse dig, the team unearthed the foundations of a Medieval tower, they said. Other finds included clay vessel fragments, a tsar's buckle, a knife sheath made of bone and an amber ring...

Here is the link for the rest of that story.

 800-Year-Old Toy Horse Among Trove of Artifacts Unearthed Beneath Polish Firehouse (msn.com)

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I took a little walk yesterday to look for bottles and things.  I searched the same area I've searched many times before and still manage to find some things on most of the time, but not every time.  I found nothing real exciting on the last couple of trips, but enough to tell me that it is still worth looking.

I didn't go as far as I planned,  It started raining and I didn't want to go too far away as the sky was threatening rain and possibly lightning, so I turned around and terminated the hunt earlier than expected.

First, I'll show a couple of metal mystery finds.  When I take walks for bottle hunts, I clear some of the metal junk when I am eyeballing because I might return to some of the more promising spots with a metal detector.

Here is the copper capsule shown below.  I don't know what it is.  It shows no marks, attachments or anything.  As you can see it is worn through and any marks or attachments that might have been there could have worn off.  IT appears to be full of mud, but I might try to open it.

Mystery Object.

What do you think it is?

If I can't get it open, I might break it open, and I'll probably find nothing other than mud.

The second metal item I took out was the following.  I don't think it should be difficult to ID, but I can't come up with it right now.  It looks like it was made for a strap.  Again, no surface details are visible.

Second Mystery Object of Recent Hunt.

In the photo it looks like might be rusted iron, but it is cuprous.  It feels like I should know what this is, but I can't come up with it right now.  Looks like a strap of some sort should go through it.  What do you think it is?

The first thing I picked up on that walk was the yellow cats-eye marble.  I call it a troll marble, because the attached seaweed when I picked it up looked like green hair sticking up.  

Yellow Cat-Eye Marble.

I also picked up this little old medicine bottle that once had a paper label.  It is embossed QUALITY and PURITY on one side.   You can't see that well in the photo.

Small Cork-Top Medicine Bottle Find..

The maker's mark on the bottom reads BLUE RIBBON, which indicates the Standard Glass Co. and a date range of 1908 - 1920s.  That is according to SHA.org.

A lot of the time you can get a good date range from the maker's mark on the bottom of a bottle.  I now pay a lot of attention to the glass itself.  Old glass will generally be thicker, more irregular, and show bubbles.  You can tell a lot by looking at the glass.  You can see how the glass was manipulated.  And there are other signs, such as the color.  Of course, there are also the seams and mold marks to inspect.

I also picked up another large Canada Dry bottle very much like the one I recently showed.  The embossing around the heal of the bottle is just a little different than the one I recently showed.  

Around the heal it reads CANADA DRY GINGER ALE COMPANY - CONTENTS 28 FLUID OZ.

The large Canada Dry bottle I previously showed reads CANADA DRY BOTTLING CO of FLORIDA INC. CONTENTS 1 PT 12 FL OZ. The difference in wording could be diagnostic.

I also found a little broken toy pitcher and a few other unremarkable things.  

Broken Little Toy Pitcher.

I picked up some copper wire and tubing.

Here are some recent scrap copper prices.

Not bad.

You can clean up the environment, prepare a site for metal detecting, and make a little in scrap at the same time.

Removing junk can help a lot.  You don't have to remove it all at once, but if you take out some junk each time you visit a beach that is junk you won't have to deal with on the next visit.

When eye-balling, any junk that attracts your eye could distract you from something better, so it is better to remove it.

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No significant change in conditions is expected.

Good hunting,

Treaureguide@comcast.net