Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Three Views of Same Coin. |
My wife was cleaning out a closet and came to me with this coin she found in the bottom of the closet. Evidently, I dropped it at some time. She asked me if it was a fake. As a practice exercise, what do you think?
You don't have a lot of the clues if you are trying to judge from a photo. Does it help me to tell you that it weighs 7.2 grams?
I have trouble telling from a photo, but I sometimes get photos and people ask that same question.
Of course one thing you do is look for a mold seam, which immediately tells you that it is a fake. In this case the coin is very thin and you can't see a mold seam from the photo, but with a loop, you can.
Besides the weight being way to light for either an eight reale or a four reale, the most obvious clue for me is the sound of the metal when the coin is dropped on a ceramic tile. It doesn't sound right at all.
Like I said at the beginning of this, sometimes it isn't easy to tell from just looking at a photo, but this one is a fake. Notice the thickness. It is very thin and regular in thickness.
Sometimes it is hard to say exactly what you are seeing, but sometimes a coin just doesn't look right. This one doesn't, but it doesn't sound right either. As they say, to learn to identify a fake or counterfeit, study the real thing. But you can't do that unless you have some to study.
If it was a real coin I probably wouldn't have been so careless as to drop it in the closet, but it is possible.
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| Illustration in Travels in North America During the Years 1834, 1835, and 1836. |
Books can be treasures, but they can also be great research resource for detectorists and treasure hunters. You can sometimes find valuable books for almost nothing if you look through thrift stores.
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Title Page of Travels in North America During the Years 1834, 1835, and 1836.
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As you can see this is an old book printed in 1839. It is a treasure worth good money, but it is also a good research resource.
The best books are sometimes old books. I like old books, but not just because they are old. Being old, they often have information that despite how much can be found online these days, old books often present information that is nearly impossible to find elsewhere. In some cases, you can find personal observations made centuries ago along with sketches and illustrations of places that have changed dramatically since the book was published.
It also seems that authors of past centuries used the language more effectively than most modern authors. You would be amazed by some of the old elementary and secondary school books how difficult the questions and exercises are. Most of today's college students could not answer questions that elementary school students were expected to answer a century or so ago.
Here is the title page of another old book with many hints and clues for the treasure hunter. The title is South Side View of Slavery: Three Months at the South in 1854.
Below is the title page of another nice old book, Travels in the Unites States 1849 and 1850.
A book like this will give you the way people viewed slavery back around the time of the civil war. Good reading.
But old books don't have to be real old to provide good information for the treasure hunter.
Here is an interesting one.
This one is not so old, but is a fairly rare book. The author provides a lot of local information on the area where he grew up along with personal sketches such as the one below.
Amos Lee Armstrong (1899 -1969), the author, is primarily known as an artist. You can find his artwork for sale online, but I can't find this book listed anywhere online, even Abebooks.com, which lists the vast majority of books both old and rare.
See if you can find it this book listed online anywhere.
Sometimes you can find reprints of old books, but they lack the feel of a genuine old book.
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The Treasure Coast surf will be only about one foot all this week. That is some nice calm water for treasure hunting.
There will be a slightly negative low tide in the early afternoon.
Good hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
