Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Silver Bracelet With Moonstones Find. |
It seems that with treasure hunting, there is always something new, and that something new might also be mystifying.
After getting over my recent nail in the foot injury, I got out for a while and found a small bracelet that bears a very small "GS" stamped mark on the inside. I don't recall ever having seen that mark before, but maybe I just forgot. Anyhow, I looked it up and found an ambiguous meaning. I found that it means either "gold shell" or "genuine silver."
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| Small GS mark on Bracelet. |
I didn't find it listed on a lot of what I'd consider the better sites, and the two very different meanings don't give much confidence. Thankfully an acid tests confirms that the item is silver, and I don't see any traces of silver overlay.
It is hard to imagine that I found a mark that I haven't seen before after all these years and find it more likely that I just forgot or didn't know what I meant if I found it before. There is some remote possibility that the mark is something else such as a maker's initials, but I find it hard to believe that such a heavy piece of silver wouldn't have a silver mark of some sort. Why the mark is GS rather than some of the other more familiar silver marks is a question that remains.
What do you think?
As is often the case, while researching the GS mark, I found a very good and extensive list of jewelry abbreviations that you might find useful. Here is the link.
List of Standard Jewelry Abbreviations With Meanings | YourDictionary
By the way, one mark that is not to be found in that list is "GS."
,925 oz. That's a coincidence.
From the weight, and assuming pure silver, it would be worth nearly thirty dollars of silver at the current spot price.
It gave a terrible signal. The numbers jumped all over the place. It has an odd shape and a big break. If it was an unbroken circle, I suspect the signal would have been good. Placing it on end so the flat surface faced the coil resulted in strong 29/30 conductivity numbers.
The next step is to determine the stone. I think they are moonstone, which seem to commonly be used with silver jewelry.
That opened up a strange search that resulted in a lot of questions. One site said moonstones could be found in Florida, but another site said they weren't found in Florida. One site said moonstones are Florida's state stone as of 1970 to acknowledge NASA and the moon landings. Other sites in which I have more confidence (including the Florida DOS site) list agatized coral as the state stone. You really have to exercise discernment when using the internet.
The name moonstone derives from the stone's characteristic visual effect, called adularescence (or schiller), which produces a milky, bluish interior light. This effect is caused by light diffraction through alternating layers of orthoclase and albite within the stone. The diffracted light varies from white to blue, depending on the thinness of the albite layers.[1] More technically, this micro-structure consists of regular exosolution layers (lamellae) of different alkali feldspars (orthoclase and sodium-rich plagioclase).(wikipedia). |
| Source: nhc.noaa.gov. |
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| Source: Surfguru.com. |