Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| 1600s Eight Maravedi Found by Detectorist. |
17th century Spanish coin found in ‘Diamond Don’s RV Park’
Metal detectorists in Texas discovered the nearly 350 year old artifact by accident.
A couple staying at a motorhome resort in Marion County, Texas recently made a surprise discovery–with origins dating back nearly 350 years. While casually scanning the grounds of Diamond Don’s RV Park roughly 165 miles east of Dallas, David Durocher and his partner stumbled on a well-preserved Spanish Maravedis coin minted in 1661. But speaking with local news outlet KLTV. Durocher explained the currency’s historical significance wasn’t immediately apparent.
“We were sitting outside the trailer here and I was going through the stuff that we had been detecting and for some reason she went over by the car,” he recounted on June 17. “A few minutes later she came back and handed me this thing.”
At first glance, Durocher thought the find was simply a discarded car wash token. However, a closer look confirmed the coin’s origins traced back nearly 247 years before the Ford Model-Ts 1908 debut.
“Man, this is a Spanish 8 Maravedis! Where did it come from?” he added.
Here is the link for more of that story.
https://apple.news/AQQ1_wChEQqmI0GzuuphNJg
Thanks to DJ for that link.
Things can be found in the most unexpected places, which is good enough reason to be out there searching. In addition to the satisfaction of finds made as the result of successful analysis and strategy, there is also the fun of the most unexpected finds.
When you feel like doing a little metal detecting but don't feel like running to the beach, don't neglect the area right around you. You never know.
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Above is a graph showing the usage of the term "metal detector" over time. In this case the graph shows the period from 1500 to 2022.
The vertical axis shows the relative frequency of that word or phrase in Google's book corpus. It’s measured as a percentage of all the words in all the books published that year—so a value like 0.0001% means the word made up that proportion of all words used in the books from that specific year.
We can see from the graph that the word "metal detector' stated to appear in books ever so slightly before 1940 but didn't really get a lot of usage until around 1950 and then really took off after that.
Sorry that I couldn't get the graphs to appear more clearly.
Here is another graph. This one looks at the frequency of the terms "Mel Fisher," "Treasure Coast," relative to metal detector.
The top line is for the term "metal detector." There was a bump followed by a little dip before the big increase. I saw the same thing with the term "artificial intelligence." You can see that below.
There was a blip in around the eighties and nineties followed by a dip before the big increase. That is typical with technologies. There is the discovery and the excitement and promise followed by a little period before the technology is widely adopted and refined.
But back to the previous graph, the use of the terms Mel Fisher and Treasure Coast appear to be correlated to a fair degree. I can't explain the decrease in the term "Treasure Coast" after 2000. Neither can I explain the peak in the term "metal detector," which shows at around 2015. It could be due to a variety of factors, perhaps linguistic changes such as people referring to specific detectors rather than the general class or something else.
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Give you neck a little break.
Here is a list of the 2025 Cape Canaveral launches.
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If you do any bottle hunting, a lot of the bottles you find might be vintage but of no real value. There are many ways to use those old bottles though.
Here is a list of sixteen ways to upcycle glass bottles and jar.s
I've converted some into Christmas ornaments. These glass salt shakers could be converted very easily.
The first was found with the top so all that was necessary was to insert a loop. A paint or better yet, Mirror Effect, could be used to make it shiny bright. People might think of painting the outside of the bottle, but putting the paint inside the bottle and swirling around actually creates a very pretty effect with the clear glass surface remaining on the outside.
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| Two Found Round Shakers. |
I've converted larger bottles for outside ornaments.
And then there are outdoors bottle trees, that have an interesting history as spirit trees like the one below.
All I'm saying is think about what you can do with some of those bottles that have no collector value but might be useful in a variety of other ways. Just think about it before tossing them in the recylce bin.
Many bottle hunters cut their embossed but broken bottles into tumblers or whatever.
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| Clip from Sebastian Beach Cam. |
Notice the small waves breaking on the flat sand that has accumulated in front of the beach over the past couple of months.
The surf will be only one or two feet for the next week. We are still have a decent low tide near mid-day.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
