Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Tuesday's Metal Detecting Finds. |
In Tuesday's post I pointed out that there was some beach erosion, and I showed a beach cam view of a cut south of the Fort Pierce inlet.
I always liked rainy days. One of the reasons is that I've had way too much sun over the years for my skin type and try to limit my sun exposure.
First, I stopped at John Brooks beach. Here is what that looked like.
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| John Brooks Tuesday Around Noon. |
John Brooks looked very much like the last time I was there several days ago except the scallops were even smaller.
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| John Brooks Around Noon Tuesday. |
I did a quick scan at Brooks, but it didn't seem very promising. I wasn't going to spend a lot of time at the beach, so I moved north a ways.
A fellow that has been a regular at that beach was hard at work and I could tell by his tracks had already spent some good time there. I went the other direction.
One of my early finds there was what I'm pretty sure is a silver dime although I couldn't see the coin at all because of a heavy black crust. It is being cleaned now. The crust is really solid, and it looks like I might have to resort to electrolysis again. After an hour or so, very little progress was made by the vinegar. Still, I'm only guessing that it is a dime.
There were a good number of coins. I felt like there was a lot more there, but I only stayed around an hour or probably a bit less.
It was interesting detecting. All the coins were well seasoned and there were some odd little bits of metal that I'll have to clean and give another look. I think the silver dime is probably the oldest of the day. The dime was encouraging and I hoped to find some more older stuff and maybe something much older.
I found two rings. One is junk and the other marked 14K.
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| Found Ring Marked 14 Kt. |
In the find photo at the top of this post, the gold ring doesn't show up well against the coins, but it is there.
By the way, the 1.9 gram gold ring only showed a 13 on the detector's conductivity scale, so beware of smaller items like that. They can give some low conductivity numbers.
Overall, the hunt left me with two major impressions. One is that there was a lot of good targets and some interesting detecting out there on the beach, and I could have, and perhaps should have, spent a lot more time before quitting. The other fellow had already spent some good time detecting before I arrived and was still hard at work when I left.
My other big impression was about the Manticore. I was impressed once again. The Manticore has impressed me more than any metal detector I've tried in the last thirty or more years and is close to becoming my new all-time favorite. I almost hate to say this because I don't want to sound like I'm doing an ad or anything like that, but that detector keeps impressing me. It was detecting small bits, and detecting deep items and it provided good target information, and all that with just the general beach settings. I'm not saying that there aren't better detectors out there because I haven't tried many of them, but this detector has impressed me. I'd guess I've used it on the beach maybe ten or twelve times and haven't spent a huge amount of time with it, and I've not spent a lot of time optimizing settings or anything. It has been both easy and effective.
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I've talked before about the target information it provides (the target ID map is nice), but the information is only as good as how you use it. You can have good information, but you still have to make good decisions based upon that information. The small ring is a good example. People who only dig strong coin signals could have easily passed up a target giving such a low conductivity number. Discrimination is risky business. And you never find out what you passed up. That is why I recommend at least occasionally digging a wider range of signals. A 13 can be a lot of things. And some of them - like the ring - are good. It did show as a solid disc shaped object on the middle line of the target ID map, so I figured it was not iron, but it could have been a piece of foil or a small slice of copper, or something like that. Even with all the information provided by the detector, there is still a range of uncertainty and the possibility of making a wrong decision both type 1 and type 2 errors. No matter what the detector does for you, your decision making still plays a major role. I also found a greater than normal number of nickels, which is often an indication of other detectorists discriminating. There is a good chance the other fellow had been over the area where the ring was found and either missed it or passed it up. There were no coins around it, and it was very near where you walk onto the beach.
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I noticed that some how I ended up with two 3/3/26 posts. It looks like I did two posts yesterday or something. I don't know how that happened, but if you saw one of them, I just wanted you to know there are two.
I hope to get the dime or whatever it is cleaned enough to see what it actually is. I'll post it when I can tell. If I have to resort to electrolysis, it might take a while. I still haven't finished one object I started to do electrolysis on back a couple months ago. Got interrupted and never got back to it yet.
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A Mexican cartel boss was buried in a gold coffin.
Hmmmm.
I guess the ancient practice of burying high status people with their gold is still around. It would seem they'd have to guard against grave looting.
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| Surf Chart from SurfGuru.com. |
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
