Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
Few moments in American monetary history caused more disruption than the years after California’s gold discoveries. The flood of new gold upset the long-standing ratio between gold and silver. As a result, silver coins traded at $1.04 for every gold dollar. That gap looked small. However, it created a real crisis. Silver coins vanished from circulation because people hoarded them.
Congress stepped in with the Coinage Act of 1853. Lawmakers lowered the weights of the half dime, the dime, the quarter, and the half dollar. That change reduced their intrinsic value and pushed them back into circulation...
Still, the government needed a large silver coin that could compete with the Mexican peso. So, the Coinage Act of 1873 created the Trade dollar. That coin carried more silver than a traditional silver dollar...
On May 22, 1877, the Patent Office awarded Hubbell patent No. 191,146. Hubbell described goloid in exact terms. He wrote that it “consists of certain proportions of gold, silver, and copper. The exact and best proportions are one pound of gold, twenty-four pounds of silver, and two and a half pounds of copper [and] one grain of sulphate of sodium or sulphate of potassium to one thousand grains of the metal.”...
Goloid did not mark the first time coin makers combined gold and silver into a single composition. Today, numismatists know that alloy as electrum.
In fact, coinage first used that combination as early as the seventh century BCE. The most famous early examples came from Lydia. Those electrum issues spread across western Asia Minor, eastern ancient Greece, and the wider Mediterranean world over the next few centuries....
Goloid Dollar and the Crime of ’73: The Failed Coin Experiment
----
Scientists Made Something Out of Nothing. Literally.
Like ghosts in the void, virtual particles can materialize from (almost) nothing.
That is what it says.
Scientists Made Something Out of Nothing. Literally.
There is little honesty in titles anymore. Note the contrast between the word "literally" in the title and "almost" in the very next sentence.
I'm getting very tired of misleading titles and spun stories.
---
When I first started metal detecting I thought of it primarily in economic terms. Possibly a way to make a little extra change. I was finding coins, but not much more than pocket change. Taking expenses, including such things as the metal detector, gas and batteries, there was seldom any profit in it even though you could actually buy things in those days with a few coins. I think you could still buy a candy bar for a dime or maybe a quarter. As I've described before, at first I kept detailed records and totals for my coin finds. Before long I managed to find enough coins to pay for a new and better metal detector and found a few pieces of gold and other things every once in a while.
As I continued to improve, I began to target and find greater numbers of gold rings and jewelry. The price of both silver and gold fluctuated a good bit. Sometimes it seemed worth finding silver or gold and other times much less. I never planned to sell precious metals though, and put those finds away for the long term, for an emergency or maybe as part of a retirement program.
In 1990 the average value of gold was about $383.00 per ounce, which in 2026 dollars would be worth about $986 per ounce. But now the price of the same amount of gold is about five times greater, which makes finding gold seem much more worthwhile.
Another big change for me occurred when I moved from South Florida to the Treasure Coast. When I moved to the Treasure Coast I began focusing more on shipwreck artifacts rather than either coins or jewelry.
Of courses there were other changes too. On the Treasure Coast I also got into hunting old bottles. I only did that once when I was in South Florida and that was by accident. I just happened to find some old bottles when metal detecting after Hurricane Andrew. After moving to the Treasure Coast I started bottle hunting on a regular basis.
The same kind of thing happened with fossils, which i hunted quite a bit for a while on the Treasure Coast. My big introduction to that was by accident too. I found a lot of fossils one day after a storm metal detecting on the Treasure Coast.
I often talk about the seasons and cycles of metal detecting. The way I looked at metal detecting when I began is very different from how I look at it now. Changes in beaches and changes in the values of metals also changed my approach at different times.
Not only has the world changed but I've changed and my life circumstances have changed as well. Now metal detecting plays a very different roll in my life than when I began. There was a time when it was primarily an economic activity. and a time when I hit it hard really hard and tried to see how far I could take it. Now it is very different for me. Now it is more about recreation and education. I look at it more like a relaxing game that peaks and satisfies my curiosity.
This blog plays a big role. I started it when circumstances gave me different priorities. The blog has added another aspect to my detecting. Now I blog more than I detect. It takes time to do this nearly every day, but it makes me think it out more clearly and in more detail in order to communicate my thoughts.
I had jobs that provided many of the same satisfactions. I enjoyed research, consulting and teaching and those jobs allowed me a lot of spare time and actually took me different places where I could metal detect. So it all worked out very well.
Everybody is different. Their circumstances are different. They have different personalities, characteristics, abilities and situations, but for each, there is a different role that metal detecting can play.
---
 |
| Fort Pierce South Beach Saturday. |
Even though the many of the snowbirds have gone home there were still a lot of beachgoers enjoying the beautiful days. Take a look up the beach in the picture above. Might be some new drops out there.
We're having some nice negative low tides. The Sunday afternoon low tides is supposed to be a negative .85. You don't get that real often.
The Fort Pierce North causewayy appears to be nearing completion.
Looks like we'll also have a nice bump in the surf around Monday.
 |
| Surf Chart from SurfGuru.com. |
It will be a quick one though
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net