8/17/26 Report - Investigating Some Unidentified Coin Finds. Cleaning and Surprise Discovery. Coin Quiz.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

I had some little bags of wheat pennies separated by decade sitting around that I never checked with the microscope for errors or anything interesting.  When I looked at the group of 1950s coins, I didn't find anything interesting - not even any die chips on the reverse.  Die chips are common on wheat pennies, but this group had none.

I had some older wheaties to check, but I noticed some other coins that hadn't been checked, and they looked more interesting, so I decided to look at them next.  I noticed the small coin above and didn't know anything about it.  Before I go any farther, see if you can you guess what it is.  I'll give you the answer below.

Among the other coins I decided to check, there were a couple about the size of a dime that were worn and encrusted, and I didn't know what they were either. 

Here is the first of those.  

Unidentified Coin Find.

This one has the same kind of crust as a Potosi half reale I once found but this coin doesn't look silver.   It has a very hard sand/shell crust, but unlike the crust on my half reale, it doesn't cover the entire side.  It looks like there is some lettering that I can't really read.

Here is the half reale with a similar hard crust before it was cleaned.

Sand and Shell Encrusted Half Reale.

You can see more about that half reale in this old post.  The Treasure Beaches Report Direct From Florida's Treasure Coast.: 3/15/20 Report - Metal Detecting on South Florida's Crowded Beaches. Thoughts on Mystery Find.

I put the coin that needed cleaning along with another in vinegar. 

After a couple hours I checked the coin to see if I could see any more of the detail.  I could now see Roosevelt on the obverse and the edge.  It is clad.  Too bad.

I'm was surprised that the crusts on the silver reale and clad dime were so similar.  I'm still interested to see if the sand/shell crust will be removed by soaking longer in vinegar.  I probably cleaned the half reale using Muriatic acid.

I did find something interesting on another coin that initially looked like it might be a dime though.

Here it is.  Take a look at this coin.  Do you see anything?

Unidentified Coin.

I drew an arrow to point out appeared to me to be the number 3.  I thought maybe it was part of a date..  

Then without moving the coin or the microscope, I adjusted the microscope to get optimal focus.  It looked like the 3 disappeared.  

Below is a enlarged view of the area where I saw the 3.

Where did it go?  If you look just above the center of the photo, the area that looked like a 3 now doesn't look much of anything.  If I was forced to see something in it, I'd say maybe it looks something like an? "S."

The interesting thing to me is that by improving the focus what appeared to me to be a clear figure disappeared.  That really surprised me.  And that is very instructive.  It says something about the process of perception and how we can get fooled. 

If I was a young man in an academic environment again, that would be a research interest that I'd pursue.  We are always working a field of some degree of ambiguity and uncertainty but form a picture or story in which we can have varying degrees of confidence.  That is the same thing we do when we try to identify a find or buried target by looking at a metal detector display.  We attempt to extract signal from noise and put things together to reach a conclusion often having more than the deserved amount of confidence in our interpretation.  New detail or additional clarification can prove us wrong and confuse us when we were overconfident in a previous conclusion.

When I improved my focus, I actually saw less because what I saw at first was wrong.  I'm sure that happens to us a lot, but we fail to improve our view and correct our impressions.

Something similar happened when quantum physics was discovered.  When we got a better look at very small things, classic physics failed to provide a satisfying interpretation of how things work.  When we got a better look at subatomic particles, we saw electrons that didn't seem to act like particles.  Instead. they could be seen as acting more like fields or waves.  

The perceived is not independent of the observer.  A closer look provides a different view.  Old views become myth.  And the beat goes on.

Looks like I've been led back to where I ended up yesterday. 

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” — 2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV)

Funny thing is that when I started yesterday's post, I didn't know where I was headed until I got there, and the same thing happened today.  I was led to the same conclusion when I had no idea that was where I was going.  

---

Now to wind it up - back to the coin shown at the top of this post.  

It is a 10 Kopek Russian coin with a Moscow mint mark. 

The coin is magnetic and has a steel core.

---

Nothing interesting on the National Hurricane Center Atlantic map.

The surf is still very small.

The salvage season has been a good long one.

Good hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net