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Treasures of the sea * Updated Jul 30 one last time *
Zot
Posts: 825 ✭✭✭
*** Final update ***
This is the final bump of my little water hunting adventure.
The MXT is screaming for attention, and I wouldn't mind staying on dry land for some old coins myself.
Autumn is quickly coming too, so I've packed up the water machine. Will have another go next June
Here's the last round of finds:
* 18k gold ring, 5.67 grams. Ring is made in 1918
* 3 silver rings (2 * 0.925, 1 * 0.813)
Total water finds from the past three weeks (9 gold, 8 silver):
On the gold side, I have the following:
37.65 grams in 18k gold (after deducting an estimated 1.5 grams for the stone in one of the rings)
10.23 grams in 14k gold
--> 34.22 grams (1.10 oz) gold weight. At current spot of $635/oz, this results in about $700 bullion value.
This distribution of 18k vs. 14k is quite unusual. It's caused by the numerous 1910's/1920's rings I've found, several of which quite close together.
This is largely thanks to a discussion with an elderly gentleman I had while land detecting last summer, as he pointed out things that led me to search closely in this area. Almost none of the old gold rings were "easy" targets - most of them only gave faint signals and I had to dig big time to get to them.
Besides jewelry and coins (only 1900's, oldest one was 1909), I picked up all sorts of random stuff as well. Like this:
* Bullet casing (made in 1916). Found tons of these, but kept this particular one due to being slightly older and with nice markings
* Toy airplane with German markings
* Hair pin
* Several numbered tags
* Fishing lures
* Gearshift knob (4 forward gears + reverse). What on earth was this one doing in nearly 5 foot deep water far from shore...?
* Two horsemen (heads missing as usual)
Happy hunting!
-Z
PS. Dubba - thanks for the info on the belly button thing! Hmm.... I wonder if I shouldn't make an extra effort in getting in touch with the owner of this particular find... Such a shame they don't come with phone numbers engraved...
*** update Jul 19 ***
Got myself a few more
I think I'm getting the hang of this water machine now!
18k gold Ring is made in 1963
18k gold Ring is made in 1926. Huge ring, very heavy!!
18k gold Ring is made in 1920
Gold ring
Now then, this one has me really excited! It came out of the water shining like only gold can.
It was of irregular shape though, far from perfectly round. It's fairly small but not extremely so; I can easily fit in properly on my little finger (but not on my ring finger).
I was looking for a hallmark but instead found some crude engravings inside. No chance of reading them until i got home.
This is when things got exciting. Here's a composite image of the inside of the ring.
It's Swedish and reads: Eirik..died..19 July..1725.
It looks like a previous inscription has been removed and replaced by this. The "5" at the end appears to first have been written partly on top of some sort of marking and doesn't show properly - therefore another 5 has been added at the end? Eirik is a man's first name.
One can come up with different theories, but the immediate one to me would be a husband having died and the widow either having worn this ring with a new inscription (and lost it in the water), or having disposed of the ring on purpose.
The potential age of this thing, combined with it being gold, is such that I'll have to have some more knowledgeable people look at it.
I suppose it could be my best find to date..
14k gold
14k gold
14k gold
Extremely thin, weighs almost nothing. It's 14k though, and gave me the rush of seeing gold gleaming in my scoop
Sterling silver
Sterling silver
*** original post Jul 9 ***
I've planned to use my water machine a bit more for a while now.
The recent warm weather (and water) provided a good opportunity for this. Straight to the finds, most of which are from water between knee and waist deep. Nice variation from land hunting!
I'm quite pleased with the results and will probably try to add to these in the near future.. (tomorrow to be exact, as I'm on vacation this week )
18k gold
Ha! Finally a bump from the standard 14k. This one is a bit older too; it has the date January 22, 1913 engraved into it. This checks out with the date stamp, where "H5" stands for 1913.
I find plenty of 1920's coins on this beach, so chances are that this ring was lost a long time ago. The bottom was quite hard where I found it, which may have prevented it from sinking even deeper.
Apparently it had been in the wild for so long that it was refusing to be captured, escaping my scoop several times before I got it. I was grinning quite a bit for a while afterwards, probably leading some early swimmers to question my mental stability..
These are soooo sweet to find!! Quite yellow color on this particular ring.
The ring is small, but it's thick! It weighs in at 9 grams (clearly the heaviest gold band I've found), so at current gold spot of $632/oz, the gold content is worth about $137 
(quite an academic calculation really, as it won't get melted anyway)
Then the silver department:
Sterling silver ring (no engravings)
Sterling silver ring
"Best Class of 01" (ugghhh..) The engraving mentions a museum of modern art (located in the center of the city), and the date 31 May 2010 - presumably the plan for a class reunion.
These junk rings (although this is an exceptionally vulgar example, but it's silver - so I'm not complaining) are the rule rather than exception among kids over here... I've had one as well (although I never wore it).
No names are engraved in these, although I'm sure the owner wouldn't be too interested in having it back anyway..
Sterling silver flower with stones This has been attached to something else..
When finding these, I picked up a bunch of coins as well. While most of these sea salvaged coins are toast, a few surprisingly nice examples can be found.
Those are currently in olive oil, so I'll save them for another post
Thanks for looking!
Happy hunting!!!
-Z
This is the final bump of my little water hunting adventure.
The MXT is screaming for attention, and I wouldn't mind staying on dry land for some old coins myself.
Autumn is quickly coming too, so I've packed up the water machine. Will have another go next June
Here's the last round of finds:
* 18k gold ring, 5.67 grams. Ring is made in 1918
* 3 silver rings (2 * 0.925, 1 * 0.813)
Total water finds from the past three weeks (9 gold, 8 silver):
On the gold side, I have the following:
37.65 grams in 18k gold (after deducting an estimated 1.5 grams for the stone in one of the rings)
10.23 grams in 14k gold
--> 34.22 grams (1.10 oz) gold weight. At current spot of $635/oz, this results in about $700 bullion value.
This distribution of 18k vs. 14k is quite unusual. It's caused by the numerous 1910's/1920's rings I've found, several of which quite close together.
This is largely thanks to a discussion with an elderly gentleman I had while land detecting last summer, as he pointed out things that led me to search closely in this area. Almost none of the old gold rings were "easy" targets - most of them only gave faint signals and I had to dig big time to get to them.
Besides jewelry and coins (only 1900's, oldest one was 1909), I picked up all sorts of random stuff as well. Like this:
* Bullet casing (made in 1916). Found tons of these, but kept this particular one due to being slightly older and with nice markings
* Toy airplane with German markings
* Hair pin
* Several numbered tags
* Fishing lures
* Gearshift knob (4 forward gears + reverse). What on earth was this one doing in nearly 5 foot deep water far from shore...?
* Two horsemen (heads missing as usual)
Happy hunting!
-Z
PS. Dubba - thanks for the info on the belly button thing! Hmm.... I wonder if I shouldn't make an extra effort in getting in touch with the owner of this particular find... Such a shame they don't come with phone numbers engraved...
*** update Jul 19 ***
Got myself a few more
I think I'm getting the hang of this water machine now!
18k gold Ring is made in 1963
18k gold Ring is made in 1926. Huge ring, very heavy!!
18k gold Ring is made in 1920
Gold ring
Now then, this one has me really excited! It came out of the water shining like only gold can.
It was of irregular shape though, far from perfectly round. It's fairly small but not extremely so; I can easily fit in properly on my little finger (but not on my ring finger).
I was looking for a hallmark but instead found some crude engravings inside. No chance of reading them until i got home.
This is when things got exciting. Here's a composite image of the inside of the ring.
It's Swedish and reads: Eirik..died..19 July..1725.
It looks like a previous inscription has been removed and replaced by this. The "5" at the end appears to first have been written partly on top of some sort of marking and doesn't show properly - therefore another 5 has been added at the end? Eirik is a man's first name.
One can come up with different theories, but the immediate one to me would be a husband having died and the widow either having worn this ring with a new inscription (and lost it in the water), or having disposed of the ring on purpose.
The potential age of this thing, combined with it being gold, is such that I'll have to have some more knowledgeable people look at it.
I suppose it could be my best find to date..
14k gold
14k gold
14k gold
Extremely thin, weighs almost nothing. It's 14k though, and gave me the rush of seeing gold gleaming in my scoop
Sterling silver
Sterling silver
*** original post Jul 9 ***
I've planned to use my water machine a bit more for a while now.
The recent warm weather (and water) provided a good opportunity for this. Straight to the finds, most of which are from water between knee and waist deep. Nice variation from land hunting!
I'm quite pleased with the results and will probably try to add to these in the near future.. (tomorrow to be exact, as I'm on vacation this week
)18k gold
Ha! Finally a bump from the standard 14k. This one is a bit older too; it has the date January 22, 1913 engraved into it. This checks out with the date stamp, where "H5" stands for 1913.
I find plenty of 1920's coins on this beach, so chances are that this ring was lost a long time ago. The bottom was quite hard where I found it, which may have prevented it from sinking even deeper.
Apparently it had been in the wild for so long that it was refusing to be captured, escaping my scoop several times before I got it.
I was grinning quite a bit for a while afterwards, probably leading some early swimmers to question my mental stability..These are soooo sweet to find!! Quite yellow color on this particular ring.
The ring is small, but it's thick! It weighs in at 9 grams
(clearly the heaviest gold band I've found), so at current gold spot of $632/oz, the gold content is worth about $137 (quite an academic calculation really, as it won't get melted anyway)
Then the silver department:
Sterling silver ring (no engravings)
Sterling silver ring
"Best Class of 01" (ugghhh..) The engraving mentions a museum of modern art (located in the center of the city), and the date 31 May 2010 - presumably the plan for a class reunion.
These junk rings (although this is an exceptionally vulgar example, but it's silver - so I'm not complaining) are the rule rather than exception among kids over here... I've had one as well (although I never wore it).
No names are engraved in these, although I'm sure the owner wouldn't be too interested in having it back anyway..
Sterling silver flower with stones This has been attached to something else..
When finding these, I picked up a bunch of coins as well. While most of these sea salvaged coins are toast, a few surprisingly nice examples can be found.
Those are currently in olive oil, so I'll save them for another post
Thanks for looking!
Happy hunting!!!
-Z
Minelab: GPX 5000, Excalibur II, Explorer SE. White's: MXT, PI Pro
0
Comments
<<probably leading some early swimmers to question my mental stability..>>
That gold ring is very cool looking.
Glad to see you back Zot. We've missed your posts!
HH, Rick
Let's see what you've got for this month....!
But... I hope that the encouragement doesn't mean kicking the proverbial sleeping dog, meaning that we'll promptly return to the usual sequence of "taking turns" with gold finds. Like this:
...
Rick
Rick
Rick
Rick
Rick
Zot
Rick
Rick
Rick
Rick
Rick
Zot..
It's been awhile since I've found gold so I think your list/record may be backwards!
Zot, are you sure that this is a date? 22/7 is Pi. While I can’t figure out why you would stick Pi in between “19” and “13”, it might not be a date. Of course, then again, it might be. I can't make out the symbols in the upper right-hand picture.
<< <i>Zot, are you sure that this is a date? 22/7 is Pi. While I can’t figure out why you would stick Pi in between “19” and “13”, it might not be a date. Of course, then again, it might be. I can't make out the symbols in the upper right-hand picture. >>
Yes, that's a date for sure. No doubt whatsoever. This is a woman's ring by the way (there's a man's name (first name only) engraved before the date)
It's not 22/7, but 22/1 (a seven would have a crossbar in it as well, compare to 19 and 13..)
The rightmost part of the hallmark is the date stamp, in this case "H5", which means the ring was made in 1913. This matches the engraved date.
I am Looking to Buy California Tokens too.
That's a superb ring!
Very cool finds!!
Zot
Zot
Zot
Zot
Zot
Rick
Zot
Zot
Zot
Zot
Zot
That's awesome... love that old one too... lots of history behind that one
Did you dig a lot of trash to get these?
Congrats!
It's amusing when you post it as it gives me the vivid image of a mighty cat having its tail stepped on
Rick: Not too much trash. The stats are probably a bit skewed as I think I finally found the end of an old water slide, having run from some nearby cliffs down into the water.
Found the two recent 1920's rings close together and a third ring close by as well.
There are still signals there too...
Here are some approximate stats:
Gold : total targets 1:47
Gold : coins 1:20
Good targets : Trash 1:1
(Edited to say Good targets : trash, not good targets : total targets)
About your revised list: I'm sure it's a temporary glitch in the system...
While the glitch lasts, however, you'll have to hurry to get those "Rick"s in, as I'll be out for more in short order myself
On your Swedish 1725 ring, that looks like a makers mark--maybe "OM"-- to the left of the "5",
Jerry
Unreal Zot! I'm sure there are more to be found!
Good luck!
Let's see... who sucks more this month, Mister 1794-half-cent-Millennium, or Mister-1725-gold-ring-Zot?
I think this calls for a poll.
Great find's,now get back to that beach for more!!HH,Tom
700 in BV.... I'd call this a good month
Definately an outstanding month you've had.
It's so hot here...I'm thinking of doing a water hunt myself.
looks like a belly button ring
That cat pic totally caught me off guard and hit a funny bone!!!
(thanks Tim, I needed the laugh!)
Had to show my wife and this is how she described Tim's cat pic:
"looks like the kitty is getting 'goosed'!"
haha
That's an awesome end to your summer/water hunting and will be tough to beat. Lots of fun memories for you I'm sure. You'll need to keep us posted on what they find out about that oldest ring...
(great final group shot by the way
Now go get some of those old silver coins (or a gold?
HH, Rick