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Monday, February 16, 2015

Keep a lid on golden opportunities.

Every once in a beach or water hunting blue moon,  a jewelry hunter will run across perfect jewelry hunting conditions. 
The photo in todays blog shows a portion of a 50 pieces of gold jewelry haul I recovered back in 2012,  after Hurricane Sandy brushed past the Florida coastline on its way north. 


50 pieces of gold jewelry over a 20 day period of beach and water hunting is not that impressive, but it is when you consider I was only able to search one or two hours a day, before or after work. 
I went metal detecting before dawn and after dark, so I was not seen at the site by the small army of full time beach hunters down this way. 
One morning I spotted three guys from the local detecting club passing through the area, luckily they were just passing through, but I still left the area just in case. 
Some of the best pieces of jewelry I recovered are on my recently revamped Jewelry Finds page at www.garydrayton.com
A vintage ladies Cartier emerald and diamond ring,  an antique mans 18K Jade & diamond ring and a beautiful 18K Amethyst ladies ring. 
As more popular local tourist beaches became hunted out because word spread of productive sites, the competition eventually made its way to the area I had been harvesting gold.  By that time, the beaches had been covered back over with sand and the door to Davy Jones locker had slammed shut. 
Back in 2012 I was still posting finds on detecting forums, and catching a lot of heat from forum "experts" who believed it was not possible to recover so much gold jewelry as word got out that all beaches down this way were already picked over. 
Word obviously did not get out about the location I was recovering multiple pieces of gold, silver jewelry and silver coins every day. 
And here you have todays blog title in a nut shell, silence can be golden when you run across an excellent jewelry hunting situation. 
At many heavily hunted tourist beaches around the world,  when beach erosion occurs news of holes in the water or cuts on the beach spreads fast and groups of beach or water hunters descend on the site. 
From past experiences dealing with perfect metal detecting opportunities, I can tell you I still get chills looking into my bank safety deposit box.  Seeing the best gold rings from late 2012, 1836 gold coin and Seminole indian war relics from late 2011, Spanish emerald treasure ring and far too many pieces of Spanish silver to mention from late 2004 early 2005. 
I remember all those memorable treasure hunting years, because I recovered many great finds over a period of several weeks.  You can only continue to recover great finds during excellent beach hunting conditions by keeping a lid on the situation. 
Many of my best finds came off productive situations a few days after the initial recoveries. 
If I was a part of the grapevine, many of my best finds would be in other beach or water hunters find of a lifetime stories. 
The internet is full of " Another beach hunter told me he found this, and I moved over and found this" stories. 
In my opinion, it is always better to make headlines in a beach hunting story, than be a part of another beach hunters story.  







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