TMI

The initials TMI stand for "too much information" and it can come back to bite you if you are not careful.  
As you probably know by now if you have been reading my blog or my treasure hunting books, I do things a little differently to the majority of beach and shallow water hunters. 
I lean more towards the treasure hunting strategy of finding gold and making sure I give myself another shot at recovering more gold the next time I return to the same site. 
It is fun to share your best treasure find stories and photographs with other beach and shallow water hunters, but if you want to protect your productive sites, you have to be careful not to let your guard down. 
Unless you like company and sharing your hot spots with many other people, always make an effort not to include easy to identify beach markers in your beach photos.  
I never tell anyone the exact location of anything I find unless it has an historical connection to a time or place, like my Spanish 1715 fleet emerald treasure ring. 
My second favorite beach find, my 1836 gold five dollar piece came from acting on careless beach hunting information posted on an internet metal detecting site. 

After dinner one evening with my laws, I was checking out a beach hunting forum on my iphone, an internet site that has a few Florida members who post finds. 
I remember thinking Bingo! as I read one post and told the wife I just had to go beach hunting that night after returning home.  
I recognized the unusual find and I recognized the area in question from a few careless details given by the poster on the metal detecting forum. 
I recovered some amazing treasure finds following the clues left by the other beach hunter, it took me 22 straight evenings searching 3 hours at a time to completely search the area to make sure I left nothing behind. 
As you can see by the photo above of just a small few of the artifacts recovered,  it was worth the hard work making the most of this eroded section of beach. 
The icing on the cake was the very same person posting that it was impossible to discover an old gold coin on a beach down this way. 
Be aware that there will always be someone lurking ready to take advantage of too much information when posting finds on the internet.