Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Top of the beach treasure hunting

An often overlooked area of the beach is the beach road or sidewalk, I have arrived at the beach many times and not even made it down to the lower beach to metal detect. 
Anytime you see beach road or sidewalk work going on, it may be a great opportunity to metal detect.
Empty beach side lots that have been bulldozed or cleared to make way way for new construction projects have always been kind to me, especially in older areas of Florida.
Before the housing market collapse many beach side lots were cleared to make room for condos, and after the recession took hold the lots were left empty. 
As long as you are not trespassing on private property, cleared lots close to the beach are excellent places to find old coins or jewelry. 
When large pipeline or cable projects are carried out on the upper beach, you can often find old coins or shipwreck artifacts in the sand that was removed and spread over the area after the construction has ended. 
Sea wall construction is another great opportunity to recover old finds, I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time recently at a local beach.
The city sunk large sheets of iron into the sand to protect a stretch of beach road that was always flooding due to beach erosion.
After sections of the project were complete I would go down to beach at night to metal detect through the leveled sand looking for anything interesting that may have came from the bottom of the deep trench.
Here are a few of the interesting finds I recovered, a 1934 silver half dollar, a buffalo nickel, spiderman ring and an old fishing lure. 


I also recovered an old glazed pottery bottle with an incised Edinburgh stamp while scooping a deep target,  one of the benefits of using a large open basket scoop was not breaking the old ale or soda bottle. 


Stop and investigate any area along the top of the beach where you know trenches have been dug and sand has been moved around. 

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