Monday, August 3, 2015

Jewelry hunting observations

Last weekend I attended a metal detecting event in Orlando Florida, I had a table set up in one of the air conditioned tents with a couple of displays of Spanish artifacts found along the Treasure coast beaches of Florida. 
I sold my books and met a lot of very enthusiastic beach and water jewelry hunters, as you would expect in central Florida. 
A few things stood out after chatting to a steady stream of people walking past my table, everyone is finding jewelry by the photos people shared with me on their cell phones. 
The majority of  jewelry had been found at two large tourist beaches on the central coast of Florida. 
I will not give away the names of the two beaches everyone had mentioned the most, but as you would expect they are heavily hunted. 
That should tell you that no matter how many people search a beach with a metal detector, you always have a chance of finding jewelry. 
I met several people who told me they search those beaches eight hours a day, seven days a week, dang that sounds too much like a job to me! 
Nows here is the most interesting thing I took away from meeting this large crowd of enthusiastic jewelry hunters. 
All the experienced beach and water hunters complained about competition, but all the people new to jewelry hunting never mentioned other people searching the beaches. 
The majority of those novice beach or water hunters, showed me the best photos of jewelry. 
I heard plenty of stories of first gold ring, first diamond ring and even a few first Spanish treasure coin stories. 
This goes back to what I always say about newbies, they search places other hunters ignore because seasoned beach or water hunters experience tells them not to search those type of places. 
No doubt many of those newbies recovered jewelry at very different times of the day, other than searching two hours before low tide. 
No doubt many newbies recovered jewelry mid or upper beach, not just in the water where every water hunter says the good stuff is. 
Unless your a treasure salvage guy, because after seeing yards of three hundred year old Spanish gold chain and coins on display at the event, I would have to agree that is where the good stuff is on the Treasure Coast.
Another observation I made was that newbies tell you where they find stuff, while seasoned jewelry hunters keep a lid on it. 









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