Pieces of the beach hunting puzzle

It is much harder to search for and recover old coins and artifacts at the beach, than it is to search for modern jewelry and coins.  
You have to research and know where you are likely to recover old stuff and to familiarize yourself with things from the era you are hoping to recover.
I look at beach hunting for old coins and artifacts as kind of like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, it is easier to start at the edges and work your way to the middle to complete the puzzle.
Just like the shipwreck salvage operations, you should look for a high amount of ferrous (Iron) targets in an area.
Salvage operations look for large iron hits on or under the seabed with sonar equipment, so it makes sense that certain iron objects especially in numbers will give away the same type of area on the beach.
Large iron ship spikes (Nails) are usually the outer edge pieces of the jigsaw puzzle when searching for shipwreck treasure on a beach.
These hand forged iron spikes are from a mid 1600s shipwreck beach in Florida, they often lead to recovering old Spanish silver and gold when you find them.

Lead is another important puzzle piece, musket balls, sheeting or any other pieces of scrap lead are often found in areas when you have a chance of recovering old coins and artifacts.
Hand forged iron nails and old lead are the very best indications that you are searching in the right spot at the beach.
But.... if you are using too much discrimination and rejecting iron you will more than likely miss old coins and artifacts at sites that hold the potential to cough up treasure.
I usually save the discrimination and rejecting targets for tourist beach hunting and dig everything at sites when searching for old stuff at the beach.
Once you find an area at the beach with a lot of old iron, its just a matter of finding the pieces of the puzzle that you are really searching for.
In beach treasure hunting, one find often leads to another as long as you do not miss the first important find which often is not made of bronze, silver or gold.
I wish I had a dollar for every piece of junk I had to dig for the old coins and artifacts on the front cover of this book, I look at this book cover and remember what I found before recovering each piece.
Ironically a ship spike before the large silver religious artifact, two crusty pieces of junk before the 1836 gold coin and several musket balls before the mid 1800s jade gold ring.