Cut half real cob and coppers, newer Spanish from another site

toasted

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Jun 1, 2015
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First signal from the cob/pine tree site was a tiny little cut cob around .5 grams. Its about the same weight as the little pine tree piece I found. Any idea why they were cutting silver so small here? Dont recall seeing such small pieces posted by others. Anyway, not much else so I explored another section of beach about 200 yards from this site and found the worn Charles IIII half real as well as a few KGs
 

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That's sweet, congrats!
 

That's tha way you do it.Congrats :icon_thumright:
 

Super site your scooping up there Toasted !
It does seem wonderfully unusual that you are finding such small cut pieces of silver there. It could be that it was the smaller pieces that tended to be lost, which is resulting in the smaller pieces now tending to be found? I suspect that you could be finding payments made to the boys, for their efforts in rolling all those heavy hogs heads of tobacco to the dock for shipment. With an economy at that time based around tobacco, the shoreline and local docks/wharfs were logical places for the leaf to be converted to hard specie. I can imagine a dozen local planters, their families & workers all gathered there on the shoreline, there crop having been transported and staged there over the previous days and weeks, waiting for the few busy days when their crop could be sold for coins or notes, or traded for other goods that may have just arrived there via boat.
Keep hitting it hard and often, there may be plenty more there to recover.
 

Congratualtions on the killer finds! :occasion14:
 

I believe redbeardrelics really hit it on the head as to why there are such small cut pieces of coins coming from the location. It definitely had to be a site with a lot of commerce going on and coinage changing hands. Besides the tobacco trade, there were likely fisherman selling fish at the docks as well. Have you done much water hunting in these locations? I ask because a lot of items were likely lost while trading and bartering over the water and coins and other valuables may have been lost as well. Congrats on some really nice finds and hope you pull a lot more from these and other locations!
 

Super site your scooping up there Toasted !
It does seem wonderfully unusual that you are finding such small cut pieces of silver there. It could be that it was the smaller pieces that tended to be lost, which is resulting in the smaller pieces now tending to be found? I suspect that you could be finding payments made to the boys, for their efforts in rolling all those heavy hogs heads of tobacco to the dock for shipment. With an economy at that time based around tobacco, the shoreline and local docks/wharfs were logical places for the leaf to be converted to hard specie. I can imagine a dozen local planters, their families & workers all gathered there on the shoreline, there crop having been transported and staged there over the previous days and weeks, waiting for the few busy days when their crop could be sold for coins or notes, or traded for other goods that may have just arrived there via boat.
Keep hitting it hard and often, there may be plenty more there to recover.

Yes I can imagine a shoreline bustling with activity circa 1680-1720. Tobacco was king so much so that larger transactions were paid in pounds of tobacco. For smaller transactions, though, specie was required and there seemed to be a lack of or unwillingness to use small copper change. I have found more silver coins than copper here. Having found several coin weights here I would have to say that most of these smaller to medium size transactions were done by scales. They would place whatever cobs, tree coins, etc they had on the scale then simply cut down whatever additional silver coinage they had to meet the required weight for a transaction since Im sure much of what they were carrying was clipped or worn to begin with. I can imagine these small pieces of silver flying off and being lost in the process of the cutting
 

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I believe redbeardrelics really hit it on the head as to why there are such small cut pieces of coins coming from the location. It definitely had to be a site with a lot of commerce going on and coinage changing hands. Besides the tobacco trade, there were likely fisherman selling fish at the docks as well. Have you done much water hunting in these locations? I ask because a lot of items were likely lost while trading and bartering over the water and coins and other valuables may have been lost as well. Congrats on some really nice finds and hope you pull a lot more from these and other locations!
Most of the finds have come from the water but with shoreline erosion since then it is possible this stuff was lost on land
 

Congrats on another cob, and the other finds as well.
 

Man o man you just keep finding awesome stuff! Congrats! :icon_thumleft:
 

Great finds! Something was going on on that site that's for sure.
 

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