scaupus
Hero Member
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2011
- Messages
- 889
- Reaction score
- 523
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Not too far from a beach
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Last Saturday, I met up with Howie, maker of the famous Howie Scoop, and his wife, Lisa for some beach hunting. Both Howie and Lisa are accomplished beach hunters with probably dozens of gold finds between them. I, on the other hand, was still pretty much a newbie last week, not having ever found any gold at the beach.
We spent a pleasant afternoon on the north end of Miami Beach. Nothing valuable was found, but I think that just spending time detecting with such splendid hunters as Howie and Lisa gave me added confidence. I decided to hunt the beach the following Sunday morning myself.
I got out there well before dawn, in the black of night, but with a bright, gibbous moon illuminating the beach like a ghostly negative. I slipped into the water. The ocean was flat calm, warm, and crystal clear. I could perfectly see the rippled sand bottom in the blue-white light of the moon. My dark coil was silhouetted against the sand. Back of the beach, the hotels and motels of the famous Gold Coast of Florida provided a glittering urban backdrop to the ocean wilderness in which I was quickly submerged up to my chest.
I had never done this before at night. I was wearing 10 lbs of weight to hold me down, and there was one danger I was sensible of; I didn't want to get stuck over my head in a dip, especially not after the tide turned. I didn't want to have to drop my weights and swim with my detector and scoop in hand.
The bottom was very clean, and I didn't get a signal for maybe 20 minutes. Then I got a signal accompanied by a lit yellow light on my beach hunter id, indicating a mid-range item...for instance, a gold ring, or a nickel or a pop-top. In this instance, just by the moonlight, I could see a small ring in my Howie Scoop. To see more detail I turned on my headlamp. It looked fake. Later that morning a guy I would meet named Langston told me it was a friendship ring.
Daylight was seeping into the sky. There was one huge cumulonimbus cloud on the eastern horizon hiding the sunrise, with lightning flashing from the towering crown of the cloud to the ocean surface.
I began seeing people. Two young women were in the water, talking a long time. One was black, one was cafe color. They looked over as I approached to within about a 100 yards, and then they left the water.
The next people I encountered in the water were two black men. They were talking together. Just after I passed them, I picked up a ferrous conglomeration that was palm sized. I turned to throw it up on the beach, when a tall, well-formed young black woman came walking by. She laughed, "Don't throw that at me!" I checked my swing and laughed, too.
One of the men called to her and they began talking together. The other man came over to me. He was shirtless, his head was shaved, he was about 30, wearing cargo shorts. He was rather chubby, fat and sleek-skinned, water glistening on his skin like a seal's.
He asked me the usual questions about metal detecting. His name was Langston, he was from New York, and he was somewhat drunk, though able to hold a sensible conversation. He pulled a diamond and gold earring out of his cargo pocket. He said it cost him $500. He passed it over my coil. I was gratified to hear a nice signal. He then ran a large gold bracelet over the coil. It also signaled nicely. It had a cuban link; Langston called it a "Miami Cuban" and said it cost him $1500.
About 9:00, the sun began to burn on my skin. I reached for the lotion I had put in my finds bag, but it was gone. The velcro used to seal the top had quit working that morning and no longer stuck together. The bottle had floated out.
I needed to return to my car; I didn't want to challenge the sun with my unprotected flesh. As I walked back along the beach, I swept my coil over the wet sand. I passed the two women I had seen in the water earlier. They were sitting on towels, still talking together, only now they were topless. The darker-skinned girl had pointy, bodkin shaped boobies that hung away from her body. Both nipples were pierced with rings. The other girl had breasts that were full and round. As I walked by observing them, they waved and smiled sweetly at me. I smiled and waved back. It was then it occurred to me they were probably Brazilian.
Not more than a minute or so later I hit a nice, loud mid range signal in the weed line. It was a large toe ring, apparently silver. I couldn't account for the anomalous poptop signal. Later, I applied an acid test and determined that it was not silver.
Fifty yards or so further down, also in the seaweed line, I hit a nice, round, average sized mid-range signal. I took out a short scoop of sand, but the item was still in the hole. I took a deeper scoop, and it was still in the hole. So, I buried my 12" scoop straight down in the bottom of the 6-7" hole, all the way to the back of the scoop. I passed my coil over the hole. Now the signal was gone. I dumped my load of sand onto the beach, kicked it, and a bright gold ring tumbled out of the pile. A man's pinky ring winked up at me. It had the face of a woman - laser cut I would guess - carved out in the center of its oval table. Nice!
I hurried back to to my car then. My day was done.
Monday morning, I woke early again, though not as early as on Sunday. It was gray out, sometime after first light, but before dawn. That was alright, I thought, as the low tide would be about 45 minutes later, today. I walked the dog, then hurried off to the beach, not sure which beach I was going to until I actually made the final turn to go there.
The water was rough today, too rough for me to wade, so I scanned the wet sand. In just a few minutes, I was reminded that this beach was full of small rusty flakes that responded on my beach hunter id as mid-range tones...same as gold. But they had a characteristic, weak moaning signal, which I could recognize...but I wasn't always willing to take the chance of passing over something gold, so I dug up quite a few flakes.
And rusty bottle caps, screw caps, pop tops and pennies. Really quite a trashy beach to be honest. Then I hit a pocket of rusty fish hooks which also responded with mid-range signals. I decided to call it "Bummer Beach."
There were rocks in the water ahead, maybe an old groin? I dug up a D battery there. On the other side of the rocks, the water was nearly flat. There was a wide and very shallow sandbar about 30 yards off the beach, creating this lacuna of calm water inside the rocks and the sandbar. The beach also dipped at this point, creating a half moon shaped water line. The quiet water was very inviting. I waded out, and found no targets whatsoever on the firm, rippled sand bottom. I got up on top of the sand bar, where the water was barely ankle deep. No targets there, either. I followed the sandbar, which ran south towards the rocks. The sandbar sank as it approached the rocks, and the bottom became shelly and rocky. I got a nice, mid-range signal there, like a poptop. I shoved the sharp point of my Howie scoop into the composite of shells and rocks and sand, and worked it down. Some wave action was hitting me here as I attempted to scoop up a full basket. I finally got it up and the sand sifted out. I could see the usual shells and corals and smoothed sendimentary rocks, but what really caught my eye was a big fat 3-diamond man's gold ring! "Oh, Lawdy", I uttered, completely losing touch with my own ethnicity. I literally felt faint.In that moment, I didn't doubt that it was real. This was my first water recovery of a gold ring, and what a gorgeous specimen it appeared to be!
I waded quickly up to the beach. Above me, a woman sat impassively in a beach chair. I felt as if I should say something to her...but what? Anyway, I had put the ring in my mouth for safekeeping. Heimlich anyone?
There was a guy with a sand cleaning tractor stopped on the beach just south of the rocks. He was out of his cab, and speaking with another detectorist. The cleaning apparatus on his tractor was interesting. A series of rows of hooked tines rotated and swept through the sand, picking up trash...and I presumed, gold necklaces. I'd heard of this machine, but this was my first time seeing one. The tractor operator turned toward me. He was a tall, tow-headed young man with a long face, which would have perfectly matched a computerized facial morph between the serial killer, Richard Speck, and the Texas bell tower shooter, Charles Joseph Whitman.
I asked him if he ever found jewelry in the hopper. The other detectorist laughed. He was a squat, swarthy, hairy man with a friendly countenance and ready smile. "I just asked him the same question."
"No, I don't look, it's a ton of garbage. I just dump it in the dumpster."
The swarthy guy and I gave each other knowing glances.
Then I showed them the ring. The kid asked me if it was real. I said I didn't know yet. He seemed surprised, "You really don't know?"
"I can't see up close. I can't make out hallmarks. I don't think there are any hallmarks in this ring, but maybe you could take a look. You have good eyes." Or, so I assumed since he was young.
"No, I don't have good eyes, actually."
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, for assuming otherwise.
"Don't be. I can see you good enough!" He laughed and walked back to his machine. Serial mass murder killer look-alike.
I chatted a bit with the other detectorist. His name was Ron, he was a high school math teacher. I told him I had a son in high school and that I loved teachers. He seemed bemused when I said that. He was using a Teknetics 4000.
We agreed the ring looked pretty real, and we shook hands. As I made the long walk back to my vehicle, I noticed some green spots on the band. They did not rub off. Shite. Green spots and no hallmark. Double shite. It was fake - a good, heavy plated fake, but a fake. Well, at least I could wear it and impersonate a real estate salesman. I could not see into the spaces behind the stones, those were still filled with sand.
Later that day, back at the ranch, I showed the ring to Howie. I had rubbed off the green spots from the band by then, and washed out the sand from behind the stones. I could now see a large, white metal, 3 position mount soldered inside the face of the ring. There was a little green where the solder was.
Howie bounced it up and down in his hand. He looked at it with a loupe.
"I think it's gold. Maybe 10k. 10k can get green spots. Also, the bands been worked on, and the solder is always a lower karat than the ring metal. You should acid test it."
I didn't have any acid. But I had an idea how to authenticate the ring myself, without acid. I had read that real diamonds flouresce under black light. None of the materials commonly used to fake diamonds flouresce, including moisanite, which can fool a standard diamond tester. To confuse things a bit, really fine diamonds do not flouresce, either. But most diamonds commonly found in most jewelry, are not high grade. So, if you question whether a "diamond" ring is real or plated, check the ring under a black light. If the stones flouresce then they are real diamonds. And real diamonds, even ones of indifferent quality, are not normally mounted in base metal rings.
Under a black light, 2 of the 3 stones, the outside ones, flouresced. The center did not. I figured the center stone was probably a fake replacement stone.
The next day I took the ring with me when I went grocery shopping; there is a jewelry store inside the grocery. The attendant was not a skilled jeweler, but she could change batteries, and she had both testing acids and an electronic diamond tester. I asked her to test all three stones as I believed the center stone was a replacement. She did, and all three proved to be real diamonds. She then acid tested the ring, which she said was 14k.
It weighs 6.9 dwt. The center stone is about 33mm across, or about .12 carats, the side stones are slightly smaller. The other ring I found Sunday has several hallmarks, including one that says 375, indicating that it's 9k gold, and made in England. It weighs 5.2 dwt.
Not a bad way for a really old virgin to finally get some love from a beach.
I didn't include this Indian .800 silver ring I found just a couple minutes ahead of the English ring, also in the weed-line, because I hadn't tested it. Well, I tested it and it is .800 silver, so it gets into my post, documenting all interesting or fine jewelry i find. I figured from the way it was made, the design, and the low silver alloy its Indian or South Asian.
Amazon Forum Fav 👍
Last edited by a moderator:
Upvote
8
I´m Brazillian, that´s why I ask...lol
