Tom_in_CA

ok

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

 ...we have a better chance of sorting out evidence from belief.....

It's kinda like crime investigation.  .....

GB-amateur, with all-due-respect, look closely at what you're saying.   In-lieu of  The current discussion of : Ghost-story camp-fire legends, vs something of merit.

Your fall-back here essentially hinges on "sorting fact from fiction" .  If I have correctly recapped with your quote from above.  Right ?

But this fails to take into account that NONE of the treasure stories EVER started with :  "Once upon a time....".  They are ALL built around actual names, dates , and events.    Why do you think Oak Island, Yamashita, Lost Dutchman, and Pearl ship are so fun to muse and dream about ?  Because they are built , let's say, on 95% "actual real names, dates, and events".  So you might say :  "All we need to do is sort fact from fiction".  Right ?  But this fails to realize that if the 5% of the story (the part about treasure) is nothing but embellished telephone game ghost story nonsense, then ... presto :  What does it matter that the other 95% is true ?   

There was a Manila galleon wreck site found along a remote stretch of Baja CA, back, I think, in the 1950s.   And , like yours, it had (gasp) wax globs and porcelain that had washed up on the beach.   Nothing of value was ever found there.  Yes some of the 2x per year @ 250 yrs did go unaccounted for and lost.   And even assuming some of those were on the west coast (versus the middle of the ocean), then:

A)  It's VERY difficult to ground yourself on shallow ground (ie.: the beach, like as in the Atocha story).  Since our Pacific coast beaches tend to drop off to insane depths, only a short distance off shore (think "Brother Jonathan", for example, which required a submarine to reach) .  So unlike the gulf-of-Mexico beaches, which invited shipwrecks to miscalculate, and wreck right on the beach, the CA shoreline is much different.

B)  The returning Manila galleons actually spotted land (the Pacific coast) MUCH FURTHER south than Oregon.  More like the channel Islands area of So. CA.  Yes it's true that a few sighted land as far north as San Francisco or Pt. Reyes, etc....    But by the time the route got established, they knew-enough to "cut off mileage" to start their curve southward, in such a way that they started following the coast MUCH further south along the CA coast.  Not Oregon latitude in the slightest.

C)  As said, they were not laden with any goodies that would be of interest to anyone other than archies.  Who might be giddy with joy over crockery shards and wax.   They had spent all their $ (gold and silver) in China/philippines , to buy their trade goods. 

I could only get a few pages into it, until I began to throw up.   It's a typical ghost story camp-fire legend. I can spin the very-same-stuff about beaches in my area of Monterey CA.  Eg.:  wax globs on the beach, crockery shards that (gasp) show up after storm erosion, etc....   And like any good treasure story yarn, there's always the curses, mysterious disappearances of persons, "he said she said".  Shadowy government conspirators, blah blah blah.  I couldn't take one more bit of it.   All the same hallmarks as the Oak Island and Lost Dutchman sillyness.

Besides :  The Manila galleons (even if any DID make landfall on the coast that far north) were NOT laden with silver & gold ("treasures", as the fanciful tale goes).  Instead, it was trade goods.  Eg.:  Wax, porcelain, mercury, spices, silk, etc......    The silver & gold they would have carried , from the mother country of Mexico, would have been traded for trade-goods in the Philippines, BEFORE setting sail back to Mexico.   Good luck on getting ANY value out of any of those goods.   This is NOTHING like the Atocha lore type "treasure", despite where the tone-of-the-article is clearly trying to send the reader.   

Sorry to be a kill-joy, but I'm not buying any of it.

2 hours ago, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

.... And really there is no set way of predicting as far as I am concerned, I've seen patterns but I'm Amazed at how each and every spot can vary....

I have been fascinated with beach erosion hunting since 1980.   And perpetually trying to figure out when and where the beaches will erode.   By factoring in the surfer/mariner reports of swells, waves, on-shore winds & tide heights.   And the coinciding timing of all the ingredients.

In this modern age of computers, I have often thought that there MUST be a way to computerize it all into methods that can predict.  But I tend to agree with you that mother nature just has a mind of her own at times 😞

I never get tired of seeing those gunpowder steel-grey looking silver salt-kissed coins jangling around in my sand scoop  😍

The odd part was, about Brian's 1914 s quarter, was that our entire trip was fueled by a desire to get seateds, and hopefully a gold coin or whatever.   Like, the sites we hit were predominantly sites that dated back to the mid to late 1800s.   Oh sure, this one particular site had some usage up till the 1930s.  Yet our goal was to get coins from the earlier usage (1880s founding).  

And although his barber quarter was on the later usage of the time-line, it turned out to be the money-coin.   Anyone care to venture a grade ?  I'm guessing an easy $700 ?    Nice going Brian !

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

.... Even as late as this was lost (early 1900's?) people weren't trusting local banks.  That would prove prophetic in the early 1930's....

 

I have heard that There were certain states, like Montana, Idaho, and Nevada, where silver dollars (albeit common date morgans and peace dollars, etc...) circulated up till the early 1960s.   Something to do with the reluctance to accept paper dollars.  Or that these were silver mining states, which sought to bolster the silver mining industry.  Or that the slot machines still accepted silver dollars.   Or something like that.

Hence Cal-Cobra's silver dollar is nothing but a 1940s/50s loss, and thus ....   We can all take back the high -5's and atteboys.  Ok ?   😉

Great video Brian.   Your quarter is worth a good deal.  You paid for the trip with that coin alone.  Congratz.   I got utterly spanked on this trek, but had a lot of fun !

28 minutes ago, abenson said:

Yes Tom agreed, it's all about using the right tool for the job. A year and a half ago I got into an area just like you described. I always have my Deus in my backpack at these hunts and when I hit this area everyone else was avoiding I pulled out he Deus. Below is the finds I made in a half a day of hunting a very trashy hillside.

 

Stunning !   That's the type site that dreams are made of !

Nice photo spread !

I attended one of those relic shootout hunts a few years ago.  Where hundreds of guys descend on 1000 acres or whatever.  And As for the discussion of the pulse versus the VLF on those type hunts :  I talked to a fellow who was intending to use a pulse machine.  And his & his co-hunter's rationale was exactly as you say : That they get "significantly more depth", and the VLF gets "significantly less depth".   

However, on this particular site, was a few zones where some CW era homesites had been.   Which, as you can imagine, were a giant spread of iron, nails, etc....   Lo & behold, not a single one of the pulse users could hack this area.  They would get driven bonkers by the iron, and "leave for greener grounds".   Yet those of us with standard discriminator machines could wade into this, and pick out conductive targets.  

So there's much more to the discussion of simply "depth", as you can see.

Good conversation piece and shadow box nostalgia item.

Thanx for sharing this link.  It was well-written by the author.

Sshheeesk what a soap opera of ingredients !   Lots of mistakes on the md'rs part :  Namely, venturing off the land they had permission on, and inadvertently getting their find across a border, onto the next farm land.  Tsk tsk (sounded like an honest mistake, that ONLY came to light when they had to split hairs after finding the hoard).    And then their inability to be a little frickin' discreet, in the first place , AFTER having found it.

But a very big part of the Soap Opera, you'll notice, is the UK law system that hoards belong to the crown.  Oh sure, supposedly the crown pays you fair market value, but as you can see in this link, it just adds one more layer of bureaucracy (which , as you can see, is riddled with purist archie's lovely inputs 🙄 )  

If this had happened in the USA, it would have removed that 3rd to 4th party input.  It would have been utterly between you and farmer Bob how you wanted to split it.   And in the USA, if you show up at a coin dealer with a super rare coin (the 3rd one known to exist), NO ONE sits around and speculates "did this come from a cache ?".   It's of utterly no concern and no business to the buyer here in the USA, as to the origin (even if you show up with 5 of the same coin, that evidences they were buried side-by-side, as in this story).  Simply because there is no mandate here to "declare" such things.

Yet despite this bureaucratic mess that results from this UK crown law thing, some USA md'rs somehow have the impression that it's a "good thing".  Or that it "opens up cool sites".   But on the contrary :  You can hunt farmers fields here too, with permission.  Thus it's not "opening up more sites".  And as for the fair-market-value payout, well so too can we do that here too (without all the legal bureaucratic maze of hoops) :  It's called ebay.  

So I am glad we do not have the UK system, as evidenced by this link.

Is this your first gold coin ?  If so, welcome to the gold coin club. You are now officially a stud muffin !  🤣

But the reason why these lores are *so* hard to dismiss (and so hard to apply critical thinking to) is that they are ALWAYS based on real names, dates, and events.  Eg.:  None of them ever started with "Once upon a time", eh ?  They always cite a place, a historical event, a date, a few names of real people from history, etc....  And from THAT they weave a treasure story.  So when it comes time to apply critical thinking, the average mind gets hung up on the "real" names, the "real" events, the "real" places, etc....

For example:  Back before the internet, in the 1970s, a buddy of mine sent in a story to one of the Treasure magazines (so-as to get the $50 or $100 author-acceptance pay).   He had some faded newspaper clippings, some actual dates and events (a gold strike in Nevada or AZ), some names and dates (that you could look up), etc....  And wove a fantasy tale of a "lost stagecoach loot" or "stolen military payroll" around the factoids.   All of it was just made up fancy.   We got a good laugh wondering if anyone ever actually went out looking for it.

Not saying that all-such-tales are made-up fancy.  They could be rooted in sincere telephone game, where no one along the daisy-train intended to deceive.  But it only takes a few daisy-chain steps on the game before it's a room-sized treasure vault, with $1 million in gold bars, etc....  And you can NEVER put it to rest.  Because the faithful will always point to the real names, dates, and events.  The trouble is, that it DOESN'T MATTER if 99% of the story is true.  Because if the 1% isn't true (that there's a treasure), then what does it matter that the other 99% is true ?

nothing but Hollywood show-biz showing off children's telephone game ghost-story legends.  Just like Oak Island:  Nothing but fairy-tales gone awry.

Good to see some CA action.   Let's hope we get some surf, swell, and tide action to rake our coast this winter, eh ?

6 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

   Tom_in_CA ......... I wonder if you ever used Etrac with 13 "ultimate ...in long tone... to detect this place ...

Hey there El-nino:   Of all the incarnations of the Explorer, the Etrac was one that I never availed myself of.   So I can't answer that question 😞

7 minutes ago, Steelheader said:

The ORX Is a new detector that XP came out with recently.  It is basically a cheaper version of the Deus.  It doesn’t have all of the features of the Deus and is simpler to use.  It is about half the price of the Deus.  Some people prefer the ORX because it is simpler.  I prefer the Deus because it has some features that I like that the ORX doesn’t have.

thanx steel-header !

44 minutes ago, Steelheader said:

I purchased a Deus in February, and I recently purchased a ORX.

Question for you (or anyone here) :  What is the difference between the Deus and the "ORX" ?

43 minutes ago, Tom Slick said:

.... HF 9" round coil....

Well gee, if I "kicked b#tt" with the LF coil, then my curiosity is way up for the HF coil .  Thanx !

On 11/12/2020 at 8:26 AM, Elbert said:

Hey Tom I enjoyed your write up, especially of the site history. Interesting the amount of finds after the years of hunting there. How do you think Brian would have done with hi 800.

El

You mean that sissy "cal cobra" feller ?   C'mon El, you know that I will spank him at every turn, right ?   😏

But seriously now, you would know of this site.  And there's been an 800 there, one time, already.  In the hands of Greg P.   He and I were close , in target count, when we went there a few months ago.  He might have had 10 or 12 targets.   The close-ness of the count wasn't really too fair, since this is my site, and I'm more familiar with it.  Versus this was his first time there.

But I can concede that the 800 would beat the explorer in an iron-riddled zone, all-other-things being equal.   But after this maiden voyage with the Deus, and after hunting with these 800 guys in other iron -ridden zones, I'm tempted to think that this will have an edge over the 800.   JMHO.  We shall see.

 Hey guys, I'm gonna geek out on this debriefing report 🙂  

A couple of friends were down in my area of CA @ early November to do some beach hunting.   At the conclusion of their stay, one was kind enough to loan me his Deus for a few weeks.   Which I will ship back to him when done.

Over the years I've heard how this is supposed to be the "cat's meow" in nail/iron-riddled sites.   But never had my hands on one personally.  I've always just reached for my Tesoro Bandito in such situations.  Which, as you know, is wimpy on depth, has no TID, etc.

Then a fellow I know gave me an hour's tutorial over the phone from Virginia a few days ago.  Walked me through all the settings, pros/cons, etc....

Last night I was able to take it on a maiden test voyage to a certain adobe site.  An "adobe site" in CA, is our version of what the east coast guys would probably call a "cellar hole" site.  This site was the adobe home of a Mexican land grant recipient.  Granted in the early 1830s.   Although the dude might already have homesteaded the place earlier. This is just his formal grant date.    And since this was on the road between 2 mission era towns, it was a stopping spot in those days.  Ie.: hospitality to travelers, did trading, etc....  

Today is nothing but a faint rectangle outline of adobe melt in a hilly cow pasture area.   After the gold rush and statehood, this was one of a myriad of the 800-ish land grants in CA, that just got taken over by the incoming settlers.   Either via bought out, or legal maneuvers , etc....    And apparently by the 1860s, was abandoned.    The *newest* coin we ever found there, was an 1860s IH.

When we first researched it in about 1995, it was SO thick with targets, that we literally went into park mindset.  Eg.: going high disc, avoiding iron-ridden patches, and not bothering to dig anything that didn't ring the bells of Notre Dame.  Just so many targets to choose from.  I filled a box with 10 or 20 lbs with green copper, endless cool doohickeys (mankiller balls, gun parts, endless henry shells, lantern parts, buttons, etc....).   All told we've pulled about 20 to 25 period coins from here.  Many reales, many early seateds, etc....   And perhaps 15 phoenix buttons.     

By the early 2000s, all the "easy gimmees" were picked off.  Leaving only the thicker iron zones to get more stuff.   Because go figure, when we started in 1995-ish, it was machines like XLT, 6000 Di pro, Whites Eagle, and Fisher CZ6.  None of which are known for ability in heavy iron.  

Then eventually using creative arsenals to see through the iron, we got to where even the iron zone was getting stingy.

So today, the site is nothing more than a test zone.  For testing machines for their iron-see-through ability.   Such that .... even if you only got some more camp lead or copper snippets you KNOW that your machine or method you're testing is competitive.   Ie.: a sport-unto-itself JUST to eek some more conductors from there (even if they're not turning out to be coins ).

Thus this was the perfect test site for the Deus .   Started with the "basic" (#1) pre-set program, and modified from there.  Assume the basic pre-sets, unless listed here :

1)  Disc :  negative 1
2)  Full tones
3)  sens :  90
4)  Frequency :   17.6
5)  Iron volume :  1
6)  Reactivity :  4
7)  Target volume 5
8) Audio overload :  0
9)  GB (ground balance):  85 
10)  contrast :  10

The results were astounding :  16 conductive targets.  See the pix.   And as you can see, several of them *could* have been coins.  I especially like the lock-dust cover.  That was deep !

Of course , since I'm just learning, I got fooled by cast-iron.   There is a different sound, but nagging doubts sent me to dig a few "just to be sure".   More than I would have been fooled by the explorer, yet more conductive targets that the Explorer would have found last night.   And the ratio actually wasn't that punishing.  Like if I got 16 conductors, I don't think I got more than 5 or 6 iron .   And for several of those conductors, there was utterly no doubt.  So theoretically I could have been more picky, and dug zero iron.  But it's a trade off , since some targets could be fighting masking.  

Hope y'all enjoyed the report.  Looks like I'll be looking to buy one of these, as soon as this loaner period is over 🙂

On 11/10/2020 at 7:43 PM, Joe D. said:

.... I hope they find "it" this season!👍👍

 

Huh ?  What is "it" ?  There's nothing there.

Kind of reminds me of the show where they are traveling around the globe in search of various lake monster creatures.   Kind of like the Loch Ness monster, yet the various lore from various lakes around the planet.   They scuba and sonar and all sorts of expensive equipment to "find the monster" .  They interview locals who relate the stories they heard as kids.  They interview others who claim to have seen the creature, etc... 

In one scene, the scientist dudes are explaining this expensive sonar (or whatever ) equipment, and finish by saying : "If it's down there, we will find it !  It can not evade this detection equipment !".   Next scenes they are scuba diving and exploring the lake bottom at length.   Musing how the creature "must have gone into one of these holes/caves" (as they point to crevices and overhangs and hole-openings in the rock bottom).  

They surface, as the show ends, saying "some day we will crack this riddle and find the lake monster fish".  To which I had to laugh, remembering that just 10 minutes earlier in the script, they'd been saying that their equipment would have all that's necessary to prove or disprove the myth.  Huh ?  😵  Then wouldn't their lack-of-finding it prove that it's not there ?  Huh ?  WTF ?

1 hour ago, dogodog said:

Tom,

Yup, just like Gary found a 19th century railroad spike and called it a 17th century ship nail. 15th to 19th century humans were smart. No one would dig 250 ft to hide a treasure below the water line of an island.

Yup.   But amazingly people continue to think there's a treasure there.   And a "mystery", blah blah.   There's utterly no mystery or treasure at all.   All the supposed "clues" can be chalked up to more plausible benign innocuous explanations.   

The only reason this sillyness goes on for so long (and attracts so many believers), is because of the subconscious human psychology that surrounds treasure.   No one wants to be "laughed at all the way to the bank", so we hold out hope, and don't apply logical scrutiny .   Oak Island is nothing than silly embellished legend.  And the coin and nail found there (and "uncanny shapes and random junk in the ground) could be found ANY place on earth.

21 hours ago, dogodog said:

Great finds, But you need to dig a few hundred test pit's and get Gary Drayton on your team Ha Ha

Haha, yup.   And then all ya need to do is draw in all sorts of local history of the local area .  Ie.: Any explorers who (gasp) came by the area.  Then throw in some Knights templar and freemason suggestions.    Then add a few cliff-hangers before commercials, and PRESTO, then you can't deny there's a billion dollars there (or the holy grail, blah blah).    It will be undeniable by the time you're done.   The fact that it's never found only ADDS to the assurance that it's assuredly there.  Just a little more to the right.  A little more to the left.  A little deeper, etc....  At no point is it not assuredly there.  Eh ?

I'm convinced that I can spin a similar story about a treasure in my backyard in Monterey, CA . After all , the Spanish were plying our coast in the mid 1700's.   And mysterious lights have been seen coming and going.  And the Carmel mission and Monterey pueblo were not far away.  And no doubt they were "filthy rich".   And there's mysterious uncanny shapes (treasure markers) in my back yard.  Eg.:  The square paver stones for my backyard path.  And the rectangular fence planks, blah blah.   All of which are certainly "clues".    And if I detect long enough, I'm sure to find a nail.    No doubt another clue to the Spanish treasure that is certainly in my backyard.  Right ?  🤣