Treasure Hunting

Two men are facing possible jail time over an unregistered scheme to solicite funds to seek and recover shipwrecked treasure. Australian investors have put up more than $600,000.00 toward a scheme entitled “The Hatcher Unit Trust.” The Hatcher Unit Trust (HUT) claimed that 15% of all the gold found by man in the last 6,000 years is lying at the bottom of the ocean.”

They also claimed “it has been calculated that if all the lost treasure and items of value could be recovered from the ocean and its wealth evenly distributed, every man, woman and child on earth could live comfortably for the rest of their lives.”

Now, we’re not wealthy enough to put up any money for this kind of treasure hunting (and if we were, we’d probably do it ourselves!), but that rhetoric seems full of holes. Unfortunately the scheme successfully raised millions of dollars internationally, the majority of the funds came from Australia.

To date, investors have not received any returns from their investment.

But exactly HOW is this illegal? Well, the men did not register the investment scheme with the Australian Securities and Investment Scheme and documents tendered to court indicated the scheme would not have been eligible for registration. So it looks like jail time for these “treasure hunters” - and no money back for the innocent investors.

Beware of schemes folks - if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. And the possibility of every person on this planet living comfortably for the rest of their lives, while something to hope for, does seem a little far-fetched.

- Shaun

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Just when you think all the good stuff has been found, the Florida Key’s prove you wrong!

Shaun and I are really itchin’ to plan a trip south to the Key’s, and the article we read today gives us hope that something might be left. Hopefully we can get our Excalibur II’s and get certified to dive by the end of the summer.

Enough about us. Here’s the article.

- Adam in St. Cloud

“An archaeologist and treasure-hunting divers found a never-before-seen gold artifact likely from a Spanish galleon that sank in a hurricane in the 1600s. They were searching the shipwreck trail of the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita that sank in 1622″ when they found a unique and special little grooming device.

“The treasure, believed to be an intricate grooming tool made with gold and earwax, was found 40 miles off Key West.

“It’s a grooming tool, composed of toothpick and a small spoon for earwax, made of almost pure gold,” Dr. Duncan Mathewson said. “It’s very, very unique. Ah, we’ve never seen anything like it before.”

They also found several skeleton keys, ceramic pieces and rigging elements of the ship.”

This find comes on the heels of gold bars and a lead box containing thousands of pearls that was also carried by the Santa Margarita. The Santa Margarita became famous 25 years ago when Mel Fisher began his initial search of the shipwreck. Divers for his team and many others have been finding valuable treasures off the Florida coast ever since!

Visit Local 6 News for updates about the artifacts found from the Santa Margarita.

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Maybe it’s because we loved the movie “Gladiator” so much, or maybe because this was discovered by divers and we secretly hope to one day go on a diving expedition… but this article is just cool.

- Shaun & Crew

The BBC News is reporting that “divers in France have found the oldest known bust of Roman dictator Julius Caesar at the bottom of the River Rhone.” Found near Arles, a city founded by Julius Caesar, the bust dates back to the town’s foundation in the year 46B.C.

It was found with other items including a 6ft marble statue of the god Neptune that is from the first decade of the third century A.D., and two smaller, bronze status.

This bust is a favorite of ours here at TreasureHunting.com because it is so life-like; wrinkles, lines, a bald head. Apparently this is typical of the realist portraits of Caesar’s republican era.

Luc Long, the archaeologist who directed the excavations, said “all the busts of Caesar in Rome were posthumous. I suspect the bust was thrown in the river after he was assassinated because it would not have been good at that time to be considered a follower of his.”

A group of republican senators assassinated Caesar in 44BC. On the Ides in 44 BC, a group of senators called Caesar to the forum for the purpose of reading a petition, written by the senators, asking him to hand power back to the Senate. However, the petition was a fake.

As Caesar began to read the false petition, Tillius Cimber, who had handed him the petition, pulled down Caesar’s tunic. While Caesar was crying to Cimber “But that is violence!” the aforementioned Casca produced his dagger and made a glancing thrust at the dictator’s neck. Caesar turned around quickly and caught Casca by the arm, saying in Latin “Casca, you villain, what are you doing?” Casca, frightened, shouted “Help, brother” in Greek.

Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, was striking out at the dictator. Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood, he tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he lay defenseless on the lower steps of the portico. According to Eutropius, around sixty or more men participated in the assassination. He was stabbed 23 times. According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal.

Some of the objects found in the river will be displayed in a museum on ancient Arles, the culture ministry said.

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The H. L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink a warship, although the submarine was also lost during the process. Owned by the Confederate States of America during the height of the Civil War, it demonstrated both the advanteages and the dangers of undersea warfare.

H. L. Hunley, almost 40 feet long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, launched in July 1863, and shipped by rail to Charleston, SC on August 12, 1863. On February 17, 1864, Hunley attacked and sank the 1800-ton steam sloop USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor, but soon after, Hunley also apparently sank, drowning all 8 crewmen. Over 136 years later, on August 8, 2000, the wreck was recovered, and on April 17, 2004, the DNA-identified remains of the eight Hunley crewmen were interred in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery, with full military honors.

There is apparently some discrepancy as to who first discovered the resting place of the Henley, and at Hunley.org it is reported that “best selling author Clive Cussler established the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA) and spent 15 years searching for Hunley. The world’s first sub to sink a ship in battle was finally discovered on May 3rd, 1995 by NUMA archeologists Ralph Wilbanks, Wes Hall, and Harry Pecorelli.

“With a magnetometer, the Cussler crew located a metal object off the coast of Sullivan’s Island. After diving in nearly 30 feet of water - they removed three feet of sediment to reveal one of the Hunley’s two small coning towers.

“At first we thought we only had a piece of old debris,” said Hall. “But while groping through the silt my hand came upon the hinges of the hatch cover.”

“The NUMA team towed the magnetometer behind a boat as they criss-crossed the water guided by a set of grid-like coordinates. Using this method, Cussler and his team discovered many other shipwrecks in their search for the sub, including Confederate blockade runners.

“As if stuck in time - she lay on her starboard side with the bow pointing almost directly toward Sullivans Island - four miles away. The same direction she was heading that historical, fateful and mysterious night.”

For the last several years teams have been busy excavating the H. L. Hunley, and have found the remains of all the crew members aboard when she sank and a plethora of artifacts. “The tiny sub and its contents have been valued at over $40,000,000, making its discovery and subsequent donation one of the most important and valuable contributions ever to South Carolina.”

For more information visit Friends of the Hunley.

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I found this treasure story on Kellyco’s “Finds” page and was blown away. This lady found one of the most sought after items with possibly the most inexpensive detector on the market! Talk about inspiration!

“I recently bought a Bounty Hunter Tracker lV from Kellyco and this was the first metal detector I have ever used.

It works very good even though I am still learning. I went out detecting today for the second time in my life and brought home the most sought after item. It was a brass belt buckle with the letters C.S.A. on the front. It is in perfect condition with a great green patina on it. I have already been offered $2200.00 for it from a local collector! I hope to upgrade to a White’s or Garrett detector someday but I will never doubt what my Bounty Hunter can find. It has already proven itself!”

Found by Joyce W., on March 23, 2003
Burna, Livingston County, Kentucky

“Proven itself” - Well that’s one way to put it!

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Our contact at Kellyco asked us to post a blog all about meteorites that’s geared for metal detectorists, and she did the research to provided us with all the material. How could we say no?

The following information is available on Kellyco’s Meteorite Page with images and links to meteorite detectors.

If you have any topics you would liked researched feel free to email me at THShaun@yahoo.com - We’re here to help, and it’s always nice to learn something along the way.

“Don’t Buy Fallen Stars - Find Them!”

What is a Meteorite?
A meteorite is more commonly known as a fallen star or moon rocks. They are pieces of space debris that have landed on the earth’s surface after surviving a fiery journey through the layers of our atmosphere. Each one is unique in shape and size, and is made of either stone or iron. The iron meteorites that lay beneath the surface are heavy and instantly stand out as unusual. The most common meteorites are made primarily of iron and nickel, referred to as “Iron,”
“Stony Iron,” or “Chondrite” meteors - and these are the kind that you and your metal detector can find!

Meteorites are real treasures!
Meteorites are rarer than gold, platinum, diamonds or emeralds. Owning one is the only way to touch the cosmos, and the demand for such an experience is quite high all over the world! Many have called them the “truest form of black gold,” and they often sell for $300.00 per gram or more - meaning a 1 pound meteorite can be worth a million dollars.

Where can a Meteorite be found?
Meteoroids are entering the Earth’s atmosphere each day, amounting to more than a hundred tons of material! Fallen meteorites are witnessed about 33% of the time and the rest go unnoticed. According to the data base of the Meteoritical Society, about 1500 verified meteorites have been found in the U.S. in the past 200 years - and with today’s advances in metal detectors, the number goes up every day!

Start at home: 291 meteorites have been found in Texas, 177 in California, 214 in New Mexico, 50 in Nevada, 85 in Arizona, 17 in Alabama, and 136 in Kansas!! Almost every single state in the U.S. has been home to a meteorite at one time - even Hawaii!

The best place to start looking for these valuable rocks is in deserts, if you happen to live close to such an area. Since they are devoid of plant life and rarely have rain, these are great places to look because the meteorite will not weather or erode quickly, and can be found just below surface.

Next are “Strewn Fields” - These are fields that have clearly been the landing place of meteorites and have often been searched by others - but that can be in your favor. With the advances in metal detecting technology, many of the meteorites found today are pieces of ones found years ago.

How can I find a Meteorite?
After you’ve picked out a good location and done some research, the first thing you’ll need is a high quality metal detector that can help you find a coveted and valuable meteorite.

Most metal detectors will locate iron, but you’ll want one that covers a large area and penetrates much deeper into the Earth to find the more valuable meteorites. This includes the entire Quantro Sensing line of metal detectors for both land and water, which are specifically geared to locate large iron items and penetrate to great depths. Lorenz metal detectors, especially the DeepMax III, have been a favorite for a number of Kellyco’s customer’s meteorite discoveries worth tens of thousands of dollars. Other recommended metal detectors for meteorite hunting are Minelab’s Explorer SE, and Musketeer Advantage, White’s XLT and DFX, as well as the Garrett GTI 2500 with the depth multiplier. (If you’re not sure what detector to use, please call any of our certified metal detector experts toll free at 1-800-898-6673 & 1-800-327-9697).

It has been reported that scientists have successfully found meteorites in the cold depths of Antarctica thanks to the help of metal detectors. Some have felt that the ability to ground balance or cancel out the dominate background rock has been the most important improvement to metal detecting technology over the years, and has allowed them to find meteorites in glacial moraines. Thanks to the help of a metal detector, twenty meteorites were found in only four hours of searching in Antarctica.

Several Kellyco customers have spent years dedicated to finding meteorites right here in America, and our good friend Murry Crowe at Mojo Outdoors found one that weighed 49 pounds! He later recovered 9 others in the same area with his Lorenz DeepMax III purchased from Kellyco Metal Detectors.

Many meteorite hunters have found this to be much more than just a hobby, and have become very serious meteorite hunters. Among the legendary stories that many hobbyist share there is one of a hunter who grossed over a half million dollars in meteorites found around the world. One such meteorite was sold for $50,000 in auction.

How can I tell if I found one?
Most metals found on Earth are either man-made or a meteorite. A piece of metal without holes or bubbles in it may be a meteorite. If you think you’ve found one but aren’t sure, rub your find on a piece of unfinished ceramic tile. If the streak is red, the mineral is hematite and not a meteorite. If you don’t have any ceramic tile lying around, try to break a piece of your find off. If it is a meteorite, it will be similar to naturally-occurring steel, and you probably won’t be able to break it no matter how hard you try.

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First things first: I know we took some time off, but it’s spring time. Can you blame us? After researching all fall and winter it’s finally nice to be outside again and we’ve been hard-pressed to sit at a computer for very long.

Second: With the current economic news/trends/status, we’re pretty happy to have a hobby that pays us instead of drains us. Which leads me to the article I stumbled on this morning.

It would seem that the price of making pennies ain’t cheap.

MSNBC is reporting that “it now costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7½ cents. Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II, and maybe using steel for nickels, as well.

“Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint.”

This shouldn’t be any surprise to those of us who have been watching gold creep higher and higher… it looks like other commodities and precious metals are slowly but surely doing the same.

But steel pennies? Really?

During World War II, there were Massive shortages of Copper. Copper was the main ingredient for Shell Casings, Bullets, Bombs and Guns for the war. The US Government was forced to forgo the copper they typically used for coins until they could find more elsewhere.

When first introduced, the steel pennies were completely shunned by the general population.

When brand new, the 1943 cents looked like, and were often mistaken for, dimes. And in 1943, making a 9 cent mistake was a big deal. When these cents corroded, they looked like slugs, hence the nick name, “lead pennies.”

In 1945 the mint began to withdraw steel cents from circulation. Over the next 20 years the mint retrieved almost 15% of the steel pennies that were minted and destroyed them.

But it looks like these unpopular pennies will be making a comeback if the economy continues down the path it’s on. So metal detectorists beware - that coppa collection might be looking a little funny in the future.

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We just realized that one of our sponsors, Kellyco, hosts a couple of other services for metal detectorists. Check these out when you get a chance!

HowMetalDetectorsWork.com: Created with metal detectorists in mind, this website features articles on Electro Magnetic Field Generation, the history of metal detectors, a buyers guide and field test reports. It’s an excellent resource - bookmark it and go back often.

MetalDetectorManuals.com: This site provides manuals for anyone to download or view with Adobe Acrobat - For FREE! This is a great site to reference if you don’t want to flip through the pages of your manual; just “Ctrl+F” and search for the term you need to know about! Manuals for Garrett, Minelab, Bounty Hunter, Detector Pro, Fisher, Cobra, Lorenz, OKM, Predator, Viper, White’s and MP series are all there.

Enjoy these websites folks. Hope you find them as useful as we do.

- Shaun

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It looks like others are catching on to our favorite hobby. With the price of gold and other metals increasing to the highest levels ever recorded, it should come as no surprise. But what is a surprise is the amount of media attention metal detecting is suddenly getting.

I found an article in Smart Money Magazine Online titled “Welcome to the World of Metal Detecting.” It’s two pages long and features a quote by our sponsor Kellyco Metal Detector’s founder and CEO, Stuart Auerbach: “Stuart Auerbach, founder of Kellyco, the nation’s largest metal-detector store, with $15million in revenue, estimates a 50% increase since 2002″ [in metal detector sales].

The article goes on to describe some of the hard-core treasure hunters who “who drive to the shore in hurricanes just for the chance to hunt a beach swept clear of the top layer of sand — they tether themselves to their cars when the wind blows hard.”

It also mentions a popular hunt we’ve heard a lot about - DIV (Diggin’ in Virginia): “Relic hunters who specialize in historic sites attend national gatherings like the annual sellout “Diggin’ in Virginia” convention, where hundreds spend the weekend combing a rented field for Civil War artifacts; teams sponsored by detector manufacturers compete to uncover the most eye-popping finds and win cash prizes.”

Perhaps most interesting is that, while the author of this article is no metal detectorist, she knows of the on-going feud between archaeologists and metal detectorists.

“While most detectorists say they dig on private property only with the owner’s permission, some accuse them of messing with historic areas and pocketing materials that belong in museums; some towns have passed laws banning the use of metal detectors on public property.”

This is a common disagreement between the two groups and one I encourage us to overcome by documenting our finds and sharing them with local museums whenever possible.

Check out the entire article at SmartMoney.com and get ready to share your hobby with a lot of other folks! It looks like the rest of the world is finally catching on to ours!

- Shaun

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This article really warms my heart and hits close to home for any beach-combers.

Volunteers scoured 33,000 miles of shoreline worldwide - 90 miles in Brevard County, Florida alone - and picked up more than 6 million pounds of trash and debris that were harmful to seabirds and marine mammals.

In Brevard county alone 5,188 bags of trash (about 103,000lbs!) were collected by over 2,000 “Keep Brevard Beautiful” volunteers.

“The debris ranges from the relatively harmless, although annoying and an eyesore, to items that annually result in the death of hundreds of thousands of seabirds and marine mammals caught in abandoned fishing lines and netting.

A third of the items found came from smokers. The volunteers collected and cataloged nearly 2.3 million cigarette butts, filters and cigar tips.

In all, 57 percent of the trash was related to shoreline recreational activities, 33 percent from smoking-related activities, 6.3 percent from fishing or waterway activities, 2 percent from dumping, and less than 1 percent from medical and personal hygiene activities, said the report.”

What the report DOES NOT mention is the hundreds of metal detectorists who scour Florida beaches year-round! But I wanted to take a moment and say “Thank You!” to all of those beach combers who, I know, pick up trash and clean the beaches as they search for lost treasures.

Spring is here and the beaches are packed, so good luck out there!

~ Liz ~

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