Finding something that would make the headlines in the metal detecting world was the furthest thing from my mind when I packed my metal detector in the family vehicle one morning before hitting the highway for a family day at the beach on the famous Treasure coast of Florida.
The beach we had planned to visit was one that I had metal detected at before but it had been some time since I had found any older shipwreck finds there. The last time I had metal detected the beach it was really sanded in.
The next morning we headed North for the trip up to the Treasure coast and it was not too long before we arrived at our destination and started setting up our little base on the beach spreading our towels out on the sand. While the rest of the family were busy combing thru the long pile of shells that had washed up from a previous tide it was time for me to get ready to do some treasure hunting.
I grabbed my long handled sand scoop and turned on my metal detector, after putting on my headphones and fine tuning my machine I headed toward the lower beach. I began sweeping my search coil just above the sand in my usual slow methodical style while waiting for a signal thru my head phones to break the silence which is quite a normal experience for a Treasure coast beach hunter. You can go hours without a signal on those well detected beaches.
On this morning unlike my last visit to this site the silence did not last very long when an old friend I had not heard from for quite some time announced its presence in my headphones. It was the unmistakable high tone of a small silver reale. It had been a few weeks since I had found Spanish silver with my new metal detector.
My last three Spanish silver treasure coins were found on only my second time using the Excalibur 1000. This signal sounded like a shallow target so I scraped the top of the sand with the side of my foot then bent down and picked up a small handful of sand to wave across the top of the Excalibur 1000 search coil to pin point the target.
Sure enough the target was in my hand I could feel it between my fingers. Peering down I could see the small blackened piece of silver in the palm of my hand with the flowered Mexican cross on one side and a shield on the reverse. I had just found a Spanish silver one reale from the famous 1715 fleet, a little piece of Spanish treasure lost for nearly 300 years and now resting in the palm of my hand.
After admiring my find and securing it in the front zippered pocket of my finds pouch I started to comb the area where the silver reale was found hoping that I could find another silver treasure coin. I knew from experience that items of the same weight will often settle in the same area but the end of the long shell pile was fast approaching and with it the end of my detecting time. The mornings metal detecting adventure appeared to be over as I reached the end of the shell pile but just as I reached the end of the shell pile my Excalibur 1000 again alerted me to the presence of a non ferrous metal object only this time the signal was quite different from anything I had ever heard before. The signal was a large booming deep low tone; should I bother digging this crazy low tone as it was only going to be a tin can I thought but not having had many signals I decided to dig the target.