Win An Ounce of Gold!

I wanted to share this monthly sweepstakes that I recently found.  This is a monthly drawing to win a 2011 Gold Eagle like the one pictured here.  Wow, that would be a nice treasure to put in this year's treasure chest.  With gold trading near $1,500 an ounce, this would certainly be the treasure of the year.  Enter at APMEX.com.  You can enter once a month per person.  Good luck!

Deep Blue Marine Locates 16th Century Treasure Ship

The Deep Blue Marine company recently uncovered a treasure ship from the late 1500's off the coast of the Dominican Republic.  So far, the company has brought up jade statues, along with silver and gold coins dating back to 1537. That would make the find one of the oldest in the New World, less than 100 years after Christopher Columbus sailed these same waters. The company feels that a lot more is still under water, as they have not yet hit the main wreckage from the ship.  The mirror in the photo above is actually a polished piece of iron pyrite that is discussed in the video below. Not bad for being over 400 years old!   Watch the short video below to see the dive team in action and visit the company's website to see additional treasure photos.  This is one recovery we will be watching closely to see what else emerges.
                                Deep Blue dive video        Deep Blue Marine website

It's Shenandoah Yard Crawl Time!

Yay! The annual Shenandoah County Yard Crawl is one of our "mark the calendar" events - hey, we're thrift-shopping pirates, what can I say?  It is a 43 mile long yard sale through several small country towns in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia.  This year marked our 4th year in a row we have shopped the Yard Crawl.  It was a lot of fun, and we did find some neat treasures.  The day was overcast and in the mid-80's, which was nice.  In past Augusts, it's been so hot, we were pooped by 11AM.  This year we were still going by 1PM, and that's saying something, since we hit the road at 5:30 to be at northern end of the sale by 7AM.

On the hunt!

We usually make our best finds in the first hour or two since everything hasn't been picked over too much yet.  This year it didn't seem like there were as many crawlers and we were still able to make some good finds later in the day.  Of course, it all depends what people are looking for.  There is a little of everything at the yard crawl, from furniture to antiques, clothing and every kind of toy and household item you can imagine.  There are a few dealers selling, but it's more like just people who have sheds or barns along the Valley Pike pulling their stuff out alongside the road.

Got some treasures!

In our case, we collect old holiday decorations, toleware, pewter, Carnival glass, jewelry, and what have you. To be honest, we have started many collections just because we found 2 matching items. Thankfully, we've come to our senses and cleared a lot of those collections out over the years. We do have a little antique booth, so we have an outlet to keep things moving on to those who will appreciate them.

  A lot of the fun of the Yard Crawl is chatting with people and moving on down the road to the next potential treasure score. It's a nice drive out in the country too, and the scenery is pretty.  I have to admit, there could be a few more bathrooms! LOL. We had a lot of fun and came home with a lot of nice finds.

Vintage Christmas treasures

Here are some neat old Santas and Christmas decorations we were able to come up with.  The red deer and sleigh in the middle are an old flocked set from the 50's or 60's.  The santa in the box is a really nice set that looks like it may never have been used.  He has a cloth outfit and beard, I don't know what the vintage of that is.  The old santa in the front left may be the best find of the day at 25 cents!  He is an old old cardboard Father Christmas made in Japan.  His beard is cotton and he is holding a pine branch in his hand. These finds will make nice additions to our vintage Christmas display.   

Assorted fun finds

Here are some other assorted goodies.  For some reason I attract Whiting and Davis mesh evening bags as you know.  Here is a more recent one for $2. The brass dipper is pretty old, the frame on the old picture must be from the 1800's (50 cents), the tole painted bucket is a nice old country piece for $1, and there's a silver bracelet up front that was $1 also.  We liked the black cat pitcher since we have two black cats.  We had to wait for someone who promised to be back by noon to get him, but she never showed, so we took him home for $1 too.  The sellers helped us count down the seconds till noon.  It was a good time.

All in all we didn't spend a lot, had a great day, and found some neat treasures.  I'm sure we'll head back up into the Blue Ridge Mountains again next year for year 5!

Gold, Diamonds and Cash This Month

  July was a good month for treasure hunting as you can surmise from the title above. Gold, diamonds and cash, woo-hoo!  First of all, the moneywalking continues to impress me. I was able to find 81 coins and two dollar bills on the ground or in machines as I wrote about in a post on July 16.  That was good for a total of $10.32 - not too shabby! I try to walk a few miles per day, and this year I combined that with searching for coins along my walks.  In 7 months I have found almost $48 in coins and bills laying on the ground or in machines.  I have gotten to the point that I expect to find coins now and they continue to turn up.



I took the metal detector out seven times and was able to come up with 213 coins that way.  It has been hot, hot, hot this Summer, though, and the ground is pretty well baked dry, so I've had to hunt in playgrounds for the most part, and only for short periods due to the heat. I was able to hunt along an ocean beach last week, and was lucky enough to find a 3-stone diamond necklace in the dry sand. That was a nice find and made the hunt.  The Ace 250 detector is pretty limited on the beach, though, it gives a lot of false signals on the wet sand, so I had to stay up on the dry sand.  I still was able to find quite a few coins and clean up a lot of pulltabs off the beach. 

Of course we both continued to hit the yard sales to see what treasure is out there.  I found another gold mesh Whiting and Davis evening bag, strangely enough.  This one cost a dollar. I can't believe what people sell stuff for sometimes but the economy is tough and people seem to be clearing out a lot of unneeded clutter. There were some other good finds too, but I can't remember them all now. 

Next week is the annual Shenandoah County 43-mile long yard sale.  We will be attending for the 3rd year in a row.  It's a lot of fun and great treasure hunting.  I will take some pics and write a post here on our adventures. Keep hunting!

Treasure In The News

I've run across several treasure stories here lately.  Maybe stories about treasure just catch my eye, but it just goes to show that there are treasures of all types being found every day.  Here are a few from the last week or two:

Bronze Cannon From 1715 Shipwreck Found - A salvage company recovered a bronze swivel gun from the 1715 Plate Fleet that sank off the east coast of Florida in a storm 300 years ago. The gun had 63 gold and silver coins inside it.  The fleet took on a cargo of millions of silver coins in Veracruz, Mexico. Most of that is still waiting to be found.

Superman Comic Saves Family From Foreclosure - A family facing foreclosure found a Superman comic book in the basement as they were packing up their belongings.  The comic turned out to be Action Comics Issue Number 1, from June 1938.  It introduced Superman to the world, and could be worth more then $250,000.

An 1885 Pocket Spill - A man using a metal detector found 7 cents in one hole along an old trail through the woods.  The coins are dated 1865 to 1885.  While not enough to retire on, they still are a neat treasure to find, and make you wonder whose pocket the coins slipped out of on that spot almost 125 years ago.  There's tons of it still out there, all around us.

Good Yard Sale Treasure Hunt

    This past weekend was a pretty good treasure hunting one in a strange way.  My significant other is the antique hunter and yard sale shopper extraordinaire.  I am more the coin and ring hunter, although I've developed a decent eye for antique styles, vintages, and marks over the years. Anyone who spends time pursuing the hobby of treasure hunting in all its forms has "inventory" collected up at home. So when a neighbor announced she was having an impromptu yard sale, we jumped onboard, a good opportunity to sell off some stuff and clear some space.  We didn't set up a lot of stuff, and it was a girls thing, so I was dispatched off to do the yard sale hunting, while she conducted the sale.  Perhaps a  bit perverse, but she didn't want to miss a Saturday's worth of sales, and I was ordered out.

  So off I went, and once I scored a $20 Hartstone checked mixing bowl at a moving sale for $1, the blood was flowing.  If you are into antiques at all, you know you can never know everything, and you can't be an expert in all fields.  At another moving sale, I pulled a porcelain doll out of a bin of junk. The person running the sale had no idea, and thought $1 sounded fair, so the doll came with me too.  Dolls are one area I know nothing about, but since she was in good shape, with porcelain head and hands, I figured she's worth more than that.  Things slowed down after that as the heat of the day rose.  I finally met a nice lady who just wanted to move some items.  I got a nice framed print and a wood dough bowl for $1 apiece, and a hanging corner cupboard for $2 (behind the blue pitcher).  We kind of lean towards colonial things, so these were all good captures.  Finally, as the morning wore down, at a sale with mostly household stuff and perfumes, I saw some old glassware on a table and inspected the blue carnival glass pitcher. Good shape.  "Are these cups a set with the pitcher?"  "Yes, $10"  Hem, haw, but don't put down the pitcher, "OK". done.  The blue punch cups are not actually a set with the pitcher, but they are all the same grape leaf pattern.  The cups are worth $8 a piece on Replacements.com, and I knew the pitcher was worth a few dollars since we have some experience with carnival glass.  Looked it up, it's worth $15-$35 on Ebay.  Not bad. 

   Wife was happy, guess I've still got it LOL.  It's all treasure.

How To Find Coins in Machines

I've been keeping up with the daily walks at lunchtime, although it's been in the 90's several days this month. Since I am walking, I am also always on the lookout for stray coins. I'm still surprised that there are so many coins out there in the wild. I've been able to find $5 to $8 consistently over the last few months.  I keep a jar in my desk and add coins to it that I find every day on my walks. Here is a link to a short article I wrote about strategies that I've been using successfully to find coins in machines.  You won't believe it until you try.  I just shake my head sometimes when coins come tumbling out of a machine.

I have to also say that I KNOW there are coins heading into my pocket if I just keep looking.  I know that because it's a rare day that I don't find any.  For that reason, I don't worry about it, I know they will come.  Interesting, but so far I haven't been proved wrong.  
Read the entire article, How To Find Coins in Machines.