We have learned that when you get the low tides that you have to take advantage of them, like it or not! I have been working hard to get things done here and have worked myself too much so that I really don't feel up to hunting in the evening. Yesterday was one more of those terrible hot and oppresive evenings. The humidity was awful and the heat index still over a hundred. The wind had picked up only slightly but anything was help. We decided to work along the seawall before hitting the same old beach again. We stopped in the Sunday afternoon crowd and tried to park along the seawall but traffic was impossible. Finally we got parked and strapped on our gear and walked down the beach. I have never had any luck along here and I was tired before we got started but I did my part. I marched on down the beach swinging but just could not get any feeling into it!
On that bad stretch of beach I got very few signals and once again my detector signaled "pulltab". There were still lots of people on the beach and quite a few were watching me. I dug the shovel full of sand and tossed it up onto the beach. As I did so something strange happened... A strange object flipped out of the pile and rolled on down the beach. At first I thought that it was one of those big gold colored twistoffs but my eyes bugged out as I saw one of the largest gold rings that I have ever seen laying in the sunshine down on the beach where it had rolled. My eyes were not the only ones that saw it for sure and my heart almost stopped as I feared one of the pesky kids would run down and grab it before I could get to it. Somehow my feelings about treasure hunting got a shot in the arm and I ran to the ring and scooped it up. I cupped my hands around it and felt a very heavy ring. It had deep markings stamped into the inside of the ring but my fuzzy eyes could not read it. I put it away in an inner pocket of my pouch where I keep a snap for good rings. I really don't want to loose them again!
Well! this had put another perspective on the day. I felt more like myself and started hunting more focused on my targets. This gold ring made the 10th in just over a month and one of our best runs of luck ever. Still and though, I found it in a unlikely place on a sanded up beach. It goes to prove that you just never know!
I paid more attention now and walked on for a bit working my coil close to the sand and once more weak signals began to show up. I got a very strange signal and I am always curious to those strange sounding signals. Moreoften than not they turn out to be something very interesting. It would read iron and one coin tone on my Fisher CZ20, but it was only in one direction! I dug deeply into the sand and finally one pile of sand showed me that somewhere in the pile of sand there was my prize. Well, It turned out to be a ladies Riviera wristwatch but the battery had run down and it had been in the sand for probably over a year. Nevertheless it was a good watch and a nice find.
After that quarters began to show up very deeply in the sanded up beach. Then there was one of those interesting pulltab signals but it was a bit large. As I suspected it was a nice new pair of sunglasses. Needless to say I wasn't disappointed! We have been finding them by the buckets lately and they all seem brand new!
We finally cleaned out the area and decided that we would drive to the beach where they charge $5 to get in. They had just left the gate and went home. Sure enough the water was out pretty good and the sandbar was up above the sea. I worked the water in the cut and picked up a little silver ring while my wife picked up another pretty silver ring with a stone in it.
It goes to prove that you really don't have to believe that you will find something. Sometimes I think that it helps but this time I didn't feel a thing when I dug out the big, fat, gold ring. It is an interesting ring as it has large Lotus flowers on it unlike the marijuana that is on most of my rings. That and skulls! Boy, what people are into these days!
The ring had a crown on it showing me that it was probably from England and I did not understand all the markings but I did see an 18 after the crown. The ring weighs 13.4 grams of 18K gold! It may be find of the year for me. And on a bad beach found while I hardly paid any attention to what I was doing!
Since the wife didn't do so well, I let her find the goodies the next evening:
Among her finds was this nice 1896 Indian head penny. Certainly a surprise at the Galveston beach since no old coins are hardly ever found there. She also found the nice 10K gold wedding band, ladies watch and old silver ring.
