Category: Treasure Hunting

ANZAC Day

ANZAC Day, which is basically a counterpart of US Veterans Day, always starts with a Dawn Service. This year I attended a different kind of morning ritual… but we certainly counted our blessings that the war stories we told over breakfast were about big fish we saw or jellyfish we narrowly avoided instead of something more somber.

Later in the day I went out for a bit of metal detecting. Here’s what I posted to the Facebook group dedicated to that hobby…

“Went to the beach for an ANZAC Day hunt. Found a few items with a military theme as the Warbirds flew overhead: .22 shell casing, a lead soldier, and a Ukrainian 5 hryvnia coin. Among the crusty coins I did get three silver thruppence, so that’s a win.

“The gold ring rang up as a 34 on my Deus 2, which is normally the foil liner from a milk or juice bottle. But it was a strong tone, so I figured it would be shallow and I could get it off the beach. I went through the whole spectrum of detectorist emotions and reactions when the ring came out… excitement of course, followed by suspicion because of that low VDI number, then furtively looking around to see if I need to hide my treasure from marauders (luckily none were spotted), then hopefully but oh so casually looking for a hallmark, then sadly concluding that it rang up like a piece of foil because it sure ain’t gold!”

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Heavy metal

So… metal detecting. I’m hooked. And yes, there’s a fishhook in the picture.

Each session is a little bit different, but they all follow a pattern. I go to the beach and dig a lot of holes: being new I still don’t fully trust the machine to tell me what’s valuable and what isn’t. And even the not valuable stuff might be interesting.

I get plenty of trash, mostly related to drinking from cans and bottles. I get scrappable metal –copper, brass and lead – in the form of screws, nails, wires, fishing gear, etc. That goes into a bucket and eventually maybe I’ll have enough to take to the scrap man. I get recognizable manufactured items, or their carcasses: pocket knives, shell casings and even a .69 caliber musket ball, vape pens, cutlery, and so on. Mostly that’s just trash.

Then there’s coins. I’ve got identifiable coins going back to the early 1900s. NZ has changed its coinage several times, so a lot of what I’ve found isn’t spendable anymore (although as a very precocious young man explained to me after walking up and asking me a bunch of questions, you can still cash it in at the Reserve Bank). But I’ve got about $30 in spending money without really targeting places like playgrounds that are seen as the most lucrative. I was a kid coin collector and it’s still fun. Especially with the older coins… is a shilling worth more or less than a florin? And what year did George VI change from King and Emperor to plain old King?

I also found this guy, who looks very much like a coin from 355 AD minted in Carthage during the reign of Constantius II. Is it real? Who knows. Even if it is, it’s not worth a ton, so I’m unlikely to spend the time or money to have it authenticated. Fun to imagine how it might have gotten here.

And finally there’s the jewelry. I’ve found a dozen plus rings already. A few are gold and a few silver. Wow! And a couple of necklaces and pins… the list grows longer each time I go out.

Digging the stuff up is fun enough, but so is Googling around to try and identify what I’ve got. Today, for instance, I got a little badge, badly corroded but with a partially legible motto. Kids here wear a LOT of such badges on their school blazers. I typed in a couple of guesses at Latin words and hey presto, found a good picture and identification of where it came from.

So, thanks again Lee for my Christmas present!!

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Third time lucky

After failing in Sydney and Houston, last Friday I was in the right place (the San Francisco Swatch store) at the right time (an hour before opening on a stormy weekday).

I was #2 in line, and according to Mr #1, who is semi-professional speculator / dealer, I was pretty lucky to get in so far to the front. By the time the store opened there were about 10 in line.

When the doors opened, I was pretty excited. But sadly the staff killed that feeling quickly. I hoped for “Welcome to Swatch, we’re so glad to help you achieve your collection goals” or “Wow isn’t it cool that we get to share this pop culture moment together?” What I got was “One at a time!” and “Step back, DO NOT block the door” When I approached the island with the samples, the guy just stood there, waiting for me to name a planet. You don’t get to look at or touch or interact with the merchandise in any way. They don’t ask you if you’d also like to buy the special San Francisco souvenir watch.

My friend Paul had a specific set of choices, and luckily the limited stock on hand included a Mission to Mercury, one of his top picks. So yay! My mission accomplished. There were no Mars watches in stock, so I didn’t have to make a Sophie’s Choice between his pick and mine. Maybe I’ll get up early one day this week and try the shop on the Las Vegas strip…

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You can buy anything if you know where to look

At the end of the cruise we took a bus to Hanoi. Midway, we stopped for a rest break at this workshop. We considered grabbing a few disabled people to pack home (way cheaper than in town since you get them right at the workshop where they’re produced).

But instead we got a silk embroidery wall hanging…

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It’s all about the Ho Chi Minhs

I bought this wallet in a New Plymouth thrift store over Christmas… what a great find to help anticipate the upcoming trip!

I’ve had more compliments on it than maybe anything I’ve ever owned… and that was in NZ. In Vietnam this wallet was a veritable rock star. Shopkeepers and waitresses would call their coworkers to take a look. Ha ha ha is very funny !!! Where you buy??? (Sorry for the possibly offensive use of dialect. But in this case I intend to illustrate that while it would not be possible for us to have a meaningful conversation using language, this silly secondhand plastic wallet really did bring us together.)

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Beachcombing

The haul from our visit to Tom’s farm in Tutukaka the other weekend. A paua (abalone) shell, a couple of super iridescent swirly shells, and a fragment of something… but what?

I’ve always thought of myself as a words guy much more than a numbers guy. So it didn’t take long to come up with “BLEND” and “WHISKY.” And that would have been the end of it, until Google. I typed in “blend whisky jug” and scrolled through the image results for just a few seconds. Amazing. There it was on the first page.

Drumroll please… the Royal Blend Whisky by A G Thomson of Glasgow was apparently a favourite of King Edward VII. They made a lot of jugs like this one more or less 100 years ago. Somehow part of this one ended up on a tiny beach in Northern NZ. You can buy an intact example for a couple hundred bucks on Ebay and elsewhere. So my little shard isn’t exactly the wreck of the Atocha, but it was still a good treasure hunt!

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