Summery of My One Week Metal Detecting The Beach.

As it turned out I never did get to go metal detecting our local beach today. Hitting the beach every day detecting the tide going out until the tide came in again, running errands for myself and the family, working night times and spending time on the internet here had finally taken its toll, today I was knackard. Even had a kip this afternoon so I'll be ok for work tonight. Looking back over the past week I think to myself, boy, what a ride. I really enjoyed it and it was my best metal detecting week long session yet. It was just great to have gone out metal detecting and come home with some decent finds, makes up for all those times where I hardly found anything, sort of spurs you on.

For those of you who have not been following my experience this week it all started last Saturday 15th. We had just had a lot of bad storms for a couple of weeks prior and I thought what a good time to have a session on our local beach to see if the storms had churned the beach up. Arriving on the beach I couldn't believe my eyes, there wasn't a grain of sand to be seen, totally stripped and the appearance of all those rocks and boulders which were normally covered by sand made it look like a foreign landscape. Excitedly I was soon set up and onto the stones and pebbles I went. Almost immediately BING BING, a first coin, BING BING, another.... and that's how it went on and I came home with a pocket full of coins.
I was back there again on the Sunday and had another harvest of coins and other bits. Monday I couldn't make it but was there as the tide started to recede on Tuesday, which produced another crop of coins.Wednesday was the same, another pocket full. As the week went on I was finding other nice goodies as well as coins. Thursday was another good day, plenty of finds but I did notice that maybe the sand was creeping back. Yesterday I could see that the sand was crawling back onto the beach but still had a bounty of coins.

As I say, I was too tired to go today and am now sat here reflecting over the past week. Everything I found this past week long session I kept separated in different jars and I have just spent the last hour sorting and taking photos to share with you.

Here's a photo of my total finds for the week. There are well over 400 coins, 6 rings, a Royal Engineers cap badge, a silver cross, a Robertson's badge, a tiny silver Torquay charm and 3 St. Christophers, two silver and a goldy looking one.

The outside edge of coins are all decimal consisting of £1 coins, large and small 50p's, 20p's, large and small 10p's, large and small 5p's, 2p's, 1p's and half p's. The top two rows inside the decimal are old pennies, the third row consists of old halfpennies. Then comes 6 farthings. Under them are all the silvers I found, 1 halfcrown, 1 silver threepence, 9 florins, 11 one shillings, 29 sixpences followed by 9 thrupennybits To the right of the silver coins are the rings and to the left are the 3 St.Christophers, Torquay Charm, cross, badge and cap badge.

A closer look at the silvers from this week. As these are not valuable coins I gave them a quick clean up. 42 coins in total. The silver 3d dated 1922 and the halfcrown dated 1948. The florins date range from 1922 - 1963. One shillings date from 1940 - 1963. Sixpences date from 1929 - 1967.

3 St.Christophers, two silver and a goldy looking one. A Royal Engineers cap badge. Small silver cross, Tiny silver Torquay charm and the Robertson's badge.

The 6 rings. One I believe to be a brass toe ring and the other 5 all silver. The 5 silver rings are all uncleaned and a bit battered.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my finds as I enjoyed digging and showing them. This last week has been a real eye opener.This small local beach these finds came from has been done to death over the years by detectorists. When I've been there myself I used to think every things been well fished out as I only found a handful of coins in the summer months. The lesson I learn't this week is that every populated beach still holds thousands of finds beneath that sand. Ok, it may take a storm or two to get at them, but the finds are there just waiting to be discovered. I don't know if ever I will experience a week like this last one again but I will be certainly studying the weather from now on.

21/02/2014.