Treasure Hunting America - Episode 105

today on treasure hunting America we'll meet Gary Edwards a treasure hunter whose tenacity has earned him some unbelievable finds we were spearfishing and I saw this anchor chef jutting out of the sand it had to be I figured out a Spanish ship and I went back and started just finding all kinds of coins there's a few Russian coins in there there's some coins from India copper Mar VG's their silver there's a small amount of gold my only danger so far has been great white sharks I call it the guardians of the ring and will visit with art Apodaca who got started metal detecting in the late 60s it was exciting because there was only about one of me other guy in this whole county here with a metal detector so we had crime land you know we had we were finding ulster all coming up on pressure hunting America hello and welcome to another episode of treasure hunting America I'm your host mark Hendricks for the next half hour we'll share some amazing stories of everyday treasure hunters across the country discovering vast antiquities and caches of yesteryear Gary Edwards started treasure hunting in 1993 after a near-death car accident since then he's found gold nuggets jewelry and a lost Spanish galleon I started metal detecting to recuperate from a very bad automobile accident I was headed to a client with my portfolio come up around a curve and I see this garbage truck come roaring down the hill and he didn't see me and I pulled off the road and he broadsided me no broken bones with lot of neurological damage I'd lost 98% of the manual dexterity in one hand and 95 in the other for Gary his therapy of metal detecting turned into an addictive hobby that would lead to bigger and better treasure I wasn't really that into it at first and then realized it could be for anybody I always thought it was just a bunch of old geezers puttering around finding junk I found some pennies 1800s my first two cent piece shocked me and you know there was such thing as a two cent piece or a three cent piece I graduated from parks and beaches to actually go into the library and doing research historical research I went to the county and went through their archives and found maps dating from the early 1900's late 1800s that was a source of location where the old roads stagecoach stops schoolhouse buildings that were on the old maps it just snowballed on me as far as wanting to find more and more and more I'm the kind of person I would set goals well I'm going to find this and I would look for that I enjoyed it you never know what you're going to find this is a ruby and diamond ring that I found on the beach these were a recent find their gold amethyst and diamond handmade earrings from 19:20 I have an incidental find that I found quite a few years ago on the Central Coast I was using XLT whites and I got an iron reading and I normally don't dig iron but just on a whim I decided to dig it up it was only about four inches deep and found this iron spearhead wrapped in an old desiccated piece of deer hide I believe is what it was with this ceremonial blade I took it to an archaeologist and he dates at about 200 years old one of my recent finds just this last year was this gold matchbox case it's got specimen gold inlaid quartz solid gold and what's unusual about it is on the back is engraved San Francisco Bay prior to the Golden Gate Bridge being built which was built in 1933 so this is pre 1933 I figured 1920 expensive gold watch matchbox research and persistence I think that's the the key to it don't give up you're not going to find something every time you go out there but the one time that you do find something wonderful it makes it worth the 10 times you went out there and found some old junk when we return Gary will share about his largest treasure find so far a sunken Spanish galleon well spearfishing off the coast of California Gary was surprised to find an old ships anchor and ballast balls 30 feet down for him it was the discovery of a lifetime I spent about a week and a half going up the California coast we went up to Monterey and then coming back down and come up over a reef ten-foot top smacks of it and drop down and I saw this anchor shaft jutting out of the sand as I drop down to about 30 foot at the bottom of the reef I noticed up against the reef or some ballast I knew right away they were ballast piles because you don't find round rock like that naturally occurring in piles at the bottom of the ocean so I surfaced immediately there and took a bearing on the coast and continued my spearfishing with the idea of coming back someday didn't say a word to my buddies and in between wanting to go back there I had the accident so I wasn't able to go back for about five years and I went back and started just finding all kinds of different pieces of metal with and found some coins and I've made a trip Specter so far actually made many trips back there and if I didn't feel good about it I didn't go in the water I started from the ballast piles working out onto the sand looking for rock structure because I know anything heavy is going to go down onto the bedrock storms tend to stir things up I had a scoop that I worked with I figured out a Spanish ship or ships because I found such a wide variety of dates that had gone across the Pacific and returning back the Portuguese had what they call the black fleet the Manila fleet that used to come down the coast or Nia I think it's just the captains board whatever you want to call it his treasure box that he paid the Cellular's with because there's copper Marva T's their silver there's a small amount of gold primarily copper Marvy DS and Blancas what are called Blancas and those were the lowest of the spaniard denomination of coins there's a few Russian coins in there which they could have picked up going you know along the coast of China above that there's some coins from India there's some British coins which were common in use back then there's some Dutch coins the Dutch East India Company had a lot of coins in circulation at that time but primarily the majority of the coins I found her Spanish I was just really jazzed finding a history knowing that this had been submerged for a long long time after I got home and started cleaning the coins and finding the dates the period when those coins are from then I really got excited because these coins have been in the water for over 200 years this is the earliest one this is a Dutch Duquette or a dollar they call them 1589 Dutch dollar this is a India phanom from the late 1600s early 1700s in the copper coins there's quite a selection there's three what are called kopecks there are Russian coins from the mid 1700s late 1780s what I found interesting and researching these coins was that a kopeck back at the time these were minted under Catherine the Great would buy 40 eggs or one peasant I've got some vellum coins in here that are silver and copper the Marvy DS are the primary coins that I've got here they were the lowest denomination of Spaniard coin there's some that I've got it had been what are called counter stamped when a king passed away there was a change in a reign of Kings they would go back through their coins and stamp them with a date or the new Kings anvil they're called counter stamped I've got some that I've got two or three different counter stamps on most of these come from the 1400s 1500s there's a English commemorative coin I found on the wreck commemorating Admiral Vernon taking Portobello six ships I researched that on the internet and found out that there were seven or eight different commemorative coins that were quite popular back in the 1700s commemorating his feat of taking Portobello an incidental fine Lange on the sand had been laying there for quite a while obviously because of the barnacles and crustacean was a late 1600s Chinese porcelain plate another fine on the ship was this English pewter spoon it's got the British rosin crown stamp on it so it was an English pewter sailor spoon that they ate with this is a bronze timber spike from the ship I found I've actually found quite a bit of iron out there that I've left alone than this with I just wanted a couple pieces for my collection this is an iron timber spike these are copper planking or sheeting planking nails they're all hand hammered copper one another little unusual find I found out there on the ship was this gold cross this crucifix my only danger so far has been great white sharks I've dove eight times there and been escorted out of there five dives by great whites and actually had one one time I thought I was safe I surfaced in about six foot of water feeling secure and had one attack me and take a fin off and scar up my other fin so I kept it as a souvenir after the encounters I've had out there an amount of coins I have under my belt now I don't see any sense of raping the wreck for anything else I've got a few artifacts and a good amount of coins and I think that's I'll take my son there to show him where it's at and whatever he does with it in his adulthood later on he'll do you know I'm not showing the wreck to anybody else and I don't want somebody to come in there and just pillage it and rape the site so I've primarily left it pretty much alone when we return Gary will take us out to his claim to find gold nuggets don't go away well here we are at the claim I'm going to go down and find some goal with my detector it's a section the creek I've never worked before we'll see what we can find we found a few nuggets here behind me and I'm going to head down the creek and do some grub in for gold with a love for finding treasure gary recently registered a gold claim in the sierra foothills a claim generally is located on public land in this case it's BLM anybody with the proper filing fees and the documentation can file a claim on so that's what I did this year is I have a 20 acre claim up in an area that was known for producing gold there's mines all around it I will find all the pockets using a metal detector it just saves a lot of time and a lot of earth-moving to use a metal detector locate the source then run that through your machine whether it's a sluice or a dredge or your pan over drywall sure saves a lot of time well what I'm doing here is working over some bedrock with this MXT of lights and I like the bedrock because obviously you don't have to dig down to it getting some readings here of a 5% probability of iron or less which means that I've got a non ferrous metal in here either lead or gold or brass I'm going to dig away at it could be lead shot you never know get what we call overburden out of the way when I'm after is the gravel it would be underneath here hopefully gold pretty heavy stuff there I'm fine yet it's awful heavy well I see something down here at the bottom of the hole really nice nugget with quartz in it hasn't traveled too far really rough I know that's over half ounce of gold right there see what else if there's anything else usually gold if it's going to come it'll be down in a pocket oh well here's another one laying in the bottom of the same pocket I'm going to scrounge out the bottom of the pocket if I can find some more I'm fan yep here's another piece way down my god I'm gonna have to get a screwdriver to get this one out it's wedged down in the bottom another long piece this is a crevice until as you can see it's really dull it used to be about that long I've Ward down scratching in cracks through the years to get the gold out of the crevices Gold is the heaviest thing there is and it will go to the bottom bottom of a crack so you have to scratch it out quite often and anyway that's what I'm gonna do right now scratch this piece of gold that's laying at the bottom of a crack here that wash down I'm sure with this year storms and we'll see what it looks like looks like a long skinny piece reflection in the water is making it very hard on me right now there it sits and I can't Oh got it there's a vein a quartz vein in one place that I go to here that I have found pieces of what's called crystallized gold it's the rarest form of gold there is they have octahedral or octagonal crystals in it and where the gold actually chills fast enough that it forms crystals rather than chilling slowly and I've cleaned these with obviously I've cleaned it with nitric acid to bring out the luster and make them as pretty as I can I think there's some people that genuinely get gold fever as for saying it's I regard it almost like a disease really they get really obsessed with it where they what might even perform criminal acts to get their gold after you find your first nugget you go well I can't wait to find my first half ounce er after you find your first half ounce er you go well I want my full answer and I'm working on a couple ounce or now I hadn't found anything over an ounce you know yeah I'm trying to find a two ounce or someday I would say the first word that comes to my mind is satisfaction satisfaction of finding it outsmarting Mother Nature pulling the riches right from the ground with the aid of a metal detector when we return we'll visit with art apodaca who's been hunting the Sacramento Valley since the 1960s and found artifacts jewelry and valuable coins welcome back to treasure hunting America art lives in Merced California and has the perfect opportunity to hunt old ghost towns in the Sierra Nevada foothills he doesn't look for gold but finds delighted hunting with the 49ers left behind I got started back in 1969 just looking at magazine and it excited me looking at what they were finding you know with a metal detector and I figured hey that should be fun you know so I ordered it through the mail you know got it and it must have rained for about two months that I couldn't get out at that time they were not waterproof but I I figured out a way to do it waterproof I just wrapped a plastic bag around it and off I go you know we had prime land you know hips we were finding old stuff you know buffalo nickels we just finding lift and writing up but kept me going is the exercise and you know just getting out and relaxing you know something like a fishing you know which I used to do before but a metal detecting took over it what of art's favorite places to hunt is a large reservoir and longtime recreational area near his home this late was made by about nineteen hundreds of thing what I even remember when ice to be a kid I used to come back in in the 40s with my mom and dad I just do it because I love it and especially my wife loves when I bring her there's big diamond rings you know then she loves it once you're diggin it on it and you're thinking you know it could be a ring could be you know depends on the single that you got if it's a big single it could be something bigger on you you're digging for big treasure these are some gold items that I found around the lake um parks and some home sites also mostly the lake that have found in the past few years this is an old hammer I found in the Horny this area I was digging a single that I got which was mostly come out square nails by a fence I came into a big rock and I still was receiving a single so I had to remove the big old Boulder Rock but underneath it was the tack hammer it's over a hundred years old these are silver rings that I found also in the lake the one on my thumb is my first silver ring that I have on my first ring completely that I have found here to lay a detector becomes part of you you know you're kind of sensing what it's doing you know you could sense it it was it was like another arm lets you down there you know sensing what you find and you can get real good at it you know where they take them yeah you gotta go single here big up here still down there okay hey look at that look at that but he mother Wow I think we found a gold bracelet here it looks like it was lost either going in swimming going into swim or for the latch might have come loose it wasn't too deep it was about three four inches down gave a good single and it pinpointed pretty good just outside his home in the foothills of the Sierras art apodaca has a wonderful opportunity to hunt old ghost towns or Nita's at one time had about 20,000 people lie beneath most of the treasures that are believed to be buried around the area you know maybe around Bagby culture Vil I have found old tools stuff like old coins in her knee this area I had detected a lot I have found gold also art is not going to give up treasure hunting anytime soon he's still looking for that dream treasure I found gold I found silver I found artifacts and a gold coin is still out there for waiting for me thanks for joining us for this episode of treasure hunting America be with us next time as we explore more stories of everyday treasure hunters around the country until next time I'm mark Hendricks happy hunting treasure hunting America is sponsored by whites electronics manufacturers of the world's finest metal detectors for over 50 years whites has been building metal detectors in the USA for treasure hunters around the world for more information visit their website or call the number on your screen you

Channel: CompelMedia

Views: 231,514

Rating: 4.7695475 out of 5

Keywords: THA, 105, rich, social, media, development, production, video, marketing, webisodes, case, studies, how-to, television, series, documentaries, tourism, commercial, trade, show, product, fundraising, factory, tour, facility, training, instructional, retail, treasure, hunting, America, coins, metal, detector

Id: zbuFwQLrHvc

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2011