And they thought the land was salted with the pretty green stones

[Woodland Detectors]

An emerald so large it's being compared with the crown jewels of Russian empress Catherine the Great was pulled from a pit near corn rows at a North Carolina farm.

The nearly 65-carat emerald its finders are marketing by the name Carolina Emperor was pulled from a farm once so well-known among treasure hunters the owners charged $3 a day to shovel for small samples of the green stones. After the gem was cut and re-cut, the finished product was about one-fifth the weight of the original find, making it slightly larger than a U.S. quarter and about as heavy as a AA battery.

The emerald compares in size and quality to one surrounded by diamonds in a brooch once owned by Catherine the Great, who was empress in the 18th century, that Christie's auction house in New York sold in April for $1.65 million, said C.R. “Cap” Beesley, a New York gemologist who examined the stone.

While big, uncut crystals and even notable gem-quality emeralds have come from the community 50 miles northwest of Charlotte called Hiddenite, there has never been one so big it's worthy of an imperial treasury, Beesley said.

 

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[treasurehound]

My wife has been wanting to go to Hiddenite ever since the story was on the Travel channel.

 

[SirJoey]

My wife has been wanting to go to Hiddenite ever since the story was on the Travel channel.

Yeah, I saw that one, too. I've been wanting to visit that place myself, ever since.
I bet they'll enjoy a big resurgence of interest now!









The Lord Is My Shepherd!

 

[U.K. Brian]

Well at least its an accurate story.

I lived near a cove in Devon (U.K.) at one time. A few coins including gold came off it. On doing research it turned out that a ship had been wrecked trying to get into the harbour thats alongside the beach. The reports of the time spoke of the whole bay being ringed with gold.

It was true. Problem was it was a slave ship carrying little else and the "gold" was the gravel they had taken from the African port to ballast the ship. You can still dig this gravel.

Treasure hunting and metal detecting magazines mostly just reported the ring of gold bit and forgot it was gravel. Of the few coins that were found the most valuable was only listed in a Dutch coin book and the price was given in dollars, $1000. Soon the $1000 was turned into a thousand pounds so they managed to double the value making it a much better, though false story.