Old treasure chest brimming with coins unearthed on SC beach. Then came the bad news
Finding a rusty treasure chest full of gold coins is the ultimate fantasy for fans of metal detecting, and it seemed to be happening Saturday to a woman vacationing in South Carolina.
Angie Moore of Atlanta says she was out with her dad “experimenting” with a metal detector when it indicated something big in the sand outside the Marriott Grande Ocean in Hilton Head.
“So, I started digging,” Moore told McClatchy News. “We finally cleared the top of it off and ... it was one of those moments where you can’t believe what you’re seeing. The wooden chest had really degraded so as I attempted to lift it, part of the wood came off and we got our first glimpse of ‘gold.’”
Seconds later, Moore realized she’d been had by a joke that was likely years, if not decades, in the making.
“We went from, ‘OMG, it’s a treasure chest full of something gold’ to ‘Oh wow, those are toy coins,’” Moore said.
It remains a mystery why someone went through the trouble of hiding a chest of play money (it was a foot down), but Moore says she and her 81-year-old father, Harry Moore Jr., saw the humor in it.
“Best thought I can give you is that we found a treasure chest!” Moore said. “It doesn’t matter to us that it had fake coins in it. It was a great find for us. And, it’s even sweeter to know that some family with kids probably buried it for us to find one day.”
It’s not far-fetched to imagine finding treasure on local beaches, due to the hundreds of sunken ships off the coast. Multiple shipwreck recovering operations are ongoing off North Carolina and South Carolina, and backers have reported finding 18th-century coins and gold watches worth thousands of dollars, according to McClatchy News.
Other oddities, including World War II mines and parts of space rockets, have also been found washed up on beaches in the Carolinas.
Moore says she was out Saturday trying to reacquaint her dad with a hobby he dropped a decade ago, and the chest definitely made for a father-daughter bonding moment. In fact, she decided to keep it and the coins for sentimental reasons.
“Finding this has absolutely just made him so happy. We will keep it for that reason alone,” Moore said.
She posted news of the chest on the Low Country Metal Detecting Club Facebook page, and learned she was not the first to find a box of something strange on a local beach. The South Carolina-based group has more than 1,600 members.
“I found a chest a few years ago on IOP (Isle of Palms), but it was filled with goodie bags for a child’s birthday party,” one person wrote on Facebook.
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 11:52 AM with the headline "Old treasure chest brimming with coins unearthed on SC beach. Then came the bad news."