By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Chris Kasper found only a few coins while scouring the beach Sunday afternoon with his metal detector, but for him the experience was priceless.
After the weekend storm blew through, Kasper headed from his home in Lumberton, N.J., to Sea Isle City in search of hidden treasure buried in the sand.
“I found a little bit of change. I don’t know if I even have a buck,” he said with a laugh about his modest haul. “But it’s fun. You never know what you might find.”
Kasper may not have hit the mother lode, but he had the beach at 88th Street virtually all to himself just as the sun broke through the departing storm clouds, creating a beautiful backdrop over the ocean and beach.
“I pretty much do this every weekend,” he said of his metal detecting on the beach. “But after a storm, that’s when you can really find some good stuff from yesteryear.”
“But you have to have patience. It’s like fishing,” he added.
Kasper usually goes to the beaches in Sea Isle, Avalon, Stone Harbor and Ocean City to search with his metal detector.
Winter storms tend to churn up the surf and deposit some interesting things on the beach. Immediately after a coastal storm can be a good opportunity to find coins or other valuables, Kasper explained.
“Storms in winter can move stuff around,” he said. “But it can also work against you, because the sand can get pushed up on the beach and bury things.”
But just the opposite has been happening in the south end of Sea Isle, where Kasper was metal detecting. The sand has been swept away by the waves. The beaches and dunes generally between 88th Street and 92nd Street in the Townsends Inlet area have suffered significant erosion from coastal storms in the past year.
Sea Isle is waiting for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin a full-scale beach replenishment project in the spring to restore a large swath of the eroded shoreline.
Barring delays, Sea Isle’s replenished beaches will be ready just in time for the start of the Memorial Day weekend kickoff to the summer tourism season.
Altogether, 252,000 cubic yards of fresh sand will be placed on the beaches in central Sea Isle from about 29th Street to 53rd Street. Another 388,000 cubic yards of new sands will restore the beach in the south end from about 73rd Street up to Townsends Inlet.
Most of the powdery top layer of sand has been washed away from the 88th Street beach where Kasper was using his metal detector.
The few U.S. coins that he discovered Sunday were of the newer variety, not the much more valuable silver-rich coins dating to 1964 and earlier.
“It’s all new stuff – ’64 and newer,” Kasper said with disappointment.
On other occasions, he has made some valuable finds in Sea Isle.
About three years ago, he found a man’s wedding ring on the beach. The frantic man asked Kasper for his help while he was searching for his ring. Kasper recalled how relieved the man was when the ring was plucked from the sand.
Another time in Sea Isle, Kasper found a man’s wallet, including cash and credit cards tucked inside.
“My sister always teases me, ‘Did you find anything good?’” Kasper said of his sister, Becky.
When Kasper told Becky about the wallet, she went on Facebook to try to locate the owner. Eventually, the sister of the man who owned the wallet contacted Becky. Later, Becky gave the sister the wallet when the two arranged a meeting in Sea Isle, Kasper said.
Kasper, 57, owns a waste disposal business in Philadelphia called American Disposal Systems. Although trash hauling is his profession, his passion is metal detecting.
He especially enjoys finding historic artifacts. For instance, his metal detector helped him to discover some old musket balls in a farm field in his hometown of Lumberton.
Perhaps his most intriguing find was a Colonial-era coin that he unearthed from a farm field in Lumberton. He roughly estimated the old coin’s value to be around $250, but he considers its history to be priceless.
“You think, what did that coin mean to the person who owned it? What did it buy back then?” he said in an interview.
Shortly after, Kasper returned to his metal detecting on the beach in search of untold hidden treasures buried in the sand.
