In the Money Pit area, the team continues drilling borehole J-9 into the solution channel, targeting the zone between 150 and 220 feet where they believe the original treasure shaft has collapsed over more than two centuries of repeated excavation. Kyle reports a depth of 158 feet as cores come up, and Charles Barkhouse runs his pinpointer across each section. Chunks of limestone yield nothing, and the operation proceeds to the bottom of the solution channel at 216 feet with 26 feet of recovery. Terry Matheson, Charles, and Steve Guptill identify the loosest material between 208 and 211 feet as the most promising section, and the team sends it to the lab for precious metals analysis. In a separate lab meeting, Laird Niven and Emma Culligan present their findings on pieces of a drill rod recovered the previous week from borehole H.5-8.5 at 174 to 178 feet. Emma's XRF analysis identifies the manganese content as consistent with mid-1800s to late 1800s manufacture, which the team correlates to the 1849 Truro Company drilling operation during which foreman James Pitblado reportedly recovered the 14th-century Portuguese coin from roughly 100 feet deep.
At the request of Rick Lagina, coin expert Sandy Campbell meets with the team and Steve Salomon in the research center to examine the Portuguese coin Salomon brought to the team the previous week. Campbell identifies it as a Tornes escudo, a decorative shield coin minted in Portugal between 1367 and approximately 1383, featuring a Templar cross on the reverse and a celebration of the king on the obverse. He notes the coin was uncirculated and definitively buried, as its condition could only be preserved at depth, and identifies its composition of silver, zinc, copper, and nickel as matching the trace elements Dr. Ian Spooner has detected in the Money Pit water. Campbell values the coin at $25,000 to $30,000, adding that an entire chest of uncirculated specimens would be worth considerably more. Alex Lagina joins by phone as the team calculates the potential value of a full treasure cache.
On Lot 5, Marty Lagina, Peter Fornetti, and Katya Drayton detect a signal beneath a large boulder between the rectangular feature and the rounded stone foundation. After failing to move the boulder by hand with a pry bar, Marty retrieves a skid steer and rolls it free. The signal beneath proves to be a corroded ghost, but Katya detects a new target in the soil disturbed by the skid steer's tracks and recovers a metal artifact with a fastener. In the lab, Emma identifies it as a fragment of a cast-iron cooking pot with high phosphorous content throughout the iron, a characteristic of pre-Industrial Revolution manufacture that places the piece in the 1700s and possibly the 1600s. Laird Niven confirms that Nova Scotia had no capacity to cast iron in this period, meaning the pot was made in Europe and brought to the island. Rick Lagina and Doug Crowell note that along with trade weights, Knights of Malta buttons, and other old artifacts found nearby, the cooking pot adds another layer of evidence that someone of European origin was active on Lot 5 and deliberately covered up the features before the discovery of the Money Pit.
On Lot 5, archaeologist Fiona Steele and members of the team continue excavating the round feature, recovering a sherd of black Anglo-American coarse earthenware datable from the 1600s to 1800s and a button found near the location of the starburst button previously linked to the Knights of Malta. Later, Marty and Katya expand their search south of the rounded feature and recover a copper coin with visible writing around its edges and what appears to be a cross on one face. Gary Drayton examines the coin and dates it to pre-1600s based on its irregular hammered shape, thickness, and pure metal composition. The find, the sixth coin recovered on Lot 5 following five authenticated Roman-era coins, generates considerable excitement as the team sends it to the lab for CT scanning and further analysis.
At Smith's Cove, Rick Lagina, Gary Drayton, and Billy Gerhardt continue searching through spoils extracted from the Money Pit area the previous year. Gary recovers a refashioned square-shanked iron fastener that he interprets as a wall hook for hanging lanterns or equipment, dating it to the 1600s or older based on its construction. He then finds a rosehead spike, a hand-forged iron fastener with beveled facets resembling flower petals, consistent with pre-1750 manufacture. Gary notes that rosehead spikes were used not only in shaft construction but also in the building of doors and treasure chests, and that the size of this specimen suggests it could have secured a large container heavy enough to hold silver coins. The finds add to a growing collection of pre-depositor-era ironwork recovered from the Money Pit spoils, reinforcing the team's belief that the drilling and digging operations are centered in the correct area.
