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About The Collection
In Short: About The Collection,
My Father and I: I was a bit too young
to join in my father's early field walking days, but I was just
fascinated by the Indian tools he'd bring home as I am still today.
I spent the next 10 years bringing rocks home for him to inspect,
but didn't actually find anything good until I moved to Venice
Florida at age 14. When I moved to Venice I was introduced to
the world of fossil vertebrates. If you don't already know this,
Venice is the shark tooth capital of the world. In the 70's Venice
was still sparsely populated and there were fossils everywhere!
Fossils of every kind of Ice Age animal could be found. The beaches
then were literally covered with shark's teeth. I soon learned
where to find the good stuff and became an obsessed hunter. I
sold shark teeth to beach and surf shops in Venice and Fort Meyers.
I had 1000's of excellent shark teeth. Before long I could smell out a fossil. Then one day I made a big discovery. Only it was in my bedroom closet. I had collected some strange rocks some years before, put them away in my closet and had totally forgotten about them. I'd been fishing one day and since the fish weren't biting I did some exploration of the area. I found those strange rocks everywhere and thought they were petrified wood. Being the rock hound I am, I took them home with me and put them in my closet. It was two years later when I put it all together I realized that something big had died in this sink hole/stream bed and that the rocks weren't petrified wood, but animal bone! I could hardly wait to get back out there to see what had died and left its remains. By the time I had rediscovered the bones in my closet, I was already an accomplished collector and had a huge fossil collection including dozens of large Carcharodon megalodon shark teeth up to 61/2 inches, mammoth teeth and many other very nice fossils. What I had discovered was a naturally eroded paleo site, which to this day only a couple close friends and I know about. But what really set this site apart from my other digs was that I was finding human artifacts too! I found two projectile points within two feet of a huge Mammoth tooth and in a 20 ft radius I found, Bison, Camel, Tapir, Horse, and even shark teeth and a human finger bone! My interest in Indian artifacts soared once again and I devoted much more attention to hunting them. Work took me about and I found artifacts in 4 different states. What a small world it is! I worked as a Cable TV construction engineer and was sent to Southern Illinois to work for a couple years there and hunted the same area for artifacts as my Dad did, with success. I also played as a professional musician and got around quite a bit. I hunted different places on the road as we traveled. My most successful band was Powersurge, a heavy metal band with an MTV video and 6 record releases. Ever since I was a little kid, my dad had told me that one day he would give me the artifact collection. I was always begging him to get it out so I could dig through it and arrange the arrowheads on the carpet. Getting out the arrowheads together was one of my fondest memories of my dad and I together. I was the only one of his 4 sons that ever showed any real interest in the artifacts. My Dad died on New-years day 1996 at age 71 and left his entire collection to me. |
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Indian Artifact collection
includes approximately:
Click here to read about the things that were stolen from our collection! |
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