The Curse of Oak Island: Team finds a coin on Lot 5 and a massive cavity at the Money Pit

This week on The Curse of Oak Island, the Fellowship got to work on Lot 5 and immediately started finding artifacts, including an ancient coin.

And at the Money Pit, the team was perplexed by a massive unnatural-looking cavity at 150 feet below the surface.

There were a lot of different things happening on last night’s episode as the guys constantly investigated new avenues of exploration.

The main focus (and expense) for this season was supposed to be the exploration of the Garden Shaft. But with that project bogged down in government bureaucracy, the Lagina brothers needed to determine what else they could afford to do to keep things moving.

The biggest point of news this week was the acquisition of Lot 5, a four-acre area on the north side of the island that previously belonged to treasure hunter Robert Young.

Over the years, Young discovered numerous artifacts, including old coins and buttons, but the area had remained frustratingly out of reach to the Fellowship. Now, Rick Lagina compared his excitement to getting the keys to the family car at 16 years old.

Gary Drayton wasted no time in hunting for treasure on Oak Island’s Lot 5

Gary Drayton was itching to get out to Lot 5 to begin the hunt, and his metal detector started pinging almost immediately. Gary, aided by Rick and Laird Niven, soon pulled two old tools, perhaps chisels, out of the ground.

Lot 5 has never been inhabited, and no buildings are known ever to have existed there, so the discovery of any human tools will always lead to questions about what happened in the area in the past.

However, the real excitement came later when Gary unearthed part of a coin. He determined it to be an old handcrafted coin and speculated that it had been cut in half because that was how change was given in the past. Gary was also hopeful it was made of silver.

Back at the interpretative center, the coin was placed in the XRF machine to determine its chemical makeup. Unfortunately, it was not silver. It was a copper coin made with arsenical bronze, which is interesting because arsenical bronze was largely phased out in the 16th century.

It may not be Bravo Tango (the guys’ code for Buried Treasure), but it’s certainly very interesting. The coin is made from the same material as the barter token discovered a few weeks ago on the nearby Lot 7. This means two objects, both at least 500 years old, were discovered in close proximity to each other.

Team investigates mysterious underground cavity in the Money Pit area

Another interesting area on last night’s show was the massive cavity at the bottom of the L-15 borehole in the Money Pit area. In the last couple of weeks, the guys discovered a huge cavity/void at approximately 150 feet, along with what appeared to be an opening to a possible tunnel or chamber.

This week, the team sent down a sonar detector in an attempt to map the area. They discovered that the cavity is linear in shape and is at least 30 feet long. It lies just above the bedrock in limestone, and the guys can’t think of how it could have occurred naturally.

The team was also intrigued to learn that the cavity lies at the same depth as the infamous Chappell Vault. This is something that will need to be investigated further. Unfortunately, the guys have neither the time nor the money for a full-scale dig of the area this season. But it’s definitely a case of ‘watch this space!’

The Curse of Oak Island airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on History.