Search for shark’s teeth at North Carolina beach leads woman to WWII artifact

A woman looking for shark’s teeth on a North Carolina beach stumbled onto something much more mysterious when a sliver of metal appeared in the sand.

It happened Tuesday, Nov. 18, at Holden Beach, and Sandy Dwork was intrigued enough to consult the nearly 18,000 members of the Holden Beach Shark Teeth Facebook group.

“Can someone please help me identify what this is,” asked Dwork, who lives in North Myrtle Beach.

It didn’t take long to reach a consensus: She had found a WWII armor piercing round, and it’s far from the first to show up.

Many of the commenters had also found WWII rounds, and they began sharing photos.

“There are a lot of WWII era 50 caliber rounds and shells in the area due to coastal training during the war,” Tony Shaver wrote on Facebook. “It is a neat historical relic!​”

That training “was vigorous — six days a week — and the air over coastal North Carolina was loud with military activity” around coastal military sites like Fort Fisher and Camp Davis, N.C. Historic Sites reports.

“Planes towing target sleeves on long cables roared back and forth above the beaches of Fort Fisher and Camp Davis’s other firing ranges, while anti-aircraft gunners below pumped streams of shells at the soaring targets,” state historians say.

The end result is occasional discoveries of bullets, bombs and even mines along the state’s beaches.

Four bombs washed up in 2018, according to the Washington Post. And in 2017, two WWII naval mines came ashore 75 miles apart, WITN reported.

Burlington resident Bradley Thomas Dixon is an avid metal detectorist who has a collection of artifacts found on the state’s beaches. He instantly recognized Dwork’s bullet, having found “identical” bullets.

“That is certainly a WWII 50 BMG armor piercing round. You can tell it is a penetrator because it has a steel core. The rust ball at the back is characteristic of that,” he said.

“Though the 50 caliber bullet projectiles themselves are not dated, many times they are found in the vicinity of their brass casings which are dated. All of these casings I’ve found have been WWII dated, 1941-1945. ... It could have been fired postwar, but the odds are that it is WWII original, fired during WWII training.”

A dredging project nourished Holden Beach a few years ago, and it’s possible the bullet was pulled from the ocean and buried on the beach, he said.

Dwork has yet to decide what she’ll do with the bullet, but notes her husband cleaned it with lemon juice.

This story was originally published November 22, 2025 at 6:00 AM.