House Site finds Day 2

[Rusted_Iron]

A 2nd day at the old house site yielded some more relics, 3 wheat pennies (1 of which was 11 1/2 inches deep!!) and some pottery / china shards. This time I dug up a couple of the big iron signals, yielding the larger objects you see in the photo.

Oldest wheat was a 1919-D, not corroded (surprisingly!). The ring is either brass or copper. Not sure if it was a wedding band. Some people didn't have the money to buy gold or silver back then. Judging from the lack of coins other than pennies and that one Merc, I'd say that makes sense.

 

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[Digginman]

You've found a good spot. Kepp digging that stuff out, better stuff to come, for sure.

 

[mlw67]

Good array of stuff there!

Wheats at 11.5"?? Are you using a VLF machine?

 

[Rusted_Iron]

Indeed, I was using a Tesoro Tejon. The signal was weak but consistent. Something told me to dig it.
If you factor in the 1/2" or so that the coil was above the grass, that's a foot distance from the coil to the penny! Not bad for a single frequency VLF. It was in disc mode, no less!

 

[Rusted_Iron]

The broken brass object down near the lower right hand corner, above the white plate shards, appears to be an early furniture brass or something like that. Judging from the design I'd say late 1700's or early 1800's. The house foundation dates back to 1800 or possibly earlier.

This brass object wasn't that deep. I have to check my notes, but I think it was 3 or 4 inches. Many of the objects I've found were at a consistent depth of 3 to 5 inches, including the wheaties. It seems the smaller objects get really deep as one nears the road, though. Probably layer upon layer of road grit and dust has built up over the years. I noticed while digging up that deep wheatie that I had to go through a highly compacted layer of fine gravel and dirt. Down in the hole with the wheat was also a piece of iron and some earthenware shards, including a fragment of early, glazed redware.

A couple of the wheaties and the copper / brass ring were what I'd call doubtful signals. At first I wasn't going to dig them, because they were solid along only 1 axis. Swinging the coil the other way gave either no signal or a broken one, which is odd, considering they were only 4-5 inches deep. It might be the soil or the huge amount of iron debris present. I dug many 1/4" fragments of iron nails.

I will probably go back to the house site in a week or two for a 3rd hunt. I'm keeping notes on the relative locations and depths of most of my finds, except the toothpaste tubes & foil I keep digging up...

There has to be at least one pre-1900 coin at a reasonable depth waiting to be found