My oldest nickel to date!

[coltdavis]

I returned to the site I hunted yesterday with my girlfriend hoping I could nab up some silver myself. Unfortunately that did not happen, but I did score my 2nd V nickel of the season and it's my oldest one yet. 1891 and she came out of the ground in pretty good shape. I also snagged a wheat and what I believe to be a couple of pieces to a printing press or possibly a typewriter? The text on them is in reverse. One would say UNDERSIZE and the other 200 I believe. Thanks for looking and happy hunting everyone!

 

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[Loco-Digger]

Congrats on those quality finds. The V-Nickle still eludes my coil.

 

[Old Dude]

Great old V. They always give a quick little euphoric feeling.

 

[coltdavis]

Congrats on those quality finds. The V-Nickle still eludes my coil.

Thanks! It surprised me how high it rang in, then again everything at this place has been really.

 

[TheRingFinder]

Good job Colt - Also got your girlfriend to go with you - that's another plus!!!! My wife wants nothing to do with detecting, except the Gold & Silver finds of-course

 

[Garrett424]

Cool old V Nick'.

The type you found is basically lead type that was used on a letterpress. It looks to be "Line O Type' which in it's day, was a revolutionary new way to set type in lines rather than one character at a time in reverse. The operator sat at a keyboard and typed whatever was needed and the machine spit it out in actual lines. It was an amazing contraption that was extremely large and very heavy.

The type basically gets locked into a frame and then the frame is locked onto the press.
The ink rollers run directly over the type face as the press turns and as the paper is placed into position, the press goes into it's impression mode, the type engages the paper and transfers the image onto it. The process is repeated until the job is done.

The type is either stored for future use or melted down and the lead re used.

So what you have isn't part of a press but what's used on the press. We actually still use letter presses where I work but not for printing; just perfing, scoring, die cutting, foil stamping and embossing.
It's a cool find.