1812 Artillery Button, KGIII, Pewter Knee buckle and more.

OutdoorAdv

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I was able to get out yesterday and today for a few hours each day at a couple sites. Yesterday I turned up a nice pewter knee buckle, a tiny forked tongue buckle, a 3 ringer and some pottery. Today I was able to get into a site where the grass had been a bit tall and I found a mess of cool buttons and a KGIII with some nice patina on it. My favorite find by far, from both days, was the War of 1812 1st Regiment Artillery button. (Alberts AY36 1813-14 20mm blank backmark). Prior to today, all my military buttons had been General Service or Infantry ranging from WWII, WWI, CW and War of 1812. So to get an Artillery button and an OLD one at that, was a great way to end the year.

I had just dug a nice silver washed flat button with some wheat ears on it and a couple feet away I got this whisper. I popped the plug and located the flat button... just like every other flat button I gave it a quick wipe on my pants to see if there was a design before putting it in a canister. I wiped this one and saw some loops on it and thought there was a floral pattern. Another wipe and I couldn't believe what I was seeing... a script A with a circle and a 1 under it. Unfortunately the dirt was caked on like concrete so there was no more field cleaning for it. I was going to pick at it, but it was too hard, so I ended up doing a cold peroxide soak with some light q-tip and tooth picking for a couple hours. I am thrilled with the results.

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A couple posts ago I decided to do some animated gifs for my posts. So here is the Artillery button 1) as dug 2) halfway through peroxide 3) complete

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Here is everything from my last couple hunts. There is a cool marked pipe stem and I glued a bit of a bowl back together.

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This KG was a huge surprise to hear and see. Oddly I mostly have KGII coppers and this is only my second KGIII. Although its bent and worn, this one has the best patina out of all of them. I believe its 1775 or 1776. Its tough to tell because the date is a little off and you can only see the tops of the letters.

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This complete pewter knee buckle was from yesterdays hunt. It was very brittle, so I packed it in dirt until I got home, then I sealed it with a few coats of Elmers last night. I've dug lots of pewter shoe and knee buckle fragments, but this is my first complete pewter frame.

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This tiny buckle was about a foot from the pewter knee buckle. Its very small and has a forked tongue on it.

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These next two buttons were from today's hunt. Both were feet from the Artillery button and I was killing it on marked flat buttons. The one with the wheat ears and the oval center is very interesting. It seems like it was made to perhaps have something engraved in the center?

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And some more pictures of the last two days.

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While I didn't get any metal detecting stuff for Christmas, I did come up with a scheme to perhaps get a little more field time with my detector, while still getting the chores done around the house. Since I cant be in two places at once, I decided it was time to get a robot to do some of my busy work, while I head out with my detector to do the dirty work. So, I bought myself a iRobot Roomba for Christmas and so far, it has vacuumed the entire downstairs, 3 bedrooms and a hallway... all while I was detecting... and the lady is pleased with all the chores "I'm" doing around the house. :headbang:

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I hope everyone had a great Christmas :occasion14: I'm going to try and get out for a couple more hours this week, so I'll post if anything cool turns up... if not, Happy New Year everyone.
 

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OutdoorAdv

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Glad to see you're getting out there and finding some great history! Man, you find a lot of cool early 19th century military buttons, and that arty button really is sweet looking. And any KgIII is interesting to me. Not sure where I read this, but I seem to recall something like 80% of them found over here being counterfeit? IP or others please chime in if my synapses are misfiring.

I laughed out loud at the robovac...that's freeing yourself up for detecting Jetsons style! Now I just need to find one robot to thaw out sections of ground for me to work, and one to cart in firewood when I'm gone. :dontknow:

Thanks Ken! I'd be more excited to find a counterfeit coin than a regal one. I think there is much more history in a coin made to steal and deceive than the real ones. ha I put the vacuum to work the other day and an hour later I came downstairs and was wondering why it was so quiet... apparently it decided it was finished and drove itself to its charger station to go to sleep and charge.... pretty cool!

Hi Brad; Awesome finds. I like that Silver Flat Button that has the Fort & Footpath Design on it. I think it was maybe a Civilian Militia piece that shows the different Forts and the footpathss around them. Very Cool. That knee Buckle is a killer sweet find. Way to go. What's the address again ?? Anyways, Happy New Year.!!! PEACE:RONB

Thanks Barker! I noticed the button with the III's on it and stippling appears to have the III's in a grid pattern... so not as random as I thought at first. Its still a really cool button though.

Here are the two I found. Not an exact match but pretty close in size I think. Both were found at a late 1700s/early 1800s civilian site.

Nice and fancy Glenn! The one on the right is awesome.

I would be lying if I said I was not jealous of that button what a beauty. Congrats on that and the other great finds

sent from my computer by frantically poking at the keyboard with a single finger

Thanks relic lover. I have it displayed with some 1812 pewters I dug earlier in the year at a different site. Anyway, I wanted to share this just in case I don't get my act together and do a year end wrap-up post.

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Bramblefind

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Outstanding finds!! :icon_thumleft: The halfpenny looks to be a counterfeit halfpenny of the "Young Head" family. The reason for the + mark on the G is b/c it is a "Closed Gs" variety.

The Young Heads are a huge family of contemporary counterfeit halfpennies and they haven't really been seriously studied yet. So many are still found in England that they probably originated there.

Clem Schettino has some information on his site.

Copperclem

If you go to the side bar and look under "Articles" and "First ten families" you will find a paper that discusses the Young Heads.

Also look under his "Coins for Sale" under "British G-III" to see some other examples of Young Heads with closed Gs.
 

Iron Patch

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Outstanding finds!! :icon_thumleft: The halfpenny looks to be a counterfeit halfpenny of the "Young Head" family. The reason for the + mark on the G is b/c it is a "Closed Gs" variety.

The Young Heads are a huge family of contemporary counterfeit halfpennies and they haven't really been seriously studied yet. So many are still found in England that they probably originated there.

Clem Schettino has some information on his site.

Copperclem

If you go to the side bar and look under "Articles" and "First ten families" you will find a paper that discusses the Young Heads.

Also look under his "Coins for Sale" under "British G-III" to see some other examples of Young Heads with closed Gs.


I was just about to add the link to his site... and also this.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Counterfeit-Georgian-Copper-Richard-Coleman/dp/1908828234
 

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OutdoorAdv

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Outstanding finds!! :icon_thumleft: The halfpenny looks to be a counterfeit halfpenny of the "Young Head" family. The reason for the + mark on the G is b/c it is a "Closed Gs" variety.

The Young Heads are a huge family of contemporary counterfeit halfpennies and they haven't really been seriously studied yet. So many are still found in England that they probably originated there.

Clem Schettino has some information on his site.

Copperclem

If you go to the side bar and look under "Articles" and "First ten families" you will find a paper that discusses the Young Heads.

Also look under his "Coins for Sale" under "British G-III" to see some other examples of Young Heads with closed Gs.

Thanks a ton Bramblefind! You are always a wealth of information and I really appreciate it. This copperclem site is really nice and I just read the Young Head article you directed me to. As you suggested, I also looked at his "for sale" page and did a "find" for "young", then scrolled down to the 1775 examples. Very nice to see some other examples of this coin. I couldn't be happier with this copper and thank you very much for all the information.

-Brad
 

pepperj

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Sweet button and in such great shape to boot. Nice bonus for the year end of hunting and one to remember. Congrats!
 

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OutdoorAdv

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Sweet button and in such great shape to boot. Nice bonus for the year end of hunting and one to remember. Congrats!

Thanks man! I hit the same place for a couple hours yesterday and discovered the trash pit. Found a few blank buttons and some pottery. I'm returning tomorrow to open it up some more. So I may squeeze in one more good 2016 hunt!
 

Stef45

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nice finds brad! How did you clean the KG? Congrats on a great bunch of relics again!
 

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OutdoorAdv

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nice finds brad! How did you clean the KG? Congrats on a great bunch of relics again!

Thanks a ton man! The KG3 from this post I didnt do anything to... it came out of the dirt with an incredible hard green patina on it. However, if you mean the crusty KG2 gif image I posted in response to Joey, I used a long cold peroxide soak on that one. That coin came from this post a month or so ago http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/t...sh-silver-british-copper-american-nickel.html Since people seemed interested in the cold peroxide soak, I wanted to show another example of a result... which is why I re-posted that gif image. I also did a peroxide soak on the Artillery button from this post too.

AND... I went sifting at that site yesterday and came home with a whole mess of awesome stuff. I'm still cleaning and preserving it all but will take photos and get that new stuff up there today.
 

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