First IHP and a Freemasons medal/tag?

lurk

Jr. Member
Oct 28, 2015
29
87
Midwest
Detector(s) used
F75 LTD SE, Pro Pointer AT, Nel Sharpshooter coil, formerly ATPro & ATGold
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Although I got my first detector in the late fall/winter of 2015, I really feel as if this is my second season metal detecting with any kind of seriousness and it's already going quite a bit better. I've been hitting it pretty hard (for me) the last two weeks, about 2 1/2 - 3 hours in the evening a few times a week. I also finally gathered up the courage to start asking people for permission and that surprisingly has went quite well and most people don't seem to mind.

The other day I was perusing my old maps and found a vacant lot that had a house on it from the early 1900s that has since been torn down. I decided to look up ownership and an out of town company now owned the lot as well as the adjacent lot and quick phone call later I had another permission. It was already about 6:00 PM when I headed out so I only had a few hours to hunt, so I decided to mostly cherry pick the area infront of where the house used to set as best as I could tell from a 1960s aerial photo I have. Ontop of all the debris from the demolition of the house it seems a construction company has been using the lot to park their equipment, and by the looks of it from the empty cans of food local homeless people like to sleep around the equipment so needless to say a very trashy environment to hunt it. There has been a good amount of rain lately so on top of all the trash my machine was giving me quite a bit of falsing on foil (which I've never had a problem with before) and the nails. Simply trying to cherry pick targets was kind of a pain but I did have some success but for the amount of ground I covered, I didn't recover very many good targets.

Of course I had to hit the Indian with my digger, I'm surprised I was even able to separate it because the poor fellow lost his pocket knife at the same time. I ended up expanding my hole to get the pocket knife out after I recovered the IHP which was pretty hard to pinpoint in the mess of signals. I was running my F75 with DST on Sens 88, 3 tones, Disc 6, DE process. The IHP rang up a solid 64-65 but only in the one clean direction but gave steady tone both directions and was around 6-7" deep. I used my cut down trenching shovel to dig because the lot is only mowed and is mostly weeds so besides making sure my holes were filled I was not concerned with not killing the foliage and most of the plugs crumbled anyway.

Besides the IHP I had only dug a few pieces of clad and a 1944 wheatie from infront of where the house used to sit. Inbetween the sidewalk and curb was very naily and had I ordered a NEL sharpshooter coil that should be here Saturday so I decided to skip it entirely because it was just so trashy for my standard coil and I didn't feel like wasting a bunch of time chasing iffy signals and am hoping to get better separation with the new coil. I knew I only had about 30-45 minutes of good light left so I decided to try and sample the whole lot and wander around. The sampling yeilded some pretty deep round trash items and some clad. On the way back to the car I got a good squeak and a solid 72 signal at around 7" so of course I dug it, to my surprise it was a medal of some kind but it was getting dark and I didn't want to mess with trying to clean it as I figured it was an old timber tag or something of the like and I was hoping to get another target or two in before dark.

After I got home I cleaned it up and it reads CHARLES HIRSCH and has a Freemason symbol with the squares in the center. I assume this is the backside and the "front" side is pretty toasty I wasn't able to get any detail off of it and I am wondering if something wasn't glued onto the frontside. Does anyone have any information about this type of medal? I did some googling and didn't find anything about him or the medal, but did find a grave in the town cemetery that matches his name and the time period of the home. I have thought about maybe trying to see if any of his descendants are still in the area and giving it to them, because I'm sure as an heirloom it's worth more to them than it is to me sitting in my coffee can with toy cars and other stuff I've found.

That's about all I've got, thanks for reading. And yes sadly, the 1891 IHP is the oldest coin I've found so far :laughing7: IMG_1145.JPG IMG_1147.JPG IMG_1148.JPG IMG_1151.JPG IMG_1158.JPG IMG_1164.JPG IMG_1166.JPG
 

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dirtlooter

Gold Member
Jun 5, 2014
8,889
13,497
mid western ARK
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XP Deus with 9"LF and 9" HF Coils and 600 Equinox with stock and 6" coils
Primary Interest:
Relic Hunting

Trezurehunter

Gold Member
Mar 22, 2003
17,860
21,408
Illinois / Oklahoma
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Minelab Equinox 800 - Fisher CZ 5
Primary Interest:
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Congrats on your oldest coin so far. I like that Free Masons medal and the research that you did on the person that it belonged to. Nothing like a good relic to put in a display case.
 

BigWaveDave

Gold Member
Nov 22, 2013
9,307
16,929
Mountain Maryland
🥇 Banner finds
2
🏆 Honorable Mentions:
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Detector(s) used
Garrett AT Pro, AT Max, Minelab
Equinox 800
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Good job by you!
Appreciate the well written story too....
The Freemason fob is a great find.
 

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lurk

Jr. Member
Oct 28, 2015
29
87
Midwest
Detector(s) used
F75 LTD SE, Pro Pointer AT, Nel Sharpshooter coil, formerly ATPro & ATGold
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
So I headed back over there tonight for a quick hunt after the old lady went to work. I got my sharpshooter coil and messed around with it at my house and my neighbors a bit on Saturday before getting rained out again. I was able to find some targets I knew were hidden amongst can slaw in my front yard that I never dug because I didn't want to destroy my grass trying to pinpoint them. So my first objective was I wanted to hit that nailpit between the sidewalk and the street. I was able to pull 1 memorial cent and some trash items out of the nails but nothing impressive.

As I mentioned in the first post the company now owns both corner lots on this block, and I investigated my aerial photo alittle closer and on the other lot (before a huge quadplex was built and subsequently torn down) there was either a tiny house or a garage. So I put my standard DD coil back on and decided to go look there. Of course I detected along the way and didn't make it over to the garage/house before a neighbor had came outside. I figured it was going to be the usual lookielou type stuff or why am I digging or they'll call the police ect, but it wasn't. He asked me if I wanted to make 10 bucks, I said "sure", and he told me some drunk drivers had hit his shed in the alley recently and he needed me to find his property markers so he knew where to rebuild his new one and asked if I could find them for him. They were iron rods driven into the ground that the city had located for him once before and had since been buried and lost. So I found the first one which took maybe 10 minutes until I found the overload signal and then of course he wanted me to find the others so I did those as well. He tried to give me the 10 dollars and I said no its okay you don't owe me anything and he had an Indian cent he wanted to give me as well which I also refused but he put in my digging bag anyways. I told him instead why doesn't he let me detect his yard another day and that would be pleanty for me to which he agreed. Turns out hes a coin collector so after quite a bit of yacking I was finally back to detecting my lot but on the bright side I got a new permission. I just looked up my county records and it looks like his house was built in 1924, so I might pull some good stuff out of there.

So I didn't have a whole lot of time to detect, but I wasn't too concerned because I could clearly see the fill dirt where the foundation had once set and I decided to do the curb strip and around the foundation as best I could with the time I had left. It wasn't nearly as trashy as the other lot but once again not many good targets either. I was able to pull some clad and memorial cents, but no wheaties, and an old broken padlock. With the sun setting I was trying to race against the darkness and then it started to rain again. I'm assuming it was a garage because I pulled alot of what I would consider car parts, brass washers, a thermocouple. I was running my F75 sens 99, disc 6, 3 tones, DST on I got a good tone near some iron with a very jumpy VDI but I knew by the "edge" of the tone that it was a good target, and it gave good tone in both directions, so I dug it. After pulling two nails out of the hole I stuck my pinpointer into the plug and out rolled an 1899 Indian. 2 of my first Indians from the same permission. Not to shabby I thought just still can't seem to get on the silver, but I was excited and let out a "*$%^ yeah" because after all of the stinkin Lincolns I didn't expect to find much of anything. I made it to one more target before the chatty old man was back out asking me how I'd done and the rain started to pick up so I had to call it quits. I still have about half of the foundation left to do, and I'll probably go over it all alittle more closely after finding this guy.

I think its in pretty good shape for sitting in the ground for around 100 years. Sorry for any typos, currently fixing dinner for the old lady on her lunch break. Cheers and thanks for reading. IMG_1167.JPG IMG_1169.JPG IMG_1170.JPG
 

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lurk

Jr. Member
Oct 28, 2015
29
87
Midwest
Detector(s) used
F75 LTD SE, Pro Pointer AT, Nel Sharpshooter coil, formerly ATPro & ATGold
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
So I guess the hunt yielded two Indians lol. Heres the one he gave me. It looks cleaned and I already have a 1907 in my book but I guess it's one more than I started with. I'll reply in this thread if I find anything worthwhile in his yard because this permission is becoming a saga lol. Cheers.

IMG_1174.JPG
 

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