paleomaxx
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- Aug 14, 2016
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This yard continues to surprise me! 
We had two days of warm weather and rain so the ground actually thawed and I was able to squeeze in a hunt on Sunday. I have several permissions from this Fall that I wanted to do mop-up sweeps on, but because of the quick winter I had to choose just one. This is the yard that produced all of the antique keys and KGII coppers so I had a feeling there might have been a few smaller relics I missed and if I was lucky a 1/2 real or something. Conditions were perfect so I did a careful sweep and as expected a number of tiny buttons and smaller metal bits turned up. To my surprise I did in fact miss a bit of silver right in the middle of where I had been digging two weeks before!
It looks like it had a pin on the back that broke off and there are no hallmarks, but definitely solid silver. I love the script letter on the front, but it seems a bit minimalist for jewelry. Very interesting whatever it was.
I finished up that spot and started new ground that was further away from the house. Lower target density, but a few small older pieces here and there until I happened upon a clear coin signal. I was expecting another large cent, but was floored when this fell out of the plug:
A gorgeous 1783 Nova Constellatio! It took some work cleaning it since the patina was delicate (I did lose a small chip on the obverse), but the design is very clear on one side and decent on the other. Looks to be a Crosby 2B and not something I expected to turn up so soon after my first this past Summer. This year has been ridiculously productive in terms of early American coppers!
The finds dried up quickly further away from the house so I went back along the side of the house where the iron noise was the heaviest. I had already determined that the early residents had dumped their stove ash along one side of the house and had largely avoided that spot since it makes a mess digging into. However, this time there was a broken high tone close to the surface so I made a small plug and flipped it over. The signal disappeared (which happens to me all the time in ashy soil), but I spotted the green rim in the dirt and pulled out what may very well be the finest dug large cent I will ever hold in my hands:
It required almost no cleaning; just a little tooth picking to get the dirt out of the spots between hair ridges. The reverse didn't even need that! Not only is it a classic head in probably AU condition, but 1814 is a scarce date with only 357,000 minted. That's less than half as many as there are 1877 Indian Head cents! There are certainly a few rarer LC dates, but I doubt I'll pull them out of the ground and definitely not in this shape!
Aside from those, there were plenty more relics of all different ages scattered about:
Of course more antique keys turned up including a barrel tap key. I also dug my first jew's harp. For whatever reason I haven't come across one until now and I see in other areas they're dug with relative frequency. I guess they just weren't that popular around here.
There was a tiny fragment of what must have been a beautiful tombac buckle:
I'll keep looking for more pieces, but I wish I could find a whole one. There was also this interesting silver-washed plate:
This has been a fascinating yard and the owners have been very kind and excited to see what has turned up. It really nice when the landowners are interested in the history and even better when I can show them relics with actual history behind them! I have their blessing to keep up the search too which is fantastic. With all the old relics and coppers there has to be some old silver hiding somewhere and I definitely can't stop until I find it!
We had two days of warm weather and rain so the ground actually thawed and I was able to squeeze in a hunt on Sunday. I have several permissions from this Fall that I wanted to do mop-up sweeps on, but because of the quick winter I had to choose just one. This is the yard that produced all of the antique keys and KGII coppers so I had a feeling there might have been a few smaller relics I missed and if I was lucky a 1/2 real or something. Conditions were perfect so I did a careful sweep and as expected a number of tiny buttons and smaller metal bits turned up. To my surprise I did in fact miss a bit of silver right in the middle of where I had been digging two weeks before!
It looks like it had a pin on the back that broke off and there are no hallmarks, but definitely solid silver. I love the script letter on the front, but it seems a bit minimalist for jewelry. Very interesting whatever it was.
I finished up that spot and started new ground that was further away from the house. Lower target density, but a few small older pieces here and there until I happened upon a clear coin signal. I was expecting another large cent, but was floored when this fell out of the plug:
A gorgeous 1783 Nova Constellatio! It took some work cleaning it since the patina was delicate (I did lose a small chip on the obverse), but the design is very clear on one side and decent on the other. Looks to be a Crosby 2B and not something I expected to turn up so soon after my first this past Summer. This year has been ridiculously productive in terms of early American coppers!
The finds dried up quickly further away from the house so I went back along the side of the house where the iron noise was the heaviest. I had already determined that the early residents had dumped their stove ash along one side of the house and had largely avoided that spot since it makes a mess digging into. However, this time there was a broken high tone close to the surface so I made a small plug and flipped it over. The signal disappeared (which happens to me all the time in ashy soil), but I spotted the green rim in the dirt and pulled out what may very well be the finest dug large cent I will ever hold in my hands:
It required almost no cleaning; just a little tooth picking to get the dirt out of the spots between hair ridges. The reverse didn't even need that! Not only is it a classic head in probably AU condition, but 1814 is a scarce date with only 357,000 minted. That's less than half as many as there are 1877 Indian Head cents! There are certainly a few rarer LC dates, but I doubt I'll pull them out of the ground and definitely not in this shape!
Aside from those, there were plenty more relics of all different ages scattered about:
Of course more antique keys turned up including a barrel tap key. I also dug my first jew's harp. For whatever reason I haven't come across one until now and I see in other areas they're dug with relative frequency. I guess they just weren't that popular around here.
There was a tiny fragment of what must have been a beautiful tombac buckle:
I'll keep looking for more pieces, but I wish I could find a whole one. There was also this interesting silver-washed plate:
This has been a fascinating yard and the owners have been very kind and excited to see what has turned up. It really nice when the landowners are interested in the history and even better when I can show them relics with actual history behind them! I have their blessing to keep up the search too which is fantastic. With all the old relics and coppers there has to be some old silver hiding somewhere and I definitely can't stop until I find it!
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