paleomaxx
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- Aug 14, 2016
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Talk about getting the year started right! We have a bunch of snow coming through today so yesterday I was making the best of reasonable conditions and scouting a new patch of woods that had been recommended to me. Someone who's lived in the area since he was a kid mentioned that where they used to camp had a dug well nearby. Nothing was on the old maps, but there's plenty of history before those maps were drawn up so I took a look.
Turns out the dug well was just a natural spring that had been lined with field stones and was too close to the river to have had a homesite nearby. However there was a pretty clear road going along the river and into the woods so I continued along. Obviously a party spot with lots of cans and shotgun headstamps everywhere, so there were plenty of signals but nothing old so far. I get to the top of a large flat area and get two mid-tones next to each other. The first is another headstamp and the second, to my great surprise, is a shield nickel! Probably a random drop, but who knows so I keep swinging around it a little slower now. What comes next is three hours of the best digging I could ask for:
There were coins everywhere! I found two spills; one of three IHPs and the second of 7 along with the clasp to a change purse! They were pretty crusty coming out of the ground but I could see the dates were around the 1880's so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that there's a seated somewhere and sure enough I get a perfect 93 tone:
Seated Dime! And then another, and another... Finally I get an even higher tone and I'm beyond excited because I know what that means:
Seated quarter, my very first! By the end I had five seated coins which is more than I've found in all my years of hunting total! Not to mention also 26 indian head pennies, 3 nickels, 3 3-cent nickels, and a 2-cent to boot. The real question was; what the heck was this from? The coins were clustered, but not so close that a spill made sense. I stuck branches in the ground where I dug a coin and the patch was oval shape about 12 feet wide at the widest spot and about 40 feet long. The center had the highest proportion as well as the two spills, but the silver was evenly distributed. I also didn't find many associated relics. This was nearly everything non-coin from the site:
Those hook like pieces along the top are Hutchinson spring stoppers from bottles. They were patented in 1879 and produced into the 1910's. A little pocket knife, a silver plated Victorian cufflink, and some odds and ends. Only a few small fragments of iron sheet and no big iron to speak of so not a homesite. I did a bunch of wide sweeps to see if there were other pockets and came up empty so I'm not thinking this was a large transient campground or fairgrounds (which would have been even more awesome). One relic is intriguing but just adds to the mystery:
It's a stick pin and the design is a "cross bottony." This particular style of cross was used on numerous medieval coats of arms, but most notably on Lord Baltimore's family crest which is how it became associated with Maryland. Apparently during the Civil War Maryland soldiers who fought for the confederacy would wear pins with the Cross Bottony as a symbol of their home state. While I did find references to that practice in several books I couldn't find any pictures of the actual pins so I can't compare it to a verified piece. It very well could have been made later as the cross continued to be used after the Civil War, but to a lesser degree. In any case it's an odd find for Upstate NY.
I'll continue researching to see if there's any mention of what was going on there in the local newspapers, but in the meantime I had work to do! It's not often that I have 30+ 19th century coins to clean so I had to get cracking. The 3-cent nickels turned out pretty well:
This alloy can end up pretty toasty in the ground, but the details are not too bad and the dates are all legible. 2x 1867 and 1x 1868. The nickels were next:
Again, not too bad. One shield nickle was 1867, the other was 1882 which was a first for me! The third was actually an 1883 first year of issue V-Nickel with "Cents."
The silver I soaked in warm water and dish soap which loosened the dirt enough to clean under running water. I was quite surprised; seated coins can be quite worn and not only were these all 1870's, but all in great shape!
Then I looked at the reverses and was blown away; 3 out of the four dimes were Carson City!
Talk about one in a million! The fourth was even San Francisco. Finding just one CC out here is unlikely but 3 together and different dates is just crazy!
1873 Quarter
1875-S Dime
1875-CC Dime
1876-CC Dime
1877-CC Dime
None of them are key dates, but the quarter is actually relatively scarce.
But on the subject of key dates...
I now had 26 IHPs that needed cleaning. These were a bit more difficult since the patina had bonded quite strongly to the dirt. Some worked out pretty well with just a toothpick and other needed Andre's pencils. I checked each date carefully before starting, you know, just in case. Most were 1880's with a few 1870's and 1860's. Interestingly three were cupro-nickel ones which I figured would have long since been pulled from circulation. I was on my last two when I see a very faint 187- and then that second 7!!!
Absolutely over the moon! But that meant that the cleaning had to be perfect. I spent some time debating a few methods, but I finally settled on a slow and steady approach. I will tell you I spend over an hour turning a crusty brown disk into this beauty:
Not so bad if I do say so myself.
I used the Andre's brush and just took off insanely thin layers of dirt until I got to the patina. It was agonizingly slow, but I know from experience that even with the soft brush you can crack the patina around the edges and it'll look terrible. I intentionally left the dirt in between the finer details. I could take it off as well, but the contrast wouldn't be as great and this way the words and date really pop. It's obviously a worn specimen, but other than being green it's like it was pulled out of a coin collection!
I actually haven't even finished the IHPs, but I did get the rest of the dates. Some are pretty toasty, but a few are stunning.
The dates are:
1x 1862
2x 1863
1x 1864
2x 1865
1x 1873
2x 1875
1x 1877
1x 1879
2x 1880
3x 1881
4x 1882
2x 1883
1x 1884
1x 1887
1x 1889
1x 1890
Pretty good spread, but those coupled with the other coins leads me to believe the activity was 1880's to 1890 and possibly only a few years. The 2-cent piece is the last coin and it's very worn, but not in bad shape considering:
It's 1864 and I checked, large motto. Still I couldn't ask for more:
Together with the seated, it's one gorgeous handful of coinage! I don't know how I could top this hunt. Obviously I'll hammer the site some more once the snow clears up, but based on the other sweeps I think it's just this one cluster. Fingers crossed I'm wrong and there are more spots like it, but even if there aren't this is an absolutely incredible haul and I'll be riding high for weeks on this!
Turns out the dug well was just a natural spring that had been lined with field stones and was too close to the river to have had a homesite nearby. However there was a pretty clear road going along the river and into the woods so I continued along. Obviously a party spot with lots of cans and shotgun headstamps everywhere, so there were plenty of signals but nothing old so far. I get to the top of a large flat area and get two mid-tones next to each other. The first is another headstamp and the second, to my great surprise, is a shield nickel! Probably a random drop, but who knows so I keep swinging around it a little slower now. What comes next is three hours of the best digging I could ask for:
There were coins everywhere! I found two spills; one of three IHPs and the second of 7 along with the clasp to a change purse! They were pretty crusty coming out of the ground but I could see the dates were around the 1880's so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that there's a seated somewhere and sure enough I get a perfect 93 tone:
Seated Dime! And then another, and another... Finally I get an even higher tone and I'm beyond excited because I know what that means:
Seated quarter, my very first! By the end I had five seated coins which is more than I've found in all my years of hunting total! Not to mention also 26 indian head pennies, 3 nickels, 3 3-cent nickels, and a 2-cent to boot. The real question was; what the heck was this from? The coins were clustered, but not so close that a spill made sense. I stuck branches in the ground where I dug a coin and the patch was oval shape about 12 feet wide at the widest spot and about 40 feet long. The center had the highest proportion as well as the two spills, but the silver was evenly distributed. I also didn't find many associated relics. This was nearly everything non-coin from the site:
Those hook like pieces along the top are Hutchinson spring stoppers from bottles. They were patented in 1879 and produced into the 1910's. A little pocket knife, a silver plated Victorian cufflink, and some odds and ends. Only a few small fragments of iron sheet and no big iron to speak of so not a homesite. I did a bunch of wide sweeps to see if there were other pockets and came up empty so I'm not thinking this was a large transient campground or fairgrounds (which would have been even more awesome). One relic is intriguing but just adds to the mystery:
It's a stick pin and the design is a "cross bottony." This particular style of cross was used on numerous medieval coats of arms, but most notably on Lord Baltimore's family crest which is how it became associated with Maryland. Apparently during the Civil War Maryland soldiers who fought for the confederacy would wear pins with the Cross Bottony as a symbol of their home state. While I did find references to that practice in several books I couldn't find any pictures of the actual pins so I can't compare it to a verified piece. It very well could have been made later as the cross continued to be used after the Civil War, but to a lesser degree. In any case it's an odd find for Upstate NY.
I'll continue researching to see if there's any mention of what was going on there in the local newspapers, but in the meantime I had work to do! It's not often that I have 30+ 19th century coins to clean so I had to get cracking. The 3-cent nickels turned out pretty well:
This alloy can end up pretty toasty in the ground, but the details are not too bad and the dates are all legible. 2x 1867 and 1x 1868. The nickels were next:
Again, not too bad. One shield nickle was 1867, the other was 1882 which was a first for me! The third was actually an 1883 first year of issue V-Nickel with "Cents."
The silver I soaked in warm water and dish soap which loosened the dirt enough to clean under running water. I was quite surprised; seated coins can be quite worn and not only were these all 1870's, but all in great shape!
Then I looked at the reverses and was blown away; 3 out of the four dimes were Carson City!
Talk about one in a million! The fourth was even San Francisco. Finding just one CC out here is unlikely but 3 together and different dates is just crazy!
1873 Quarter
1875-S Dime
1875-CC Dime
1876-CC Dime
1877-CC Dime
None of them are key dates, but the quarter is actually relatively scarce.
But on the subject of key dates...
I now had 26 IHPs that needed cleaning. These were a bit more difficult since the patina had bonded quite strongly to the dirt. Some worked out pretty well with just a toothpick and other needed Andre's pencils. I checked each date carefully before starting, you know, just in case. Most were 1880's with a few 1870's and 1860's. Interestingly three were cupro-nickel ones which I figured would have long since been pulled from circulation. I was on my last two when I see a very faint 187- and then that second 7!!!
Absolutely over the moon! But that meant that the cleaning had to be perfect. I spent some time debating a few methods, but I finally settled on a slow and steady approach. I will tell you I spend over an hour turning a crusty brown disk into this beauty:
Not so bad if I do say so myself.
I used the Andre's brush and just took off insanely thin layers of dirt until I got to the patina. It was agonizingly slow, but I know from experience that even with the soft brush you can crack the patina around the edges and it'll look terrible. I intentionally left the dirt in between the finer details. I could take it off as well, but the contrast wouldn't be as great and this way the words and date really pop. It's obviously a worn specimen, but other than being green it's like it was pulled out of a coin collection! I actually haven't even finished the IHPs, but I did get the rest of the dates. Some are pretty toasty, but a few are stunning.
The dates are:
1x 1862
2x 1863
1x 1864
2x 1865
1x 1873
2x 1875
1x 1877
1x 1879
2x 1880
3x 1881
4x 1882
2x 1883
1x 1884
1x 1887
1x 1889
1x 1890
Pretty good spread, but those coupled with the other coins leads me to believe the activity was 1880's to 1890 and possibly only a few years. The 2-cent piece is the last coin and it's very worn, but not in bad shape considering:
It's 1864 and I checked, large motto.
Still I couldn't ask for more:
Together with the seated, it's one gorgeous handful of coinage! I don't know how I could top this hunt. Obviously I'll hammer the site some more once the snow clears up, but based on the other sweeps I think it's just this one cluster. Fingers crossed I'm wrong and there are more spots like it, but even if there aren't this is an absolutely incredible haul and I'll be riding high for weeks on this!
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