1235CE
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Hello all.......I cannot believe what I found tonight!!!!!.........well, let me back up 3 years to let you know how I ended up swinging a loop where I did after work tonight......my brother works with a guy who happens to own about 500 acres of hay fields (all neatly divided by old stone walls) in Western Mass. (The Beautiful Berkshires)
He learned of our hobby and said (3 years ago) to help yourself to checking out my fields anytime you want and we hit the fields hard for the first year with only a Buffalo nickel to show for our efforts. The next year (2007) I took a friend of mine out into the very middle of one field and completely out of the blue we found 3 Large Cents within about 10 feet of each other (1801,1803 Draped Bust and a really nice 1787 NJ Copper)........and so we POUNDED that one particular field for the rest of that summer and NOTHING else. I mean literally coming home with clean hands.
I did not even hit these fields at all last year and then last week, lacking for a new place to go, I decided to back to the "Large Cent Field"........this time something caught my eye near the edge of the field.......it was 4 square field stones, in the shape of a square (maybe a 20x20 shack, house, cabin, who knows?......and this "foundation" was about 200 feet from where the Large Cents came from.......so I start focusing on this area and I immediately get an 1906 Indian Head at about 4 inches and then 5 feet from that I get a quarter signal (+87 on my XLT) also at 4 inches and I was THRILLED to pull out an 1918-s Standing Liberty Quarter........it's been a REALLY slow year for me and this was only my 6th silver all year........so yes, I was VERY HAPPY!
Was thinking about that spot all week and finally got a chance to go back tonight and grid out a larger area, moving away from the 4 stones, getting closer to the spot where the large cents came from........with clean hands and daylight going away fast I was really just roaming around a little, getting ready to head home when I get a +74/+75 reading and when I checked the depth it was coming up around 5 inches.........hmmmm......that's a deep Wheat Cent I thought and dug my plug..................it fell right out of the very bottom of my plug into my hands.........thought I had Spanish silver at first until I saw "Liberty"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..........knew exactly what it was and with trembling hands and knees somehow drove home..........This is my very best find of my life and I am sooooo happy to be able to share it with you all!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a couple questions and please feel free to chime in with any grade and/or value you may think.......I am thinking Fine but that is really just a guess.........and does anyone see something odd with the "18" in the date......maybe a re-cut die?.........also, are Draped Bust Dimes attributed like other coins? I'm very curious if someone can put a rarity or variety number on this.........thank you all for reading this and looking at the pics, may you all stumble across something like this very soon.
HH all!
Greg
(yes, I'm going back to that field in the morning :-)
He learned of our hobby and said (3 years ago) to help yourself to checking out my fields anytime you want and we hit the fields hard for the first year with only a Buffalo nickel to show for our efforts. The next year (2007) I took a friend of mine out into the very middle of one field and completely out of the blue we found 3 Large Cents within about 10 feet of each other (1801,1803 Draped Bust and a really nice 1787 NJ Copper)........and so we POUNDED that one particular field for the rest of that summer and NOTHING else. I mean literally coming home with clean hands.
I did not even hit these fields at all last year and then last week, lacking for a new place to go, I decided to back to the "Large Cent Field"........this time something caught my eye near the edge of the field.......it was 4 square field stones, in the shape of a square (maybe a 20x20 shack, house, cabin, who knows?......and this "foundation" was about 200 feet from where the Large Cents came from.......so I start focusing on this area and I immediately get an 1906 Indian Head at about 4 inches and then 5 feet from that I get a quarter signal (+87 on my XLT) also at 4 inches and I was THRILLED to pull out an 1918-s Standing Liberty Quarter........it's been a REALLY slow year for me and this was only my 6th silver all year........so yes, I was VERY HAPPY!
Was thinking about that spot all week and finally got a chance to go back tonight and grid out a larger area, moving away from the 4 stones, getting closer to the spot where the large cents came from........with clean hands and daylight going away fast I was really just roaming around a little, getting ready to head home when I get a +74/+75 reading and when I checked the depth it was coming up around 5 inches.........hmmmm......that's a deep Wheat Cent I thought and dug my plug..................it fell right out of the very bottom of my plug into my hands.........thought I had Spanish silver at first until I saw "Liberty"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..........knew exactly what it was and with trembling hands and knees somehow drove home..........This is my very best find of my life and I am sooooo happy to be able to share it with you all!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a couple questions and please feel free to chime in with any grade and/or value you may think.......I am thinking Fine but that is really just a guess.........and does anyone see something odd with the "18" in the date......maybe a re-cut die?.........also, are Draped Bust Dimes attributed like other coins? I'm very curious if someone can put a rarity or variety number on this.........thank you all for reading this and looking at the pics, may you all stumble across something like this very soon.
HH all!
Greg
(yes, I'm going back to that field in the morning :-)
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You have to remember too, the Philadelphia Mint was in it's infantcy then. All I know is, for whatever reason, there ARE errors in this coin. I would take it to an EXPERT, not some SCHMUCK in Pittsfield. There are actually a couple people I know of. 1 is Northeast Numismatics in Concord Ma. I would send pics first and see what he says. There have been several new die varieties of Connecticuts discovered in recent years, (not to mention others), so it's not out of the relm of possibility at all. BUT, there are ALOT of questions and research that would have be done to actually confirm this assumption. Is yours a JR-1 or Jr-2 reverse die? It appears to me, the beak touches the 12 star but can't quite make it out. It makes sense to me that if it was a 1798 obverse die, they used the earlier, (or first), reverse die also. 
