bcbirdman
Jr. Member
I spent a day and a half detecting a harvested field in west central Indiana this past weekend. Not a lot of modern trash, which is awesome. Almost everything that was found I could date to about the late 1800s or earlier to about 1830s. Here are my best three finds.
An 1861 Indian head in pretty decent shape (was just sitting on the surface)
Brass knuckles that I suspect are from the 1800s. This design seemed popular later on into the 1900s, but I found some civil war era brass knuckles online that matched this style and based on the other items from the site, I'd guess they are about as old as everything else. They gave me a super high squeak ringing in at around 91-92 on the detector. Thought I was about to pull out a silver coin for sure!
And lastly, my favorite find is an 1835-1838 floral, guilt, civilian coat button made by Wadhams & Coe Co. The shank is intact and the backmark reads "Wadhams & Coe. Co, Extra Rich." They made these buttons between 1835-1850ish. After doing some research, I found that the Coe guy quit the company in 1838, and they changed the backmark to not include him. Something really cool about this find is how fun it was to find it. Haha I was getting a broken signal around 77 on the detector, but it wasn't super consistent but I decided to dig it anyway. I ended up digging two small square nails in the hole and thought to myself, "This can't be the 77 I was hearing." So I waved the detector over the hole again and this time got a solid 77-78. Then dug a little more and pulled out this button around 6-8 inches down. So satisfying haha.
Can't wait to head back out there!
An 1861 Indian head in pretty decent shape (was just sitting on the surface)
Brass knuckles that I suspect are from the 1800s. This design seemed popular later on into the 1900s, but I found some civil war era brass knuckles online that matched this style and based on the other items from the site, I'd guess they are about as old as everything else. They gave me a super high squeak ringing in at around 91-92 on the detector. Thought I was about to pull out a silver coin for sure!
And lastly, my favorite find is an 1835-1838 floral, guilt, civilian coat button made by Wadhams & Coe Co. The shank is intact and the backmark reads "Wadhams & Coe. Co, Extra Rich." They made these buttons between 1835-1850ish. After doing some research, I found that the Coe guy quit the company in 1838, and they changed the backmark to not include him. Something really cool about this find is how fun it was to find it. Haha I was getting a broken signal around 77 on the detector, but it wasn't super consistent but I decided to dig it anyway. I ended up digging two small square nails in the hole and thought to myself, "This can't be the 77 I was hearing." So I waved the detector over the hole again and this time got a solid 77-78. Then dug a little more and pulled out this button around 6-8 inches down. So satisfying haha.
Can't wait to head back out there!
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