My favorite finds, Silver, Belt or Sword Plate ? and others.

[DFX DAVE in M.D.]

Here it is the whole ball of wax of my favorite finds, well almost. Most of this was detected and a few was found bottle digging in Maryland. We are knee deep in snow here, so it was a good time to take pictures.

 

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[GopherDaGold]

Very cool stuff!! I sure see a lot of harmonica parts on these threads! Love the pocket watch!!

 

[vayank54]

You've dug some cool stuff. That plate is nice. Can you post a pic of the back? It might be precivil war but could be post civil war as well.

 

[DFX DAVE in M.D.]

Here is a picture of thev back, it is thin with the front being shown through.

 

[vayank54]

Man It's hard to tell from the pic. Are there any solder marks on the back. There should be 3. If it had the hooks I could have probably given you some kind of time frame but it's going to be a bit harder with no hooks.

 

[Brian(upstateNY-Central Fla.)]

Fantastic job there

 

[DFX DAVE in M.D.]

I can't see any solder marks on the back. It is a light piece, it feels like copper maybe. It was dug up in a bottle dump on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

 

[vayank54]

I checked and could not find an exact match in any of my books. The eagle has the 1850's look to it but I only know of one type of stamped eagle plate that is civil war or earlier and it had pins holding the hooks on. With the hooks gone there would be small holes in the plate where the pins were. There were several different styles of stamped eagle plates made after the civil warused until the early 1900's. Someone could tell better by holding it. You may want to take it to a civil war relics show where you can show it to different dealers and get more than one opinion.
As far as it looking like copper. Until electricity was in use copper was considered more of a junk metal and older brass has more copper content than more modern brass. Also if something was going to be silver washed or plated it would be made of copper as the silver stuck to the copper better than to brass. If it is copper I would lean toward it being a precivil war piece.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.