| Description |
Dave Ketch was detecting on April Fool's Day, but he definitely wasn't fooling around when he found a scattered cache of 20 Spanish colonial 8 reales or "pieces of eight"!
"My partner Paul and I had dug all day at a site where we'd hoped to find Civil War relics, but two bullets were all we'd turned up, and we were ready to call it a day. However, since it had taken so much effort to reach the top of the steep hill where we were hunting, I suggested that we search for another 15 minutes before heading for home."
The two of them fired up their machines once more, and moments later Dave got a solid signal that registered "dollar" on the ID readout of his detector.
"I dug down about 3" and picked up a coin covered with black mud. 'Please let this be silver and not just a clad,' I thought. Then I gently rubbed my thumb over it and saw the first two numbers of the date... 1... 7!"
Dave and Paul keep in touch with voice-activated two-way radios when working separate areas during a hunt, but Paul probably didn't need his to hear Dave's yell from 15 yards away!
"He thought I'd seen a snake. As soon as he came over, I handed the coin to him. He read the date and said, 'Incredible!' It was the best thing I'd ever found. Finally, I said, 'Give me 20 yards'."
Paul agreed and began slowly circling just beyond the newly staked claim. Meanwhile, Dave eagerly rechecked the spot where he'd found the coin. Sure enough, he got another strong "dollar" reading and recovered a large silver piece dated 1774.
Once again Paul summed up the situation in a single word: "Fantastic!"
"During the next few minutes I was pulling up one coin after another," Dave recalls. "At last I was up to 19 coins, and everything got quiet. But something told me there had to be 20. Three or four minutes must have passed, and then there it was. Blam! Number 20!"
Dating from 1774 to 1800, and averaging Very Fine in condition, the coins are Spanish colonial 8 reales from the mint in Mexico City, with a total numismatic value of approximately $1,600. Dave and Paul are uncertain how the coins came to be where they found them, but Spanish silver circulated widely as legal tender in the U.S. until 1857.
"When you turn on your machine, you never know what you'll find," says Dave. |
