brianc053
Bronze Member
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2015
- Messages
- 1,021
- Reaction score
- 3,723
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- 0
- Location
- Sussex County, DE
- 🏆 Honorable Mentions:
- 3
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Equinox 800
XP Deus 2
- Primary Interest:
- Metal Detecting
Hi everyone. My son and I got out and detected a new permission in a historic area of our town. We detected for about 90 minutes but spent some of that time getting the "lay of the land" and some of the time talking with the land owner, so we didn't dig all that many targets - but there were lots of hits (mostly iron). We cherry picked the non-iron and this is what we dug:
Item 1: Shield Nickel - as you can see from the condition I won't be getting a year off of this one. New Jersey soil strikes again. We weren't sure what it was at first because it rang up around 11 VDI on the Equinox; I haven't found a Shield Nickel before. We saw stars on the obverse when my son first started cleaning it; he was just brushing off dirt with his finger, but he said "Dad I think I rubbed off a star". I can still see the bottom curve of the "5" and one "T" from UNITED STATES on the obverse, and on the reverse the parallel lines of the shield are visible.
Can anyone offer advice on how they treat coins like this when they first pull them out of the ground? Can I do anything better to preserve them? Or if some of the surface rubs off with a finger, is the coin "toast" and there's nothing to be done?
Front | Back
Item 2: old button - this one has a bit of a design/pattern around the front edge, and the back has no markings and the shank looks old. Is this one early 1800's?
Front | Back
Item 3: small lock plate - I love finding these, since they make me wonder what they were attached to. Very small box? This one doesn't look all that old given the two rivets' design - agree?
Mystery item 1: shell casing. The mystery is - what kind of shell casing? The opening is 0.17 caliber, and there's "LC 62" on the base. But the neck design is weird, is it "necked down"? I don't know much about shell casings.
Mystery item 2: this one I have no idea. Thoughts?
Here's everything we dug.
Thanks for looking!
Item 1: Shield Nickel - as you can see from the condition I won't be getting a year off of this one. New Jersey soil strikes again. We weren't sure what it was at first because it rang up around 11 VDI on the Equinox; I haven't found a Shield Nickel before. We saw stars on the obverse when my son first started cleaning it; he was just brushing off dirt with his finger, but he said "Dad I think I rubbed off a star". I can still see the bottom curve of the "5" and one "T" from UNITED STATES on the obverse, and on the reverse the parallel lines of the shield are visible.
Can anyone offer advice on how they treat coins like this when they first pull them out of the ground? Can I do anything better to preserve them? Or if some of the surface rubs off with a finger, is the coin "toast" and there's nothing to be done?
Front | Back
Item 2: old button - this one has a bit of a design/pattern around the front edge, and the back has no markings and the shank looks old. Is this one early 1800's?
Front | Back
Item 3: small lock plate - I love finding these, since they make me wonder what they were attached to. Very small box? This one doesn't look all that old given the two rivets' design - agree?
Mystery item 1: shell casing. The mystery is - what kind of shell casing? The opening is 0.17 caliber, and there's "LC 62" on the base. But the neck design is weird, is it "necked down"? I don't know much about shell casings.
Mystery item 2: this one I have no idea. Thoughts?
Here's everything we dug.
Thanks for looking!
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