Another First! An 1857 Flying Eagle Cent!

brianc053

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Jan 27, 2015
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Hi everyone. April and 2021 in general have been remarkably good to me, and in a previous post I commented on having a lot of "first finds" recently (KG2, Barber Half, a Spanish Real back in January).
The list of firsts has grown: today I found an 1857 Flying Eagle Cent, a coin I never expected to find! It's in rough shape, but I've included pictures at a mid-cleaning stage (yes, I cleaned it with Andre's Pencils only) and at that point the final digit of the year, "7", was clear (I realize that it looks like 1117 in the picture - I was only focused on trying to clean the last digit, for obvious reasons).
The final result isn't great; my son rightly pointed out that it looked better before I started cleaning it (when the dirt was in the shape of the eagle), but I couldn't resist trying to find the date - at the cost maybe of the appearance of the coin. Oh well, as I told him: I didn't ruin the coin, nature ruined the coin. I did what I could to save it.

I found the Flying Eagle and other coins at a house in town that I've wanted to detect for a long time. A friend who knows the owner and who detects called me midday to ask if I wanted to join him and I jumped at the chance - boy am I glad I did!
The first hole had three silvers: a 1953 Washington Quarter and two Mercs (1928 and 1929, both Philly mint). I included the picture of two coins on the plug because I thought I was done when I pulled those out, but being a good detectorist I checked the hole before moving on and discovered that I'd missed the second Merc.

Not far from the silver was a 1911 Liberty "V" Nickel, in reasonably good shape (since the only other V Nickel I've found was completely toasted). Once again I cleaned this coin and once again my son pointed out that the back was WAYYYY better before I cleaned it. Oh well - still got a date off of it!

The final item I'll mention is the broach with the "diamonds" pictured below. I'm pretty confident it's costume jewelry, because: the metal is not sterling/925 (it's plated at best; the plating is coming off the screw back), the stones are all surprisingly uniform, and I swear that with a jeweler's loop I see scratches on the stones (and even a chip in one). But it was fun to find for a moment...and I'll still get it checked out just in case.

My buddy found a coin spill (but all clad, including a 1965 quarter...off by one year!) and a heavy silver necklace charm or maybe an earring...he's cleaning it and hopefully will see 925 or "sterling" on it.

Thanks for looking, and I hope everyone else had a great weekend!

- Brian

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billb

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Sep 23, 2010
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Congratulations on your nice recovery
 

Silvermonkey

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Apr 24, 2013
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Some very nice finds Brian. Congrats on your first FEC. Those don't come to the surface that often. Well done!
 

erfranks

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Mar 3, 2021
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Very Nice saves!!!!
 

HunterMF

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Congrats on your first!!
 

Hunk-a-lead

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Dec 20, 2020
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beauties, congratz and thanks for posting. 2021 has been a good year for you
 

Elvis

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Nice haul!!! Congrats!!!
 

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