rhedden
Sr. Member
Today, I took a massive hike into the mountains to the site of an old farm that existed from the 1790s through roughly the 1930s. It has a well-built foundation and even the barn has a stone-lined cellar hole, so the signs of occupation after 1900 are there. The fun part of this site is a rugged, 60-minute hike down a 600 ft. elevation change, followed by climbing the same distance back to the car after your legs are broken from detecting. Since most cellar holes have been picked clean in my area, I've been focusing on the remote/inaccessible places that are hard to find, even by using old maps.
Probably the best find of the day is this aqua beer bottle, embossed Fitzgerald Bros. Brew'g Co. Troy N.Y. It was sticking out of the ground at an angle, and I kept saying, "please don't be broken!" as I approached it. It wasn't broken! I think it dates from the 1900-1920 period. After much searching, I could not find a similar one online anywhere, though I did find some examples of other beer bottles from the brewery in different colors and with different embossing. This one looks like it probably pre-dates Prohibition by just a few years, as the mold seam goes all the way up, and the embossing looks like 1910s style to me.
Now here's the funny twist to this story. Literally yesterday, I watched a video on YouTube by Brad (Green Mountain Metal Detecting) where he ditched the detector for a day to dig bottles with a friend. Near the beginning of the video, he unearths a brown Fitzgerald beer bottle marked Troy, NY. I said to myself, "Why don't I find any old bottles from Troy, NY?" I live nearby and work in Troy, so a bottle like that would mean something to me. Little did I know, I was only one day away from finding the same bottle in aqua glass! Now what are the odds of that?
Here is a link to Brad's video of the bottle dig from just up the road from me in VT.
GMMD - We Found Guns, Cocaine and a Cure for Baldness
I hit the former fields around the cellar hole pretty hard for the rest of the day with my Nokta Simplex. I found my first complete early batwing buckle! I was 100% sure I was digging a coin due to the +72 VDI, but the batwing is better than a coin from this site (see below). Does anyone want to place a date on it? I suspect mid-1800s. There are two other buckle fragments, which is what I usually find - broken stuff.
The button I dug is 2-piece, iron, shank intact, with a cloth cover. Nothing fancy there, and I suspect it's post-1900.
To end the day, I broke my "Cellar Coin Curse" that was regrettably 4+ years old. Since I moved to eastern NY in January 2018, I haven't found a single old coin around any of the dozens of cellar holes I've visited. Not one until today! A couple months ago, I posted a thread called "cursed by a witch" where I found a funky bottle cap with a witch embossed on it. Thought that was a coin for sure, but nope! Well, I broke the witch curse when this absolutely toasted 1901 Indian popped out of the hole (shown above). It's corroded so badly that pieces of the coin broke off, like it's some kind of foul-tasting, green, mint-flavored cookie. I'm not sure it's even metal any more - but the date was somehow readable, and it counts! Like I said above, I'm better off with the bottle / buckle (if the coins are going to look this way).
Finally, I'll conclude with some thoughts about the Simplex and its DD coil. I prefer it to my old White's XLT simply because it kills the old machine on depth. However, the DD coil leaves something to be desired in terms of pinpointing and depth estimation. I use my GP-Pointer on every single target these days, and I often miss the location with the Simplex by something like 4 inches, which is really bad. The XLT was so good at pinpointing that I never needed a handheld pinpointer in 20 years+ of detecting. I like the extra long battery life of the SImplex, the wireless headphones, and the scary depth (dug a shotgun shell at over 6 inches today, and it gave a bangin' signal) enough that it gets the nod these days, but I really got the max. out of my XLT over the years.
Probably the best find of the day is this aqua beer bottle, embossed Fitzgerald Bros. Brew'g Co. Troy N.Y. It was sticking out of the ground at an angle, and I kept saying, "please don't be broken!" as I approached it. It wasn't broken! I think it dates from the 1900-1920 period. After much searching, I could not find a similar one online anywhere, though I did find some examples of other beer bottles from the brewery in different colors and with different embossing. This one looks like it probably pre-dates Prohibition by just a few years, as the mold seam goes all the way up, and the embossing looks like 1910s style to me.
Now here's the funny twist to this story. Literally yesterday, I watched a video on YouTube by Brad (Green Mountain Metal Detecting) where he ditched the detector for a day to dig bottles with a friend. Near the beginning of the video, he unearths a brown Fitzgerald beer bottle marked Troy, NY. I said to myself, "Why don't I find any old bottles from Troy, NY?" I live nearby and work in Troy, so a bottle like that would mean something to me. Little did I know, I was only one day away from finding the same bottle in aqua glass! Now what are the odds of that?
Here is a link to Brad's video of the bottle dig from just up the road from me in VT.
GMMD - We Found Guns, Cocaine and a Cure for Baldness
I hit the former fields around the cellar hole pretty hard for the rest of the day with my Nokta Simplex. I found my first complete early batwing buckle! I was 100% sure I was digging a coin due to the +72 VDI, but the batwing is better than a coin from this site (see below). Does anyone want to place a date on it? I suspect mid-1800s. There are two other buckle fragments, which is what I usually find - broken stuff.
The button I dug is 2-piece, iron, shank intact, with a cloth cover. Nothing fancy there, and I suspect it's post-1900.
To end the day, I broke my "Cellar Coin Curse" that was regrettably 4+ years old. Since I moved to eastern NY in January 2018, I haven't found a single old coin around any of the dozens of cellar holes I've visited. Not one until today! A couple months ago, I posted a thread called "cursed by a witch" where I found a funky bottle cap with a witch embossed on it. Thought that was a coin for sure, but nope! Well, I broke the witch curse when this absolutely toasted 1901 Indian popped out of the hole (shown above). It's corroded so badly that pieces of the coin broke off, like it's some kind of foul-tasting, green, mint-flavored cookie. I'm not sure it's even metal any more - but the date was somehow readable, and it counts! Like I said above, I'm better off with the bottle / buckle (if the coins are going to look this way).
Finally, I'll conclude with some thoughts about the Simplex and its DD coil. I prefer it to my old White's XLT simply because it kills the old machine on depth. However, the DD coil leaves something to be desired in terms of pinpointing and depth estimation. I use my GP-Pointer on every single target these days, and I often miss the location with the Simplex by something like 4 inches, which is really bad. The XLT was so good at pinpointing that I never needed a handheld pinpointer in 20 years+ of detecting. I like the extra long battery life of the SImplex, the wireless headphones, and the scary depth (dug a shotgun shell at over 6 inches today, and it gave a bangin' signal) enough that it gets the nod these days, but I really got the max. out of my XLT over the years.
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