rhedden
Sr. Member
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2003
- Messages
- 393
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- Location
- Eastern NY
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Manticore & Nokta Makro Simplex
The past few weeks, I have been hunting the fields around an old farmstead that has more than one cellar hole. There is a lot of cleared land around the main house site, and it has already given up 13 coins since I located the site back in 2024. Eight of those coins were found the past few weeks, with five of them coming out of the ground today. I haven't found a single silver coin out of the thirteen, sadly, and the soil is brutal to the copper and nickel coins. Regardless, any cellar hole that gives up old coins again and again is worth revisiting
Today's finds produced a crazy pocket spill with a face value of 13 cents. I was searching at the top of a hill overlooking the smaller of the two house sites at this location when I got a solid 22 signal on the Manticore. About half of those signals are buttons, and the rest are bullets or shell casings, so I dug it up hastily, only to have an 1884 V nickel pop out. I was bummed out that it wasn't my first-ever shield nickel, because I previously found no coins dated after 1865 at this place. Well, I only had to wait a few minutes, because I re-checked the hole and there was another strong 26 signal in there. Shield nickel it is! One bucket lister checked off, one to go...
I re-checked the hole again, and there was another solid hit - but this was coming in at 11 to 13 on the Manticore. Now that could be a small gold coin, a gold ring, or a button, depending on what the person had in their pockets. Before I dug it, I thought "that could also be a 3-cent nickel." It was the last choice - a second bucket lister, the only 3-cent nickel I've ever dug in 27 years of detecting! I'm mildly disappointed it's not an 1861-D gold $1, but I was really disappointed about the same thing the last 75,000 times I dug a hole.
Without further ado, here is the unlikely 13-cent pocket spill consisting of two nickels and a 3-cent nickel. It is worth noting that the person who lost it could have had two silver half dimes and a silver 3-cent piece instead, in which case I wouldn't be staring at a pile of corroded coins, but no - they simply abhorred silver coins at this place.
The other two coins for today were a toasted Matron Head cent at 6 inches and a toasted/clipped, razor-thin copper that is surely a KG or a counterfeit thereof.
Last weekend, I dug two unexpected coins at the same site: a holed 1865 two-cent piece and a highly oblong KG III copper, which is surely counterfeit. I really don't know what to say about the KG III except that I could not believe it was a coin based on how completely oval it is. There's a good chance it's a fake from the Machin's Mills site, which is not too far from here. The 2-center was down about 7 inches while the KG III was not more than two inches deep, making me thing that the perfect 72 signal on the Manticore was going to be a fired bullet or maybe a modern Lincoln cent dropped by a hunter. Instead, it was a pre-1800 coin, and a weird one at that.
The previous weekend turned up a single coin at about 7 inches deep: a surprising 1860-dated Queen Victoria penny from Great Britain. What a surprise out in the woods a mile or more from the nearest paved road and one ocean away from the place it was minted.
Anyway, here are all of the 2026 finds from this site so far, plus a nice 1801 Draped Bust cent I dug there last fall. I will be going back there a few more times, because I just know there's a Seated coin or a Spanish silver there somewhere. 13 coins in a row without any silver is tough to digest, but I will continue the search.
(1801 cent found fall of 2025)
Today's finds produced a crazy pocket spill with a face value of 13 cents. I was searching at the top of a hill overlooking the smaller of the two house sites at this location when I got a solid 22 signal on the Manticore. About half of those signals are buttons, and the rest are bullets or shell casings, so I dug it up hastily, only to have an 1884 V nickel pop out. I was bummed out that it wasn't my first-ever shield nickel, because I previously found no coins dated after 1865 at this place. Well, I only had to wait a few minutes, because I re-checked the hole and there was another strong 26 signal in there. Shield nickel it is! One bucket lister checked off, one to go...
I re-checked the hole again, and there was another solid hit - but this was coming in at 11 to 13 on the Manticore. Now that could be a small gold coin, a gold ring, or a button, depending on what the person had in their pockets. Before I dug it, I thought "that could also be a 3-cent nickel." It was the last choice - a second bucket lister, the only 3-cent nickel I've ever dug in 27 years of detecting! I'm mildly disappointed it's not an 1861-D gold $1, but I was really disappointed about the same thing the last 75,000 times I dug a hole.
Without further ado, here is the unlikely 13-cent pocket spill consisting of two nickels and a 3-cent nickel. It is worth noting that the person who lost it could have had two silver half dimes and a silver 3-cent piece instead, in which case I wouldn't be staring at a pile of corroded coins, but no - they simply abhorred silver coins at this place.
The other two coins for today were a toasted Matron Head cent at 6 inches and a toasted/clipped, razor-thin copper that is surely a KG or a counterfeit thereof.
Last weekend, I dug two unexpected coins at the same site: a holed 1865 two-cent piece and a highly oblong KG III copper, which is surely counterfeit. I really don't know what to say about the KG III except that I could not believe it was a coin based on how completely oval it is. There's a good chance it's a fake from the Machin's Mills site, which is not too far from here. The 2-center was down about 7 inches while the KG III was not more than two inches deep, making me thing that the perfect 72 signal on the Manticore was going to be a fired bullet or maybe a modern Lincoln cent dropped by a hunter. Instead, it was a pre-1800 coin, and a weird one at that.
The previous weekend turned up a single coin at about 7 inches deep: a surprising 1860-dated Queen Victoria penny from Great Britain. What a surprise out in the woods a mile or more from the nearest paved road and one ocean away from the place it was minted.
Anyway, here are all of the 2026 finds from this site so far, plus a nice 1801 Draped Bust cent I dug there last fall. I will be going back there a few more times, because I just know there's a Seated coin or a Spanish silver there somewhere. 13 coins in a row without any silver is tough to digest, but I will continue the search.
(1801 cent found fall of 2025)
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