Is This an Old Bullet??.......

Garrett424

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Granite, Maryland
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Fiskar's Big Grip Digger & my old Army Trench shovel for the tough jobs
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Metal Detecting
I went on a quick after work hunt in a friend's 30 acre hay field for about 90 minutes today. He just started cutting it yesterday and called to lemme' know, so off I went.

I dug up this bullet. How old it is (if at all), I have no clue. :

First Old Bullet May 22 2015 001.webp

Here's a view from the bottom. It's kinda' flattened:

First Old Bullet May 22 2015 002.webp

And one more of the other side:

First Old Bullet May 22 2015 003.webp

It rang up in the nickel/gold range and it's really heavy for it's size. It's about 7/16" long and around 1/4" across/diameter. If anyone knows what caliber it could be I would also love to know.

I know lots of you folks on T'Net hunt old bullets and other relics. I know next to nothing about these things and really haven't run into anything quite like this before. I've dug a bunch of old shell caps and .22 slugs but that's pretty much it. I'm hoping this turns out to be a cool find.

If anyone can tell me exactly what this is and/or if it's old or possibly a good find, I will truly appreciate it.

Thanks for lookin' & HH.
 

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It's a bullet, it's flattened so an accurate diameter will be hard to get but my guess is it'll be maybe a .32 cal possibly .38. It has reeded grooves which as I remember would date it post 1880,
 

It's a bullet, it's flattened so an accurate diameter will be hard to get but my guess is it'll be maybe a .32 cal possibly .38. It has reeded grooves which as I remember would date it post 1880,


Thanks. It just doesn't look very modern to me.
I guess it's hard to date something like this.
 

The second picture,,, the bottom one,,,the grooves running lengthwise on the slug,,,would those be from a bore that is not rifled?

The grooves just caught my eye,,, that's all

Hit
 

The second picture,,, the bottom one,,,the grooves running lengthwise on the slug,,,would those be from a bore that is not rifled?

The grooves just caught my eye,,, that's all

Hit

'Dunno. That's why I posted it here to find out! It definitely looks like it was in a cartridge.

I'm certain it's not Civil war era or anything but it may still be pretty old. I'm thinking possibly WW 1 era??
I've dug a few modern bullets but this one seems very different from what I'm used to seeing.

I'm really hoping someone can identify and hopefully at least roughly date it.
 

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The first pic you can clearly see the grooves from a rifled barrel. It's a hollow base bullet which people often assume means old, but they are still in use today in many common pistol calibers. If it were possible to get an accurate diameter it might be easier since we'd know the caliber, that combined with a weight in grains could narrow down exactly what it is. Without that, the best guess would be based of off what kind of site it was found at and the age of other finds around it....
 

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