My best day digging in years!! 26 buttons, 7 coppers, 2 Spanish silvers, and more!!

[Steve in PA]

Saturday I returned to my site where I dug the 1803 Draped Bust dime two weeks ago. I had my buddy Tom along with me again. From previous visits I knew that the scattered finds had to be coming from a house site in the vicinity. We decided to start out in an ajacent field relatively close to where I found the dime, but a fair distance from where a lot of the other finds were located. We weren't in this new field for a minute before Tom dug a knee buckle and I dug a copper almost simultaneously. From then on it was GAME ON!!! We were pulling coppers, buttons and other relics almost non stop for the next two hours. After that it slowed down a bit for the next few hours but the finds were still coming. I ended up with 26 buttons, 7 coppers including a 1808 half cent, 2 half reals (1773 and 1781), 2 watch winders, a silver dagger sheath tip, and a cool diamond shaped brass piece with a silver skin that has a guy's name inscribed in it. Tom ended up with 10 buttons, 6 coppers including a half cent, a half real (1790), a knee buckle, and the button of the day - a beautiful gold plated War of 1812 era artillery button.

I also achieved a personal mile stone on this hunt with my 50th Spanish silver.

The first picture is a group shot of all our finds with mine on the bottom half of the pic. All the other pics are of my finds except the artillery button.

 

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[Bill D. (VA)]

Bill, I'm glad you found the post before it got buried. This hunt reminded me of one of your hunts, with all the buttons. I have always noticed the large number of buttons you turn up on your hunts. I attribute this to the presence of slaves on your sites. Where a Pennsylvania farmer in 1810 would have had himself, his wife, kids and maybe a couple indentured servants, a Virginia farmer may have also had a dozen slaves. More people = more buttons lost. I was a little disappointed in the buttons I found, of the 26 I dug, two were tombacs, two had backmarks, and the rest were just plain flat buttons with no backmarks and no designs on the face. As far as the Spanish Silvers, I dug my first in 1990 and I hunted some killer sites in the 1990s that really added to my totals. I have dug 5 this year so far, so I guess another 50 might be possible in another 15 years or so, if my health holds up....

Steve - all it takes is one killer site and you can recover half of the remaining 50. Gonna be tough, but you're just the guy that can do it. Good luck!

 

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[Kirk PA]

I had to check this post out again. It reminds me of our Colonial site from last October. We had a bonanza. Hit that sloping ground some more and dig hard, Steve.

Kirk

 

[TomPA]

Appreciated Bill! I did however get a pretty nice Real (1790) and a couple other neat finds. (Picture down below Steve's post on the first page)

 

[OldSean]

Do you think you were on a military site or an old tavern site? Seems like a lot of coppers for someones yard. Thats going to a once in a lifetime hunt but I hope you have another. Oldsean