My buddys Clovis point find brings $69,000 at auction!

[Mark Todd]

My buddy's Clovis point find brings $69,000 at auction!

Everybody likes a good story especially if it's true. I'm fortunate to live in an area that was heavily occupied by archaic, Mississippian, and Woodland cultures,and you can add to that a fair amount of paleo and even some Hopewell. This post is about a recent "sold",not a recent find. In 1979 after having pounded the fields for many years I found what is often called these days an "elite museum quality artifact". In 1982(?) a classmate of mine found an elite piece also however he hadn't even walked an hour in a plowed field all his life, that's right it was his first experience at arrowhead hunting! Needless to say he stuck with it. I sold my piece in 1982 and have recently misplaced all my pictures of it as we've been remodeling the house. So this morning I decided to do an internet search with my name and a description the artifact. I clicked on an auction news site that looked promising and started scrolling down until I found the artifact listings. Unfortunately the pink banner listed wasn't mine but got to looking at this sugar Quartz Clovis and thought "HOLY SHITE!" That's Ron's piece gotta be, it's even listed as found in my Township. After running the snowblower for a few hours I hit the road to see if I could locate my old friend. I did and he had no clue about the auction. He had sold the piece years ago and the last he had heard was that it had been resold several years ago for $35grand. He dug out some of his better finds while we visited and talked about the good old days before no-till farming. I took some pics.while talking so not the best. All but three are his own personal finds. The sugar Quartz dovetail was his only bought piece (I've never seen a sugar qrtz. Dove before, how about you all?),his dad found the neat looking scalloped scraper and a couple of the medium sized knives. The axe is just shy of 8lbs., and the Clovis with the provenance paper is of course a synthetic reproduction of the original. HAPPY HUNTING!

 

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[quito]

to cool!

 

[NCPeaches]

Wow! that is amazing! Thank you for sharing your story with us!

 

[sandchip]

I've seen that point somewhere before, maybe in the Central States Archaeological journal? Fantastic artifact. That thing called "beginner's luck" seems to be very real and never ceases to amaze me. Afraid it skipped me, however!

 

[Cosmo]

Loca

 

[Cosmo]

Local guy in green county Illinois sold a Clovis at auction for 77,000 a few year ago.

 

[rock]

westernartifacts.com has one for sale for 23K on their site.

 

[yakker]

Wow! Amazing story-- just the thing for a frosty day Yakker

 

[painterx7]

Awesome story thanks for sharing

 

[Tnmountains]

Mine are not worthy or maybe the word is worth. Great story and fun to dream about that one special find.

 

[Mark Todd]

Okay, since "Sandchip" mentioned "beginners luck" I've gotta tell another story, actually two but the second will have to wait for another time. This ones about my youngest son. I think he was 13 maybe 14 years old at the time. We lived in a small town so he grew up with bicycles and basketball hoops and playgrounds and such whereas I'd grown up in the country with trees to climb, snakes to catch, and all those woods and the Spoon River to explore. Because of this he never developed an interest in artifact hunting but he'd seen mine many a time an because of that must of at least developed a bit of an eye for them. It was 15 years ago I suppose, we'd driven over to McLean Co. with the kids to visit Grandma and Grandpa T. , who were living on 10 acres of timber that has a large creek a stones throw behind the log house a smaller one that meanders through the woods 50 or so feet from the side of the house that T's into the larger. Eric had been playing with a neighbors boy in the smaller creek and came walking back into the house with big smile on his face, held out his hand and said, look what I just dug out the creek bank! It's certainly no Clovis, but it's a darn nice blade and great color to boot. Well you can't call that one beginners luck because he's still never hunted a day in his life, maybe "blind luck". P.S. I have no idea whether style of blade has a common name or anything about the material it's made of, if anyone knows please tell, THANKS

 

[painterx7]

Very interesting piece looks very old it's hard to type those blades could b a cobbs boss IMO thanks for taking the time to type out this very good story nice read I enjoyed it !!!

 

[Mark Todd]

This is the last of a trilogy of brief (beginners luck and unintended nice finds) stories. The artifact pictured below was given to me by my grandparents. As a young boy I was always fascinated by it. Whenever we went to visit them it was always right there on the old rug next to the leg of an antique curio cabinet just as you walked through the door. They had no particular interest in indian artifacts, rather they had acquired it by a strange coincidence. In the late 1920's they took a road trip to Virginia ( from central Illinois) to visit relatives. While driving thru The hills of rural Virginia grandpa had to pull over to the side of the road to do--- well to do what bears do in the woods. When he returned to the car from the edge of the woods he had this in hand.

 

[Mark Todd]

"Painterx7" if you happen to see this: thanks much for mentioning "Cobbs" as a possible type for the blade and your right, a difficult form to label. I'm thinking late transitional period Paleo "Stanfield knife" which are very similar to Cobbs but do not have the pronounced angle percussion flaking along the cutting edge. I have the benefit of two full time archaeologists 15 minutes away at Dickson Mounds state museum , I'll have too go see what they think.

 

[painterx7]

You know I was looking at some of mine and you might be right I've noticed on a couple I have that they only have one edge that looks beveled where cobbs have two but I am just guessing lol

 

[painterx7]

Yours looks like it has one edge like I was saying so keep me informed on what they say

 

[painterx7]

heres a few

 

[Mark Todd]

Hey painterx7, thanks for showing the pic. above, all three are very nice and the material too! The middle blade has that dense buttery smooth gloss, really pretty stuff. The first two blades look like they may be great examples of the difference between a true "Cobbs triangle"(early Archaic) and a "Stanfield knife" (late Paleo).
I'd love to see pics. Of the left two individually and one of each taken straight down on the points while holding them standing on their bases. Thank You!

 

[painterx7]

Thanks Todd hope these work