My first Good find with my Fisher

[OldAviator]

Good Afternoon
I have been a fan of this site for about a year now. After 28 years in the military I bought a house, settled down in Alabama and decided to get back into metal detecting. I bought a Fisher F75 special edition and haven't looked back. I live on a golf course so on days it's closed I hunt the cart paths, natural areas and around the lakes. Well today it's closed and I decided to go for a little hunt, I usually find lots of quarters,dimes and penny's but never anything old. I started hunting around this old pine tree right outside my back gate and with in a few minutes I got a 100% dime hit about 10 inches down. Dug it up and out popped this beauty, man my fire is lit after 6 months of finding lots of modern coins. It looks like it was dropped right after it was minted. I am addicted for life NOW! 155 years old-man that's cool.

A beautiful almost mint 1859 Liberty Seated Dime.

 

[markp]

nice coin

 

[l2hunt]

yup that's a honey!!

 

[HenryWaltonJonesJr]

Hypothesis on that amazing condition of the coin:

Pine is actually a very powerful natural herbicide. That is why you rarely see any weeds growing under or in the near vicinity of a pine. It's a natural defense to keep competition away. If it is a really large pine they can live for hundreds of years and its possible it was there when the coin was lost.

Have others made finds under pine trees that were in great condition as well? Pine secretions may very well be a metal preservative! I need to start hunting under pines! They are however hard to get near without getting scratched up and the very low growth.

 

[73dguard]

 

[OldAviator]

Hypothesis on that amazing condition of the coin: Pine is actually a very powerful natural herbicide. That is why you rarely see any weeds growing under or in the near vicinity of a pine. It's a natural defense to keep competition away. If it is a really large pine they can live for hundreds of years and its possible it was there when the coin was lost. Have others made finds under pine trees that were in great condition as well? Pine secretions may very well be a metal preservative! I need to start hunting under pines! They are however hard to get near without getting scratched up and the very low growth.

Having done some research on the area I found the coin, their was a trading post located what appears to be a hundred yards or so from the area I found the coin.
The post was located on a trail which ran right thru the neighborhood. My home was built in the mid 90s but the property was deeded starting in 1883 so I know it has some history.
I would love to detect the whole golf course-haha-but I think they might be a little upset, unless I convince them its gopher holes...
Heck you never know, my brothers house in town was built in 1943 but has a long history in the area.
When we got our MDs we started messing around in his back yard and found 6 civil was bullets, 3 ringers and 2 ringers and a standing liberty quarter.
I was stunned we found all that stuff in his back yard! Even today he will go back their and still find bullets after we have hunted that yard 20 times.
It blows me away you can hunt an area a ton then go out and find something special, all the while thinking I know I went over this area 10 times how did I miss it?

 

[Dug]

Hypothesis on that amazing condition of the coin:


Have others made finds under pine trees that were in great condition as well? Pine secretions may very well be a metal preservative! I need to start hunting under pines! They are however hard to get near without getting scratched up and the very low growth.

My impression has been that Pine Trees produce a fair amount of straw which is acidic in nature and having seen what it does to pewter buttons is not good. I have observed that the better draining a soil is or dryer, typically the better shape an item will be in with PH balance of the soil being a second factor.

 

[HenryWaltonJonesJr]

what it does to pewter buttons is not good.

So perhaps to an alloy its very bad, but to elements, like silver or gold, the acidic nature of the soil keeps them cleaner?

I agree balanced PH and dryness would be good for an even patina, but maybe very acidic to almost even clean over time.

I only want to dig deeper into this because looking at this coin it looks like a coin collector dropped a mint coin the previous day! What an amazing find!

 

[OldAviator]

Here are the photos I took when I first dug it up.
Here are the trees I found it under-big one on left-taken from my back fence.

 

[HenryWaltonJonesJr]

Okay, thats it, I just nominated this for a banner find!

I'm not a coin collector (nor do I know much at all about it), but that looks looks something that should get graded and slabbed.

 

[Dug]

So perhaps to an alloy its very bad, but to elements, like silver or gold, the acidic nature of the soil keeps them cleaner?

QUOTE]

With silver that sounds logical. I'm under the impression that gold in it's higher content form has little to nothing to affect it.

 

[Dug]

I'm sure there has to be more out there waiting to be saved O.A. go dig so more for us to drool over.

 

[Lownslow]

Congratulations!!! That is An Extra Nice Find! I've been detecting 15 years and never found a Seated Dime. I guess they are still out there. I use a T2 Special Edition which is a lot like your Fisher F75 Special Edition. Again Congrats!!!

 

[OldAviator]

Congratulations!!! That is An Extra Nice Find! I've been detecting 15 years and never found a Seated Dime. I guess they are still out there. I use a T2 Special Edition which is a lot like your Fisher F75 Special Edition. Again Congrats!!!

Thanks
It takes lots of practice and for me setting up a coin field in my back yard so I could get used to the different sounds- gold, silver, copper ect. If I did not have to contend with bottle caps, pull tabs life would be grand. There must be a billion of those in the ground. After reading this site for a while and seeing how many "tabs" turned out to be rings ect I dig them all now.