paleomaxx
Hero Member
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 841
- Reaction score
- 6,887
- Golden Thread
- 6
- Location
- Upstate, NY
- 🥇 Banner finds
- 6
- Detector(s) used
- Deus XP
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
New Treasurenet, so let's try out a new post for my new site! I'm actually in the middle of researching this spot since it's a bit of a mystery. For starters I never expected to find a colonial foundation here that hadn't been detected before. This area has a bunch of resident detectorists and they've clean swept the sites around here to the point that I'm lucky to find a button or two! It's along an old road and not right beside it, but not particularly far away from the road. It wasn't on any of the county maps, but based on the relics it looks like it was abandoned in the 1820's so that's not a surprise. What is surprising is the sheer number of relics that I've found so far! The buttons alone are incredible:
Lots of tombacs, dandies (no GWI yet, but every time I'm hoping!), and fancy flat buttons. Only very simple backmarks so the buttons seem to date to the beginning of the 1820's. There's one very interesting pewter button that seems to have writing around the edge. I've done my best to bring out the letters with an Andre's brush, but the lettering was very flat to begin with so the relief wasn't high to start with.
I'm hoping someone here recognizes it, because it seems to have two words and I swear the second one is "Liberty" which makes me particularly excited that it's a Rev War period political or military button. I can't find a match so it could just be optimism, but I'm really hoping someone can chime in with the ID.
There were some very cool relics along with the buttons including an absolutely stellar Georgian shoe buckle:
Also recovered were some fragments of a few other ornate ones and another intact tiny shoe/boot buckle:
The one on the bottom left appears to be a fancy halter buckle, but what's odd is the material isn't brass. It almost looks like fire-scortched silver, but it rang up pretty low for that so maybe a billon alloy or a tombac of some type.
The recovered coins, on average, were pretty great!
1807 Draped Bust large cent, followed by an 1804 Draped Bust half cent:
Also, very interestingly, I found another pewter large cent, but this time it's an 1827 Matron Head:
I'm beginning to suspect that these were used as game chips of some sort since I've found at least four so far in very different areas and with different dates. Best of the large cents is perhaps this 1808 classic head large cent which is special, not only because it's in good shape, but because when I examined it under the light the reverse revealed a massive die crack!
Turns out that it's a known die crack variety, Sheldon S-277. You can see the triangular crack on the left going from the edge up to the top through the "S" and then another running through the "O" in One. With that many cracks I bet when the die finally failed it just shattered. I found a photo of a pristine example online too:
Pretty rare finding a classic head that has the date legible, let alone in good enough condition to identify a variety, so I'm very pleased with this one! Only one colonial copper appeared, but it's a fantastic one so no complaints from me!
Looks like 1783 Crosby-2B and not at all bad shape either! I'm hunting around for some more colonial coppers or even a colonial silver, but none so far! There are some other cool relics that I found scattered about including an intact iron padlock:
Given what else I have recovered I have to imagine that it's at least 1820's and maybe even late 18th century! There's also a nice, and intact, pocket knife:
Also in the extremely cool and unusual category are a couple of thimbles. Well, one thimble in particular because as I was cleaning it out I noticed that there was a clump of something inside. I fished it out with a toothpick expecting a root ball, and instead I found some perfectly preserved linen from 200 years ago!
Someone must have been trying to pad the tip of their finger and the copper salts from the brass kept it from decaying for all these years in the soil. Talk about a neat find!
Besides that, lots of iron bits, and a few non-ferrous odds and ends. I'll of course be going back to look for any missed targets. I also suspect that this section of road is hiding some other old homesteads so fingers crossed I'll have some more cool finds to post. In the meantime, I love having full-sized images on the posts again so I'll try and get some more good field photos to include!
Lots of tombacs, dandies (no GWI yet, but every time I'm hoping!), and fancy flat buttons. Only very simple backmarks so the buttons seem to date to the beginning of the 1820's. There's one very interesting pewter button that seems to have writing around the edge. I've done my best to bring out the letters with an Andre's brush, but the lettering was very flat to begin with so the relief wasn't high to start with.
I'm hoping someone here recognizes it, because it seems to have two words and I swear the second one is "Liberty" which makes me particularly excited that it's a Rev War period political or military button. I can't find a match so it could just be optimism, but I'm really hoping someone can chime in with the ID.
There were some very cool relics along with the buttons including an absolutely stellar Georgian shoe buckle:
Also recovered were some fragments of a few other ornate ones and another intact tiny shoe/boot buckle:
The one on the bottom left appears to be a fancy halter buckle, but what's odd is the material isn't brass. It almost looks like fire-scortched silver, but it rang up pretty low for that so maybe a billon alloy or a tombac of some type.
The recovered coins, on average, were pretty great!
1807 Draped Bust large cent, followed by an 1804 Draped Bust half cent:
Also, very interestingly, I found another pewter large cent, but this time it's an 1827 Matron Head:
I'm beginning to suspect that these were used as game chips of some sort since I've found at least four so far in very different areas and with different dates. Best of the large cents is perhaps this 1808 classic head large cent which is special, not only because it's in good shape, but because when I examined it under the light the reverse revealed a massive die crack!
Turns out that it's a known die crack variety, Sheldon S-277. You can see the triangular crack on the left going from the edge up to the top through the "S" and then another running through the "O" in One. With that many cracks I bet when the die finally failed it just shattered. I found a photo of a pristine example online too:
Pretty rare finding a classic head that has the date legible, let alone in good enough condition to identify a variety, so I'm very pleased with this one! Only one colonial copper appeared, but it's a fantastic one so no complaints from me!

Looks like 1783 Crosby-2B and not at all bad shape either! I'm hunting around for some more colonial coppers or even a colonial silver, but none so far! There are some other cool relics that I found scattered about including an intact iron padlock:
Given what else I have recovered I have to imagine that it's at least 1820's and maybe even late 18th century! There's also a nice, and intact, pocket knife:
Also in the extremely cool and unusual category are a couple of thimbles. Well, one thimble in particular because as I was cleaning it out I noticed that there was a clump of something inside. I fished it out with a toothpick expecting a root ball, and instead I found some perfectly preserved linen from 200 years ago!
Someone must have been trying to pad the tip of their finger and the copper salts from the brass kept it from decaying for all these years in the soil. Talk about a neat find!
Besides that, lots of iron bits, and a few non-ferrous odds and ends. I'll of course be going back to look for any missed targets. I also suspect that this section of road is hiding some other old homesteads so fingers crossed I'll have some more cool finds to post. In the meantime, I love having full-sized images on the posts again so I'll try and get some more good field photos to include!
Amazon Forum Fav 👍
Upvote
23