AirmetTango
Forum Supporter
I'll take both, thank you very much!!
Great weather here on Thursday, so I went out to a farm field permission to hunt for a few hours and enjoy the day. The site has great history, but it's otherwise rife with problems: high tension power lines run directly overhead (EMI), a major gas pipeline runs directly underneath (previous excavation), and the property owner says her cousin used to detect the property regularly until a few years ago (ugh). Still, I've gotten a few interesting finds there on previous visits, including a Civil War era New Hampshire Volunteer Militia cuff button, so I wanted to try the site again.
The first hour was decidedly slow, and I was honestly about to pack up and go somewhere else, when I see this:
Thanks to the dirt and distance, and the history of the site, I assumed it was a V nickel! I would have swore that the bits of crud visible on the upper edge (the arrows in the pic) were actually the stars on the front of a V! Something didn't look quite right with Lady Liberty's profile, but no matter - I was giddy with excitement and started taking pictures, partly because of the neat find and partly because I've been on fire lately with surface coin finds (my 3rd in about a week). But as I got closer and my aging eyes focused on more detail, my excitement vaporized - "that's Monticello, not Lady Liberty...good grief, I just got all worked up over a Jefferson!", I thought. But then I noticed the big "P" over top of Monticello, and my smile returned! A 1945 P war Nickel - my first surface silver! Must have been a farmer's drop since the history of the site I was hunting is definitely mid- to late-1800s:
Encouraged by that oddball find, I kept going and got over a couple of Indians, 1878 and 1880. I also found more old shotshell headstamps than I've dug in a long time, and the business end of a fork with the sharpest tines I've ever felt - it's far deadlier than the one's I've got sitting in my kitchen drawer, which is pretty impressive considering it's been sitting underground for the last century or more! I also got one or two cool surface iron finds that I'm clueless on - will post those in the ID section.
But the best find came late in the hunt, with a somewhat junky sounding high tone, 22-24 on the EQ800 in Park 2, 50 tone. As I circled the target, it varied a little more, as low as 20 and as high as 28 or 29. It was an obvious digger, but I wasn't getting my hopes up. No sooner did I turn the plug, and a shiny coin rolled out!! At first I was thinking Barber, but then I remembered almost all of the Indians I’ve gotten from the site have been 1880 and earlier, and I dared to hope....
I was thrilled to recognize Liberty sitting down through the dirt!! Clean up at home under running water and a little dish soap revealed 1876, and then CC on the back!! Northwest Ohio must've been the first stop from the Carson City mint, because I've only found 4 Seated dimes since I've started detecting, and 3 of them are CC mint marks!
Glad I persevered despite the very slow start - if I had packed up when I was originally thinking about it, I would have missed out on my first double silver day in a long time, not to mention a Seated!! The pics below show the better finds both before and after cleaning, and the full hunt. This site has a ton of those leather fasteners! I placed a couple of shotshell headstamps in the iron/trash pic for scale.
Great weather here on Thursday, so I went out to a farm field permission to hunt for a few hours and enjoy the day. The site has great history, but it's otherwise rife with problems: high tension power lines run directly overhead (EMI), a major gas pipeline runs directly underneath (previous excavation), and the property owner says her cousin used to detect the property regularly until a few years ago (ugh). Still, I've gotten a few interesting finds there on previous visits, including a Civil War era New Hampshire Volunteer Militia cuff button, so I wanted to try the site again.
The first hour was decidedly slow, and I was honestly about to pack up and go somewhere else, when I see this:
Thanks to the dirt and distance, and the history of the site, I assumed it was a V nickel! I would have swore that the bits of crud visible on the upper edge (the arrows in the pic) were actually the stars on the front of a V! Something didn't look quite right with Lady Liberty's profile, but no matter - I was giddy with excitement and started taking pictures, partly because of the neat find and partly because I've been on fire lately with surface coin finds (my 3rd in about a week). But as I got closer and my aging eyes focused on more detail, my excitement vaporized - "that's Monticello, not Lady Liberty...good grief, I just got all worked up over a Jefferson!", I thought. But then I noticed the big "P" over top of Monticello, and my smile returned! A 1945 P war Nickel - my first surface silver! Must have been a farmer's drop since the history of the site I was hunting is definitely mid- to late-1800s:
Encouraged by that oddball find, I kept going and got over a couple of Indians, 1878 and 1880. I also found more old shotshell headstamps than I've dug in a long time, and the business end of a fork with the sharpest tines I've ever felt - it's far deadlier than the one's I've got sitting in my kitchen drawer, which is pretty impressive considering it's been sitting underground for the last century or more! I also got one or two cool surface iron finds that I'm clueless on - will post those in the ID section.
But the best find came late in the hunt, with a somewhat junky sounding high tone, 22-24 on the EQ800 in Park 2, 50 tone. As I circled the target, it varied a little more, as low as 20 and as high as 28 or 29. It was an obvious digger, but I wasn't getting my hopes up. No sooner did I turn the plug, and a shiny coin rolled out!! At first I was thinking Barber, but then I remembered almost all of the Indians I’ve gotten from the site have been 1880 and earlier, and I dared to hope....
I was thrilled to recognize Liberty sitting down through the dirt!! Clean up at home under running water and a little dish soap revealed 1876, and then CC on the back!! Northwest Ohio must've been the first stop from the Carson City mint, because I've only found 4 Seated dimes since I've started detecting, and 3 of them are CC mint marks!
Glad I persevered despite the very slow start - if I had packed up when I was originally thinking about it, I would have missed out on my first double silver day in a long time, not to mention a Seated!! The pics below show the better finds both before and after cleaning, and the full hunt. This site has a ton of those leather fasteners! I placed a couple of shotshell headstamps in the iron/trash pic for scale.
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