Detecting Nirvana: 955 Coins & A Hammered Roman Bronze!

This last week, June 26th – July 2nd, my son attended a summer Boy Scout camp called La Noche located in Central Florida. This camp is beautiful and huge and has 23 large campsites with very expansive common areas. Sunday (June 26th) was check in and the following Saturday (July 2nd) would be check out. I did not detect either of those 2 days. The classes began on Monday and ended on Friday. My son was to be in merit badge classes the majority of the day while we adults spent time on our own. Needless to say, I took up my Deleon & my Lesche to do some detecting and took some reading material for when I was tired or it was rainy.

6/27 Monday: I started on my campsite (“UTE” #10) with the larger 12x10” concentric coil and I immediately knew that I would have to go to the smaller 9x8” coil the next day to get better target separation. There where so many targets, that as I was simultaneously closing up a hole and swinging the detector, another target would already lined up! It was like shooting fish out of a barrel and I was in the zone with my Lesche, popping many coins, making plugs and cutting through roots. Total take for 4 hours was 141 coins for $6.35 with 2 wheat pennies. I could not believe I pulled this many coins dirt hunting.

6/28 Tuesday: This time I had on the more appropriate 9x8” coil for better target separation. I began a little sore from the prior day but it quickly went away. I hunted on my same campsite (“UTE” #10) for 4-5 hours for 171 coins and a $6.39 total clad take. Found the Canadian penny to make things interesting.

6/28 Wednesday: This is the day that rocked me! I hunted our same campsite for another 5 hours. Sometime, mid-way through the hunt I got a solid upper pull tab/penny signal that I should have and probably had ignored on other targets but somehow I dug this one. It was about 3 feet away from an 80’ pine in a layer of encrusted roots and decomposing leaves. I had some trouble finding it but when I did I found it unusual in that it was not perfectly round. The more I looked at it the more excited I got! I could tell it was a hammered coin, possibly bronze and the writing on it I believed to be either Greek or Latin but wasn’t sure. Yesterday I posted pictures of the coin in the Help Me ID Finds section and it was quickly identified by some of our members and a friend of mine. It’s a Roman hammered bronze! I found the specific coin at a website listed as a Constantius II Æ Centenionalis. 351-355 AD. D N CONSTANTIVS P F AVG. (Whatever some of that means) I know that these are common in Europe but this was found in a Boy Scout camp in Florida!!! My 2nd find of a lifetime!!! I also found 5 wheats and this was also the first time I reached 200 coins and dirt hunting to boot!!! Totals were 214 coins at $10.50.

6/29 Thursday: I decided to try another camp near ours – campsite #11. (I actually had gotten permission to hunt another 2 campsites that I never went to). I hunted this site for 5 hours. I detected 215 coins which includes the Canadian for a total of $7.86. The big brass ball thing has a hole that’s threaded so it’s something modern in case any of you are wondering.

6/30 Friday: My last day to hunt because we were leaving Saturday morning. I hunted another 5 hours with the larger 12x10” coil on both our campsite and #11 again. Detecting time was split between the 2 camps and finds were split about the same for each. I got my first dollar coin for the year a Sac, 2 more wheats and another Canadian. I went over 200 coins again for the third straight day at 210 and had my largest single day clad hunt of the 5 days at 12.71.

Final Notes: This campsite is very popular and while we were there they had 600 Boy Scouts not including adults for 1 week. We were part of week 4 of the merit badge summer camp and there are 8 total weeks of this. This camp is also open all year round Total coin count for me was 955 coins at $43.80. 631 of those coins were pulled from my campsite alone. A friend of mine that detected also pulled over 100 coins also from our campsite. There are 23 campsites there and lots of huge common areas so imagine the possibilities!

Look at the picture of the tent and notice the pallets that the tents are mounted on that allow lots of goodies to disappear into. I spoke at length with one of the rangers for that camp and he told me that the tents get taken down and the pallets get put away once a year. He told me he does this with 3 other guys and their surface finds are unbelievable; knives, coins and anything else that can fit in those pallet slats. He also told me that campsite #19 was the oldest, and I had gotten permission to hunt there as well in the hopes that I would have a better chance at some silver, but why move when the fishing is good?

Thanks for taking the time to read my long story and have a Happy 4th of July!