Unexpected finds

ebblade

Junior Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
76
Location
Santa Fe
Hi All,

My Dad had an old stake and ring detector he had picked up at work that we would mess with. The old detector had died about five years ago and I have been wanting a replacement for a while. I got back into detecting last April when I went and bought a Bounty hunter 2200.

Starting with the BH i went to a spot that we used to hunt with my dads detector, the spot is very trashy with lots of lead sealed cans that would set the detector off every few inches in some spots. After discriminating out iron I could kind of search but it would still go off a bit much. one evening as the sun was going down I was looking around and got a coin signal on the BH. I dug down about six inches and pulled what looked like a badge from the ground, I stuck it in my pocket and went on for a bit more and got another good signal and dug up what I thought was a scope ring or some kind of car part.

When I got home I pulled out the badge first and read Allegheny arsenal 1863. I looked it up and was shocked to find that it was civil war. The ring turned out to be the outside of a pocket watch. I went back to the spot the next day and found the Sharps shells.

The BH was ok for a while but I wanted something better so I found a barely used Whites DFX. It took a while to learn it and to figure out how to search the area without going nuts digging every nail and can there. So I finally found a program that seems to work, Sunday I went out and searched for a few hours. I found a couple of 12 gauge head stamps and then I hit an iffy signal and dug down a bit and found a broken clasp that looked like a snake. Once again when I was able to find info on it and I was shocked to see that it was also civil war and that it was a confederate sword hanger.

When I got back into detecting I never expected to make any finds like these in the area I am searching. I figured maybe some old coins and I knew I would find iron relics but didn't expect the area to turn out to most likely be a union camp. Hopefully the spot has some more sweet finds to give up!

Thanks for looking!
 

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Thanks Hawgdawg!

Thanks for the info Charlie!

My favorite find is the sword hanger because I make custom knives for a living.
 
Nice finds! I like the saddle shield. I've never seen anything quite like the snake piece. How did you find out it's a CS sword hanger? Must have pretty tough to research.
 
Nice finds! I like the saddle shield. I've never seen anything quite like the snake piece. How did you find out it's a CS sword hanger? Must have pretty tough to research.

It was tough to research. The first lead I found to it was a civil war confederate snake buckle, on a goodle search of snake buckle images a piece just like mine came up and gave me the info to what it was. Found a couple more images from different sources that had the same description so I think it is correct. What I could find said it was made here to go with the imported snake buckles.
 
Hey man, nice finds!! I'd hit that place really good. Thanks for sharing and good luck on your next hunt. Maybe you will find you a buckle or box plate next time.
 
Thanks Bama Man! I Don't know what is out there, hopefully there is some more finds. I am pretty happy with what I have so far because I didn't even suspect that I would find anything like this there. The Snake clip may be extremely rare, I am not sure because I can't find much about it and have only seen a couple others on some of the detecting forums. IF anyone has any info on these I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks again!
 
Not Sharps

Civil War Sharps used linen cartridges, not metallic. Many were converted to 50 caliber cartridges after the war. But I think those smaller casings are Spencer. Not sure about the big casing -Maynard, maybe?
 
Thanks Thommy! The casings are all the same diameter. The two shorter casings look like they are broken or torn because the end is rough. All three of these cases plus a couple others I found are rimfires if that will help identify them, I could also mic them to get the exact size. The long case looks like someone tried to fire it with a centerfire rifle. The other casings dont look fired, maybe someone tore them apart.

These cases may be from a later date and not related to the other items, I find a lot of shotgun headstamps that are late 18 early 1900s.
 
Two of the shells measure .664 on the base and .570ish on the case itself. The shortest on is different .649 or .650 on the base and .570 on the case itself. Maybe two different makes of shells.

The measurements on the small case match the listed dimensions of the spencer. The other two are too long, the unbroken case is 1.769.

Thanks! I at least seem to have one identified.
 
Thanks SantaFe79!

Thanks 61chip, I have not found much more yet. Mostly a ton of cans. I did find a few Dr. J hosteters stomach bitters bottles but they are all busted, seems like every bottle there is busted. I wish I could find just one complet bottle but the spot has a lot of rocks so I doubt it.
 
Just found some more info on the large cases, they are 50 - 70 1/34 and are a bar fire not rimfire like the shorter case. Inside the long case I can see a plate with two holes so the primer could be set of by a centerfire rifle. they may have been for a sharps but not until 1867 or later.

http://www.oldammo.com/january10.htm

Interesting link about 50 caliber shell cases.
 
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