Dark Chameleon
Elite Member
Whats the best thing you ever found without hunting with your detector?.
We stumble by things all the time, eye ball finds we call them but what's your best one?.
Number One
When I was young I found a torpedo in Dornoch Firth beach in Scotland, my dad wouldn't let me take it home, not cos it would explode, the side had been ripped out but cos we'd have needed a crane to get it into our little 4 berth caravan and do it without anyone noticing...lol
Number Two
When I was slightly older I was walking around the countryside like kids my age do on weekends before we have motorbikes or cars and I found a chunk of metalwork, which turned out to be part of a former underground power cable which had been left, it was basically loads of thick shiny copper wrapped around each other with a solid lead casing with like a grease paper between them, I spend the next couple of days separating them and then weighed them in for three weeks pocket money, from one find.
Number Three
When I was in my early 20's I was working in a quarry, drilling and pry baring out stones that could sometimes be more then 20 tons (those ones got drilled till they were about 3 tons so the machines could pick them up but id be using sometimes up to a 12' long solid steel pry bar and dangling near the edge of a cliff trying to budge these things, sometimes id find a stone get in the way and had to chisel it out, like getting the plague from between teeth, one such stone had some circle shapes in it, it was a large boulder type stone so I didn't want to destroy it before telling the boss, I went to call him over and explained it.
We slowly removed the whole rock from the side of the cliffs edge and took it up to the top of the cliff and laid it there for a local museum to take a look, we knew that circles usually meant fossils of trees (edge on).
It turned out the stone was a whole section of tree, the trunk and branches and the museum person took some chunk that had been knocked off an had it opened properly and it was like a section of palm tree....this was in the upper dales...more then 1000 feet above water and was a swamp type tree from 50 millions years previous as I was told, now that section that broke off is in Bowes museum in Barnard Castle, Teasdale, one reason I hunt now cos my name is not on it, its described as 'local find'...they have the rest of the tree too but that isn't on display, just this 18" by 6 inch slice of palm tree fossil.
Finally Number Four
When I worked now cutting stone and shaping it, some of my stone is now in Raby castle (and will be there for the next thousand years hopefully), I was also working in a transfer station the boss also owned so when it was in a rush or I didn't have much on id work there.
One day the furniture from an old folks home came in, the place had been closed and boarded up for years and so they had demolished it and ordered a bunch of dumpsters to take the trash away.
I was running the transfer station by myself, using the multi digger to help sort the stuff out, wood in one section, steel in the scrap dumpster, paper in the landfill and soil through the screen for turning into topsoil and hardcore.
So they tipped the furniture out and there was metal commodes and some steel legged chairs with wooden seats so im happily smashing these things up, I love smashing things, its very relaxing...
I had thrown the steel legs and wooden seats into their respective piles and so came the furniture which one was a desk with a locked draw...so I just took the sledgehammer and 'whack' 'opened it'.
Inside were some junky papers and a brown paper bag, which I had no idea what was in it but I had to keep doing my job and clear this stuff up quickly so put it in my pocket and carried on, the whole day was the same thing, sorting, cleaning, sorting, cleaning, pushing down the landfill dumpster with the multi digger arm to get as much as possible in there cos we paid for the dumpster, not the weight in the dumpster (sometimes they had to use another hydraulic arms to get the stuff out, it was that tightly packed...lol).
So when the day was over I went home and didn't realize till I was walking home (it was like 1 1/2 mile walk) that I had the brown paper bag in my pocket (it was a deep jacket so you could keep a 4lb hammer in it and not notice).
When I got home I poured the bag onto a paper plate and it was all the type of stuff you'd like...gold, silver and costume jewelry, the best part being that most of it wasn't costume...it was gold and silver, rings, ear rings, necklaces, a snuff box, bracelets, it was like a poor mans treasure chest.
I gave one of the rings to my daughter as it had her initial on it and I showed her the find...big mistake but what the hell, she'll end up with them all one day anyways, apart from that one ring they came with me to America and are still here, safely put away in an SDB and the best find depending on your view of the last three finds
We stumble by things all the time, eye ball finds we call them but what's your best one?.
Number One
When I was young I found a torpedo in Dornoch Firth beach in Scotland, my dad wouldn't let me take it home, not cos it would explode, the side had been ripped out but cos we'd have needed a crane to get it into our little 4 berth caravan and do it without anyone noticing...lol
Number Two
When I was slightly older I was walking around the countryside like kids my age do on weekends before we have motorbikes or cars and I found a chunk of metalwork, which turned out to be part of a former underground power cable which had been left, it was basically loads of thick shiny copper wrapped around each other with a solid lead casing with like a grease paper between them, I spend the next couple of days separating them and then weighed them in for three weeks pocket money, from one find.
Number Three
When I was in my early 20's I was working in a quarry, drilling and pry baring out stones that could sometimes be more then 20 tons (those ones got drilled till they were about 3 tons so the machines could pick them up but id be using sometimes up to a 12' long solid steel pry bar and dangling near the edge of a cliff trying to budge these things, sometimes id find a stone get in the way and had to chisel it out, like getting the plague from between teeth, one such stone had some circle shapes in it, it was a large boulder type stone so I didn't want to destroy it before telling the boss, I went to call him over and explained it.
We slowly removed the whole rock from the side of the cliffs edge and took it up to the top of the cliff and laid it there for a local museum to take a look, we knew that circles usually meant fossils of trees (edge on).
It turned out the stone was a whole section of tree, the trunk and branches and the museum person took some chunk that had been knocked off an had it opened properly and it was like a section of palm tree....this was in the upper dales...more then 1000 feet above water and was a swamp type tree from 50 millions years previous as I was told, now that section that broke off is in Bowes museum in Barnard Castle, Teasdale, one reason I hunt now cos my name is not on it, its described as 'local find'...they have the rest of the tree too but that isn't on display, just this 18" by 6 inch slice of palm tree fossil.
Finally Number Four
When I worked now cutting stone and shaping it, some of my stone is now in Raby castle (and will be there for the next thousand years hopefully), I was also working in a transfer station the boss also owned so when it was in a rush or I didn't have much on id work there.
One day the furniture from an old folks home came in, the place had been closed and boarded up for years and so they had demolished it and ordered a bunch of dumpsters to take the trash away.
I was running the transfer station by myself, using the multi digger to help sort the stuff out, wood in one section, steel in the scrap dumpster, paper in the landfill and soil through the screen for turning into topsoil and hardcore.
So they tipped the furniture out and there was metal commodes and some steel legged chairs with wooden seats so im happily smashing these things up, I love smashing things, its very relaxing...
I had thrown the steel legs and wooden seats into their respective piles and so came the furniture which one was a desk with a locked draw...so I just took the sledgehammer and 'whack' 'opened it'.
Inside were some junky papers and a brown paper bag, which I had no idea what was in it but I had to keep doing my job and clear this stuff up quickly so put it in my pocket and carried on, the whole day was the same thing, sorting, cleaning, sorting, cleaning, pushing down the landfill dumpster with the multi digger arm to get as much as possible in there cos we paid for the dumpster, not the weight in the dumpster (sometimes they had to use another hydraulic arms to get the stuff out, it was that tightly packed...lol).
So when the day was over I went home and didn't realize till I was walking home (it was like 1 1/2 mile walk) that I had the brown paper bag in my pocket (it was a deep jacket so you could keep a 4lb hammer in it and not notice).
When I got home I poured the bag onto a paper plate and it was all the type of stuff you'd like...gold, silver and costume jewelry, the best part being that most of it wasn't costume...it was gold and silver, rings, ear rings, necklaces, a snuff box, bracelets, it was like a poor mans treasure chest.
I gave one of the rings to my daughter as it had her initial on it and I showed her the find...big mistake but what the hell, she'll end up with them all one day anyways, apart from that one ring they came with me to America and are still here, safely put away in an SDB and the best find depending on your view of the last three finds