4th visit yields some great firsts and unexpected finds.

Fooleeze

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 23, 2018
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340
Location
Copley, OH
So this is going to be a story, with plenty of pics, so read on if you dare!

I've got a local permission that was the site of a mid to late 1800s home. I've visited this site 3 times with a friend in the past 6-8 months. We've found some great finds, such as an 1830 matron head large cent, a civil war breast plate (Completely unexpected). There is a trashy area that must have been close to the home site, and was at least a dumping site for quite some time. We have pulled several early 1900s bottles and fragments out of this area.

This past Saturday, the hunting buddy and I revisited the site. We were focusing on this trashy area. In the trashy area I got a huge iron signal, I was curious so I started digging. After pulling my plug I revealed the side of some kind of stoneware / crock. So I called the hunting buddy over and we started excavating it. After uncovering the top we saw that it was an old brown stoneware jug.

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We kept digging and we were completely shocked to find it to be complete! After pulling that out I was curious about my huge iron signal that brought me here in the first place. It was a large iron pot, like a dutch oven. Once I pulled that out of the ground I was excited to find the bottom of another white stoneware item just beneath the iron pot.

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So we expanded the hole and kept digging. Low and behold it was another old stoneware jug and it, too, was complete with no breaking. Here are the three items just after pulling them out of the ground:

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The iron pot was trash (Had a big hole in one side) but I took the time to clean up the two jugs and I'm very happy with how they came out:

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I was so excited to find these, I would have never expected to find a complete jug buried in the ground let alone TWO of them. But this was within the first 60 minutes of our hunt so we kept moving. I started moving towards one of the existing houses on the site and I got an inconsistent low 80s signal on the AT Max. I cut my plug and opened it up, and the signal jumped to a much more consistent mid-80s signal. I pinpointed and stuck my hand-digger in and popped it out and my heart stopped. . . the first thing I saw was silver, the second thing I noticed was an inconsistent rim.

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So I called my buddy over and nervously pulled it out and it was immediately clear, I had found my first ever spanish silver! I could see '1777' clear as day on the bottom. At a little under the size of a quarter, I believe this to be a 1 reale.

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I was beside myself. Never had I expected to find a coin of this age in our area. Yeah, I've heard of people finding spanish silver in the midwest before, but it could never happen to me, right?

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While those are the two most exciting finds, we weren't completely done. It was not too long after this that I ended up breaking my shovel. It was a cheaper shovel from Lowes that I've been using for 3 years, and it finally gave out and just broke. So the rest of my digs were with my hand-digger. But a little later I tripped over a mid 80s signal. I dug it expecting to find a modern quarter but to my surprise I found a nice old "925" silver ring with what I believe is an amethyst stone. (Sorry, no 'in the dirt' photos, but here it is anyways):

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What a fun hunt. And for our 4th trip back, I couldn't believe we were able to find these items. So I'm certain there will be a 5th trip back!

Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Happy hunting!
 
Wow, those jugs are in great shape, what an unusual find! And your first Espanol Shiny... amazing find, congrats on everything!
 
the brown jug has Albany slip glaze i believe. a commercial glaze commonly used but desirable. it being rounded up top means it was in a single layer most likely when fired. more of a smaller operation of jug makers. the round tops are more sought after in Georgia where i live, and the famous Crawford county jugs, where they have a small festival every year.

the white is a "stacker" they were made more uniform in size, and a pre-made collett of glazed pottery was set on the shoulder and extended above the spout, so another jug of the same size could fit on top and you could make a stack of them and fire more at one time in the kiln. they used a jig to make the jugs uniform in size, just a stick measure most times so the collett's would fit. and white glazes or light glazes lead to the blue red and brown stamps on them, more visible and advertising. many jug makers stamped with a seal indenting or scratched their initials or mark in the handle. or side of the jug. some had whole names. the Bishops of Georgia were in several locations, and the five brothers all had their own marks. some of the better jug makers worked for large groups and were not allowed to put their own initial, and during prohibition most stopped stamping jugs because seized whiskey could be traced back to a jug maker, and try to make him talk. local Georgia makers had their own glaze color recipes of various elements and even without initials the glaze could be identified, like the Longs, Merritts, Bechams, Hahn, as well as styles of the handles etc... where some did use early white glazes, the white became more for commercial stackers. round tops gave way to stackers and then they gave way to glass, which now is giving way to plastic. i had a small collection and was friends with the biggest collector and bottle digger in Georgia about ten years before he died. hundreds of thousands of dollars worth dug and sold from old kiln and dumpsites. Smithsonian pieces, etc... he did not metal detect but enormous digs let him find a lot of relics. massive displays. he found a pot of pre civil war coins in downtown Savannah Ga on the riverfront where Shermans troop occupied the town and the bar and saloon and hotel row. over 700 coins . he simply threw them in his truck and went back bottle digging for dutch onion bottles and flasks he was after lolololol... his interest. his home built personal museum was built with Savannah and Charleston mud bricks made by slaves and had handprints on them. his collection was sold. the repaired jugs that were chipped and broken, and was in a society of bottle and jug collectors. he had the largest coke bottle collection known, would build up one sell it and start over. his bottle polishers ran 27/7 and his power bill enormous but made a lot of money. really good guy. cigarettes got him. . but anyway good finds for every 100 jugs he dug with track hoes out of 1800s dumps, maybe a handfull would be whole. so you did exceptinally well.
 
Gotta love a nice set of jugs


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