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Dug versus bought: a textbook example.
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,216 ✭✭✭✭✭
I posted this over on the Detecting forum, but that's a pretty slow place, so I'll put it here, as well. If any of you have ever wondered how we detectorists can get all worked up over a crusty looking coin we pulled out of the ground, nasty looking things from which most sane collectors would flee in terror, here is the story of two coins, which by pure coincidence turned out to be the same type, date, and variety, albeit very different in their grades of preservation. One I found with my metal detector; the other I bought on eBay for my old type set.
The first was, as I mentioned, a metal detecting find. I found it one steamy summer night on a freshly-cleared lot on Saint Simons Island, Georgia, just next to the mysterious and legendary "Pink Chapel". My pal Russ and I, in a futile attempt to beat the heat, went out there in the middle of the night, but the temperature and relative humidity were still in the 90's. Sweat dripped off our noses as we switched on our flashlights and checked out the site prior to detecting. He had just gotten permission from the owner of the lot, who was about to build a large, expensive home there. The site had been cleared with a bulldozer that afternoon. Russ' parents lived on one side of the cleared lot, and the Pink Chapel was on the opposite side of it. Mosquitoes sang their annoying songs in our ears, and we slapped at them violently. The bulldozer was still parked near the roadside, at the front of the lot. Our lights picked up many sparkles in the grey dirt, which upon closer examination turned out to be shards of early 19th century pottery and porcelain, and bits of black bottle glass, which is actually a really dark green if you hold it to the light. All the visible signs were there, and we knew we were not only on a potentially rewarding site, but also, we were the first to arrive!
Eagerly, we turned on the detectors and got down to business. I got a loud signal over on the side of the lot that was right next to the Pink Chapel. I dug down about ten inches and found the gold-plated case of an 1820's-vintage key-wound pocketwatch. Russ dug a really neat brass drawer pull with a fancy, ornamented lion-gargoyle face. Several flat buttons, musketballs, and other small artifacts turned up. While not a huge lot, we could tell this was a rich one. Back past the bulldozer and up in the very corner boundaries of the property, right next to Russ' parents' driveway (in fact, almost beneath their mailbox, as the two driveways were right next to one another), I got a loud signal. The sand was pretty loose, so I kicked two or three inches of it up with the toe of my foot, then groped around until I felt what was obviously a sizeable round object, and almost certainly a coin, as it was too heavy to be a button. My heart began to pound, but it almost stopped completely when Russ, somewhat breathless and with eyes bulging and white like ping-pong balls, came up behind me and practically shouted in a stage whisper:
"There's something in the bushes, coming toward us! It sounds pretty big!"
I stopped and listened, and I heard it too. But I dismissed Russ with a waving gesture, saying,
"Aah, it's just a cat, man!"
It, whatever it was, was shorter than the bushes, which were about the height of my chest. It sounded rather low to the ground. But much heavier and bigger than a cat. And let me tell you, the Pink Chapel site was spooky and mysterious enough in the daytime, let alone at two or three in the morning! Rumors which ran rampant back during my high school days had it that the chapel, which by then had fallen victim to neglect and vandalism, was the haunt of Satanistic cults. Back then, when I was younger, that area of the island was much less inhabited and mostly wooded. And people told stories of house pets disappearing, and of finding burnt-out ritual candles in the woods and the chapel. Of course, there was talk of the place being haunted. These were almost certainly nothing more than the typical high school rumors, sure, but these kinds of stories do come back to mind when one is standing on the very spot, in the darkness of night, listening to something moving in the underbrush... ever closer!
Just as I was putting my detector down in order to see what it was I had found, and more importantly, what sort of terrifying creature was advancing toward us, the biggest, fattest armadillo I have ever seen came shuffling out of the bushes in front of me, and proceeded to snuffle around in the hole I had just dug! He was totally oblivious to our presence. Around here, you see lots of armadillos dead by the side of the road, but this was the closest I could ever recall being to a live one. What a bizarre, prehistoric-looking creature! I must have kicked up some nice tasty grubs or something when I found the coin.
I let out a sigh of relief when I realized we weren't about to be carried off by a panther or a ghost. The armadillo went on happily rooting in my hole until I decided I should check to see if there were any other coins in it. I had to gently nudge him out of the way with the detector searchcoil, and suddenly he seemed to realize that he wasn't alone! He let out a sudden, snorty-sounding grunt, and bolted off into the bushes, faster than I would have ever thought a little armor-clad critter like that could move!
Finding no other targets in the hole, I turned my attention to the coin I'd found, and I immediately knew I'd found a big copper, either a King George halfpenny or a United States large cent. I was able to scrub enough dirt off the reverse to see the wreath, so I knew I had a large cent, only the second one I'd ever found! (And the first I found was so corroded it was basically unidentifiable).
I was later able to clean the newly-dug coin enough to see it was an 1837 Coronet Head large cent, with the Medium Letter reverse. It was a little pitted from ground corrosion, but really not bad looking for a dug copper that had slept in the ground for a century and a half. Probably worth no more than five or six dollars as it was, but it was the equivalent of a five or six hundred dollar thrill for me!
This was a relic of the exact period in which one of our better-known local legends occurred.
The Pink Chapel ws situated on the old Hazzard Plantation, and has an interesting, if somewhat tragic history: it goes back to a boundary dispute in 1838, when Doctor Thomas Hazzard shot and killed his hotheaded young neighbor, John Armstrong Wylly, during an argument in Brunswick, on the mainland. Local tradition has it that Dr. Hazzard was acquitted of any wrongdoing, but for years afterward, the Hazzards were so ostracized by the polite society of the other planter families that they were not welcome at Christ Church. Instead, they built their own private family chapel at their plantation on West Point.
In time, the chapel became known as "The Pink Chapel", not from the "bloodstains of the innocent victim", as some romantic fools claimed, but rather from a pink-colored lichen which later grew on its tabby walls. By the middle of the twentieth century, the chapel had fallen into disrepair and was torn down in the 1950's by the property owner, but almost as soon as the deed was done, local citizens raised such an outcry that he rebuilt it on the same site, using the original tabby blocks. Strangely, though, the pink lichen which gave the chapel its nickname never grew back after the building was demolished and rebuilt. By the early 1980's, as I mentioned previously, it had again fallen derelict and lay neglected and vandalized. (In the late 1990's, the chapel, an empty, windowless shell, was rehabilitated and made into a pleasant looking office or study by its owner.)
So here I had found a coin which had been struck a year before the Hazzard/Wylly tragedy, and which almost certainly had been lost by a member of the Hazzard family, if not Doctor Hazzard himself! And, to make things even more interesting, a year or two earlier, on a different lot just a few hundred yards away, I had found a nice 1839 Seated Liberty dime and some really nice military buttons. So I had found two coins on the Hazzard plantation site at West Point, and they bracketed the year of the infamous killing- one a year before, and the other a year after! Those were the only two coins that turned up, though there is another lot adjacent to where I found the dime which is still uncleared as of this writing. As you can imagine, I check on it once every month or two, just to make sure the bulldozers haven't visited again!
Now, this brings us to my second coin, also an 1837 Medium Letters Coronet Head large cent, but this one in much nicer condition. I purchased it on eBay, for the old 1798-2000 nongold type set I built from 1998 to 2001. I only needed a nice Coronet Head cent; the fact that the one I purchased was of the same date and variety as the one I'd dug was a mere coincidence. This one was a nice glossy brown example from the famous Benson collection, graded and encapsulated by PCGS as an AU58. I paid in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars for it, and as of this writing, it remains the highest-graded large cent I have owned, though not the most valuable.
I'll give you a hint: I sold the Benson coin a few years ago when I broke up the old type set.
Had the Benson coin been a full Uncirculated gem worth hundreds of dollars more, I still don't think I would have traded it for the humble, porous dug coin, which I still have, of course. I've never sold any of my detector-found coins. How could I, when I am the first person to have seen them in decades, if not centuries?
Corny though it may sound, I think of them as a gift handed directly to me from long-dead, unknown, or forgotten people. No dealers, grandparents, or fellow collectors have bequeathed or sold them to me. No middlemen at all. Only a long sojourn in the sandy South Georgia soil stands between those historical, often fascinating folk and myself. The coins and relics they left behind slept for centuries, while many of my ancestors were born, grew old, and died. All the while, like Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale, those coins were waiting... waiting... for me, and me alone.
Having a good detector? It's the next best thing to having a time machine, I tell you.
The first was, as I mentioned, a metal detecting find. I found it one steamy summer night on a freshly-cleared lot on Saint Simons Island, Georgia, just next to the mysterious and legendary "Pink Chapel". My pal Russ and I, in a futile attempt to beat the heat, went out there in the middle of the night, but the temperature and relative humidity were still in the 90's. Sweat dripped off our noses as we switched on our flashlights and checked out the site prior to detecting. He had just gotten permission from the owner of the lot, who was about to build a large, expensive home there. The site had been cleared with a bulldozer that afternoon. Russ' parents lived on one side of the cleared lot, and the Pink Chapel was on the opposite side of it. Mosquitoes sang their annoying songs in our ears, and we slapped at them violently. The bulldozer was still parked near the roadside, at the front of the lot. Our lights picked up many sparkles in the grey dirt, which upon closer examination turned out to be shards of early 19th century pottery and porcelain, and bits of black bottle glass, which is actually a really dark green if you hold it to the light. All the visible signs were there, and we knew we were not only on a potentially rewarding site, but also, we were the first to arrive!
Eagerly, we turned on the detectors and got down to business. I got a loud signal over on the side of the lot that was right next to the Pink Chapel. I dug down about ten inches and found the gold-plated case of an 1820's-vintage key-wound pocketwatch. Russ dug a really neat brass drawer pull with a fancy, ornamented lion-gargoyle face. Several flat buttons, musketballs, and other small artifacts turned up. While not a huge lot, we could tell this was a rich one. Back past the bulldozer and up in the very corner boundaries of the property, right next to Russ' parents' driveway (in fact, almost beneath their mailbox, as the two driveways were right next to one another), I got a loud signal. The sand was pretty loose, so I kicked two or three inches of it up with the toe of my foot, then groped around until I felt what was obviously a sizeable round object, and almost certainly a coin, as it was too heavy to be a button. My heart began to pound, but it almost stopped completely when Russ, somewhat breathless and with eyes bulging and white like ping-pong balls, came up behind me and practically shouted in a stage whisper:
"There's something in the bushes, coming toward us! It sounds pretty big!"
I stopped and listened, and I heard it too. But I dismissed Russ with a waving gesture, saying,
"Aah, it's just a cat, man!"
It, whatever it was, was shorter than the bushes, which were about the height of my chest. It sounded rather low to the ground. But much heavier and bigger than a cat. And let me tell you, the Pink Chapel site was spooky and mysterious enough in the daytime, let alone at two or three in the morning! Rumors which ran rampant back during my high school days had it that the chapel, which by then had fallen victim to neglect and vandalism, was the haunt of Satanistic cults. Back then, when I was younger, that area of the island was much less inhabited and mostly wooded. And people told stories of house pets disappearing, and of finding burnt-out ritual candles in the woods and the chapel. Of course, there was talk of the place being haunted. These were almost certainly nothing more than the typical high school rumors, sure, but these kinds of stories do come back to mind when one is standing on the very spot, in the darkness of night, listening to something moving in the underbrush... ever closer!
Just as I was putting my detector down in order to see what it was I had found, and more importantly, what sort of terrifying creature was advancing toward us, the biggest, fattest armadillo I have ever seen came shuffling out of the bushes in front of me, and proceeded to snuffle around in the hole I had just dug! He was totally oblivious to our presence. Around here, you see lots of armadillos dead by the side of the road, but this was the closest I could ever recall being to a live one. What a bizarre, prehistoric-looking creature! I must have kicked up some nice tasty grubs or something when I found the coin.
I let out a sigh of relief when I realized we weren't about to be carried off by a panther or a ghost. The armadillo went on happily rooting in my hole until I decided I should check to see if there were any other coins in it. I had to gently nudge him out of the way with the detector searchcoil, and suddenly he seemed to realize that he wasn't alone! He let out a sudden, snorty-sounding grunt, and bolted off into the bushes, faster than I would have ever thought a little armor-clad critter like that could move!
Finding no other targets in the hole, I turned my attention to the coin I'd found, and I immediately knew I'd found a big copper, either a King George halfpenny or a United States large cent. I was able to scrub enough dirt off the reverse to see the wreath, so I knew I had a large cent, only the second one I'd ever found! (And the first I found was so corroded it was basically unidentifiable).
I was later able to clean the newly-dug coin enough to see it was an 1837 Coronet Head large cent, with the Medium Letter reverse. It was a little pitted from ground corrosion, but really not bad looking for a dug copper that had slept in the ground for a century and a half. Probably worth no more than five or six dollars as it was, but it was the equivalent of a five or six hundred dollar thrill for me!
This was a relic of the exact period in which one of our better-known local legends occurred.
The Pink Chapel ws situated on the old Hazzard Plantation, and has an interesting, if somewhat tragic history: it goes back to a boundary dispute in 1838, when Doctor Thomas Hazzard shot and killed his hotheaded young neighbor, John Armstrong Wylly, during an argument in Brunswick, on the mainland. Local tradition has it that Dr. Hazzard was acquitted of any wrongdoing, but for years afterward, the Hazzards were so ostracized by the polite society of the other planter families that they were not welcome at Christ Church. Instead, they built their own private family chapel at their plantation on West Point.
In time, the chapel became known as "The Pink Chapel", not from the "bloodstains of the innocent victim", as some romantic fools claimed, but rather from a pink-colored lichen which later grew on its tabby walls. By the middle of the twentieth century, the chapel had fallen into disrepair and was torn down in the 1950's by the property owner, but almost as soon as the deed was done, local citizens raised such an outcry that he rebuilt it on the same site, using the original tabby blocks. Strangely, though, the pink lichen which gave the chapel its nickname never grew back after the building was demolished and rebuilt. By the early 1980's, as I mentioned previously, it had again fallen derelict and lay neglected and vandalized. (In the late 1990's, the chapel, an empty, windowless shell, was rehabilitated and made into a pleasant looking office or study by its owner.)
So here I had found a coin which had been struck a year before the Hazzard/Wylly tragedy, and which almost certainly had been lost by a member of the Hazzard family, if not Doctor Hazzard himself! And, to make things even more interesting, a year or two earlier, on a different lot just a few hundred yards away, I had found a nice 1839 Seated Liberty dime and some really nice military buttons. So I had found two coins on the Hazzard plantation site at West Point, and they bracketed the year of the infamous killing- one a year before, and the other a year after! Those were the only two coins that turned up, though there is another lot adjacent to where I found the dime which is still uncleared as of this writing. As you can imagine, I check on it once every month or two, just to make sure the bulldozers haven't visited again!
Now, this brings us to my second coin, also an 1837 Medium Letters Coronet Head large cent, but this one in much nicer condition. I purchased it on eBay, for the old 1798-2000 nongold type set I built from 1998 to 2001. I only needed a nice Coronet Head cent; the fact that the one I purchased was of the same date and variety as the one I'd dug was a mere coincidence. This one was a nice glossy brown example from the famous Benson collection, graded and encapsulated by PCGS as an AU58. I paid in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars for it, and as of this writing, it remains the highest-graded large cent I have owned, though not the most valuable.
I'll give you a hint: I sold the Benson coin a few years ago when I broke up the old type set.
Had the Benson coin been a full Uncirculated gem worth hundreds of dollars more, I still don't think I would have traded it for the humble, porous dug coin, which I still have, of course. I've never sold any of my detector-found coins. How could I, when I am the first person to have seen them in decades, if not centuries?
Corny though it may sound, I think of them as a gift handed directly to me from long-dead, unknown, or forgotten people. No dealers, grandparents, or fellow collectors have bequeathed or sold them to me. No middlemen at all. Only a long sojourn in the sandy South Georgia soil stands between those historical, often fascinating folk and myself. The coins and relics they left behind slept for centuries, while many of my ancestors were born, grew old, and died. All the while, like Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale, those coins were waiting... waiting... for me, and me alone.
Having a good detector? It's the next best thing to having a time machine, I tell you.
0
Comments
When you get right down to it, ain't that what collecting is all about? I mean, isn't that what draws most folks to collect old coins in the first place: their history, or at least a good story that speculates on what their history could be?
FullHorn, I've heard about them Texas armadillos.
We don't have so many here.
Thanks.
yep, it does. great story!
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
You should write a book...you REALLY have a way with words. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!
To someone else they might be junk but to you they are priceless.
<< <i>You should write a book...you REALLY have a way with words. >>
Thanks.
I've thought of that. I even have a title picked out: Digger's Diary.
Maybe one day. *sigh*
So far I've had a few small pieces published here and there, but mostly it's either an amorphous mush inside my brain or scattered meanderings on these forums.
My Type Set
My Type Set
That story was so good, I will have my wife read it. This fact is a tremendous recommendation--I have her look at or read only the ultra, ultra best...Paul's (Shylock's) pictures, your story, anything I post (
Mark
P.S.: Whereabouts on St. Simon's is this? Is it by the airport, by the lighthouse, near Fort Fredrica, or ??? I know you explained a bit where it is, but I couldn't place the location.
Casey
and it sets us apart from practitioners and consultants. Gregor
Thanks
Allen
Proud member of TCCS!
They are clearing ground to expand the parking lots here.
We're right on top of a 1780's plantation site. In fact, the bulldozers
went all around the slave hospital today. It's the building behind me
in this picture from my eBay page:
I park right next to the ruins every day, and now I have to walk past
all that beautiful, cleared dirt, which will soon be recovered in asphalt
for the rest of my natural life. They aren't messing with the ruins
themselves, but the yard around them has all been plowed up.
And I can't hunt it.
I asked the general manager of our resort for permission to detect it last week,
and he said he'd think about it. Today he politely told me no.
I cannot tell you how it is going to make me almost physically sick to be
near such a rich site and to be unable to do anything about it
(except maybe kick around the surface). This site is potentially the
richest on Saint Simons Island, and had I gotten permission to hunt it,
it would have been my exclusive playground, as it is behind the guard
gate. I was gonna ask the CEO permission, but thought it better to go
to the general manager first, to follow the chain of command
(gotta be politically correct when dealing with your own bosses, y'know.)
Now that he said no, I can't really go above his head and ask the CEO
without putting my neck at risk politically.
You can bet I will be out there in about an hour, walking around with a
flashlight, though, at least...
Hey, I'm willing to get creative to get onto this site. There is all kinds of Spanish silver and Bust and Seated coins here, I guarantee it. Plus, it's been the site of this fancy-schmancy golf club since 1928, so gold is a definite possibility, too.
There are big photographs on the walls in the hallways here, which show the construction of the golf courses in 1927- when acres and acres and acres of this place were "naked dirt!" I can look in the 1927 pictures and see all kinds of oystershell, pottery sherds, and old glass peeking out of the dirt!
I will be able to go out there and surface-collect tonight, at least. Nobody would say anything to me for that. I might find a few pieces of pottery, and if I'm really lucky, a musketball or something. Or if I'm reeeeeealllly lucky, maybe a coin. It's a long shot, but hey, it happens on these sites. I know a guy who picked up an early Bust dime off the ground, and a 1794 Liberty Cap cent, too, on a bulldozed site. It would help if it rained. I'm hoping it'll rain like hell, now, and delay the paving job, and expose some goodies...
C'mon, Isabel... let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!
Maybe I turned him off when I knelt down and gave him a bear hug around the knees, tearfully groveling and begging and pleading...
(I did tell him electrical cables were no prob- I can find 'em with the detector! I told him I'd sign any waiver he wanted me to sign! I offered him my wife, daughter, dog, and two cats!)
Hmm. Maybe he's not a cat person.
Does he seem the least bit interested in anything? Detecting? Coins? History?
Maybe you can offer to take him with you for a night or two?
I've been told I tolerate fools poorly...that may explain things if I have a problem with you. Current ebay items - Nothing at the moment
My Type Set
It seems you forgot that it's easier to get forgiveness than permission.
<< <i>Got an update? >>
Yeah. My detector has gone belly up.
Oh, well. I got more than a decade of service from it, and it paid for itself at least fourfold, if not five or six times over. It was time for an upgrade, anyway.
They are already putting fill dirt on the site. In another two or three days, a once-in-a-lifetime detecting opportunity will be lost, for probably another forty or fifty years, anyway. The last time that pavement was moved was probably the 1940's.
<< <i>Lord M,
It seems you forgot that it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. >>
You are so right, Steve. In retrospect, I should have just gone out there one midnight (which is when I get off work and have to walk out there to my car, anyway). The odds of my being seen would only be about 5-10%, and even then, there's a 50% chance the guard is someone I'm on a first-name basis with, anyway.
But... this is where I work. And I would kinda like to keep this job. Where else could I get paid a good salary to sit in a chair and chat with you fine folk most of the night?
It's a moot point, now that my detector is dead. That's actually a relief, in a weird sort of way, because the temptation of walking past that primo naked dirt every night was getting to be a bit heavy...
Big Mike <><
Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him, so you will grow in faith, strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all that he has done. --Colossians 2:7
Camelot
myEbay
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