Dig O' The Day 6/29/04

lordmarcovan

Moonlight in the boonies: midnight detector hunt in the piney woods, rural McIntosh County, GA, 6/29/04

(Edited to add the date to the title, since I've had a few other "Dig O' The Day" threads since)

nOoBiEeE

I loved reading that, the best one for me was,

<< <i>Oh. How strange. A yellow #2 pencil. >>

Bikingnut

Very cool. Sounds like a lot of fun.

RBB617

Interesting story and outcome. I like the cent you found. It must be a tremendous feeling to find items that are part of this country's early history just sitting in the earth.

boz

Some good reading there. Nice account of a great find

clevegreg

Thanks for the great read, and congrats!

Greg

TheLiberator

That is really neat! Congrats!

lordmarcovan

It's an 1850, BTW.

The date was rather softly struck. I'm hoping to further clean it. I imagine it had VF to EF details when it went into the ground. What it will look like after cleaning, however, is hard to say. Some of our detectorists here use a rock tumbler filled with crushed pecan shells for a gentle cleaning. The results are pretty impressive. Check out Steve's Nova.

I have a tumbler, but it's a cheapo kiddie model with a leaky drum, that makes a horrendous racket.

mgoodm3

Nice Find, Nice story.

CarlWohlforth

I really enjoyed reading that story. Thanks LM!

JrGMan2004

Cool story! Maybe you should come down my way. An orange grove was just recently cleared for a new Housing Developement

poorguy

I had a metal detector a while back. I made the mistake of letting one of my wife's friends borrow it to look for an $800 diamond engagement ring she lost in a wooded area. I never saw it again. They never found the ring last I heard.

I used to take it and search around the block where I grew up in Southwest Louisiana. Some of the best things I've found were:

A silver spoon. (large too), a metal toy car, an antique skeleton key locking mechanism, buttons, knives, and very old coke cans.

I did take it to the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi and got a large BLIP BLIEEP! (you know what I mean.). I dug the area and didn't find anything but dog crap. My wife thought it was funny. I didn't.

phut

Nice story Lord Marcovan
Made me late for work this morning, but I couldn't leave without knowing what the good find was.

Shamika

Great story. Thanks for sharing.

CoinAddict

Great story. It sounds like you had a great time.

Baley

very nice find!

curious, why pecan shells and not walnut, pistachio, or peanut shells? is there something special about pecans?

lordmarcovan

Baley- I have no idea. That's a good question. Maybe some other kind of nutshell would work. Could be just because pecans are common around here. Maybe folks in California use pistachio shells, for all I know. I only heard of the practice a few years ago. A fella showed me a 1970's Mexican peso that looked awesome- semi prooflike, even. Turns out it had been tumbled with crushed pecan shells. The only medium I had any success with in my cheapo tumbler was beach sand, used on some crusty ancient Roman coins I had gotten in one of those "uncleaned" eBay lots. It worked pretty well on those.

Edit- maybe it is because pecan shells, though thin, are pretty hard, like pistachio shells. Hard enough to get the crud off a coin's surfaces, but not hard enough to scratch it up. Sort of like the way some early-copper gurus use thorns to clean little bits out of their coin's devices. (I need to try that- toothpicks are too soft and lose their point quickly).