DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-07-01): THE SORCEROR'S GIFT
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,530 ✭✭✭✭✭
DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-07-01): THE SORCEROR'S GIFT
“Songs from the wood make you feel much better.
Life's long celebration's here. I'll toast you all in penny cheer.”
(Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull)
More than three months have passed since I last made a DigDiary entry. I made possibly as many as ten outings in that period, but the finds were disappointing and not interesting enough to inspire me to write about them. Aside from a musketball, a 1940s Savannah electric company token, and some odds and ends, it was pretty slim pickings. Probably the most interesting thing I dug was a weird little square of copper with strange symbols on both sides, which somewhat resemble the ancient “dram” weight symbol. I believe it is an old apothecary weight for a balance scale. It was found on the same antebellum house site in Camden County where Steve Smith found an 1837 large cent in late March. (Update: it was indeed a one-dram weight from an apothecary scale, from the early 1800s.)
This tiny little square of copper with an arcane symbol was the most intriguing artifact I found during the last three months of mostly futile outings.
Recently I received a pleasant personal message over the Internet from a chatboard acquaintance named Charlie Mead, asking how my detecting had been going. When I told him I was in the midst of a long slump, he said he had a small gift for me that would turn my luck around. I forgot all about it until a package arrived from Heritage Auction Galleries. “That’s odd,” I thought. “I didn’t order any coins from Heritage.” Inside was Charlie’s gift: a fancy pen with the Heritage logo, and a coin. Aha! The coin appeared to be a British “Bullhead” shilling of King George, dated 1820. It had a tiny, neat hole drilled at the top, which is probably what made Charlie think of me- everyone knows I collect old holed coins, for my famous “Holey Coin Vest”. The odd thing about this particular 1820 shilling was that it is apparently struck in copper rather than silver, as a Bullhead shilling should have been. Almost certainly it is a contemporary counterfeit from the period, and may have been silver plated at one time. I thanked Charlie for his gift and promised to carry it in the field with me the next time I went out detecting.
As a lucky talisman, it worked, ending my long slump, so Charlie must have some minor powers as a sorcerer. But I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself in the story.
This “lucky piece” was a gift to me from Charlie Mead, to break my long detecting drought. Charlie must be a sorcerer- it did its magic well.
Coincidentally, a detecting buddy of mine once found a genuine shilling of the same type in a local park where I’ve done a lot of detecting.
(UPDATE: yes, it is an old one-dram apothecary weight. How it got out into the backwoods nowhere is anybody's guess.
Today’s site was quite near my home. While there’s nothing but pine forest there today, a large plantation once stood on the site in the 19th century. During the Civil War, Federal gunboats came up the river and shelled the plantation. Over the past few months, my friend Billy Ridenour has found numerous early coins in the sand roadbed here: a silver Spanish half-real from the 1770s, a 1798 large cent, a nickel three-cent piece, two Bust half dimes dated 1829 and 1834, and several Indian cents and Shield nickels. On my second-to-last outing, I watched him walk into a weed-choked field and dig an 1864 two-cent piece, struck the very same year those Yankee gunboats fired on the plantation house. A musketball was my only noteworthy find that day. After months of watching friends dig great old coins all around me, I was beginning to get disgusted. Time after time I’d sweated and slapped mosquitoes for hours, only to go home with a pocket full of rusty nails and small lead buckshot. However, surface finds of pottery sherds and clay pipe stems were numerous on this site, showing it had promise. Billy said he’s found more coins than buttons on this site, which is highly unusual.
Billy Ridenour finds an 1864 two-cent piece on a previous visit to the old plantation site near my home.
The coin was found in the field of waist-high weeds seen behind him in the picture. The river lies behind the trees.
I had pretty much given up on going out in the heat and humidity and battling insects for such disappointing returns, until Billy told me they’d cleared the woods across from the hotspot. I drove by and sure enough, the log trucks were hauling the lumber away. I didn’t have time to hunt it right away, but when Billy informed me he’d found two more large cents dated 1827 and 1833, plus an 1854-O Seated dime, I was intrigued. He also said he’d found some early 20th century coins like a Barber quarter and some Wheat cents. I knew it was time to get out there again, and put Charlie’s lucky talisman to the test.
I couldn’t get in touch with Billy; we’d been playing phone tag for a while. I figured there was a fair chance I’d meet him out there, though. Off I went. As I rolled over the bridge and crossed the river, the title track of one of my all-time favorite albums came on the radio: “Songs From The Wood”, by Jethro Tull- not something one hears often on the airwaves these days. Another good omen, perhaps?
(Left): the clearing on the east side of the road, showing recent timber-cutting activity.
(Right): the trees still remain on the west side of the road, obscuring any view of the river.
Remembering the old batteries in my detector were on their last gasp, I assembled a set of new, albeit mismatched ones, from two partial packs, and off I went. Soon the mosquitoes were singing in my ears, and I could see they were going to be a constant nuisance. I picked a poor day to forget my insect repellent! The first part of the newly-cleared area I hunted in proved to be nearly sterile, and mostly barren of signals. One loud blast registered strongly in the coin range but I was not surprised when it turned out to be a modern soda can, so close to where the heavy equipment had been operating. Before long I was sweating profusely and losing patience with my insect antagonists. If I didn’t go home and find some bug spray, these bloodsuckers were going to exsanguinate me! While I have had worse buzz attacks, this was no fun. I walked back towards the van to get a drink of water and to search again for the missing insect repellent. Just then I heard someone shouting at me, up the road. It was Billy! He had his seven year old daughter, Kinsey, with him, and was digging an enormous hole, pulling out large pieces of old black-glass bottles. “I think I’ve found a bottle dump!”, he said excitedly, pointing to a pile of fragmentary bottles, bits of pottery, and a clay pipe bowl. It was plainly part of an early 19th century trash pit. All of this was just across the dirt road from where he had previously found the two-cent piece and large quantities of pottery and clay pipe fragments.
Billy finds a small trash pit filled with fragments of 19th century bottles, pottery, and clay pipes. He stumbled across this find
when his detector sounded off on some iron in the hole- there were old nails and spikes and such mixed in with the glass.
I borrowed Billy’s bug spray and thoroughly doused myself with it, then set off detecting near the spot he was digging. My first signal was another modern aluminum can, just below the pine needles, but the second was a clear coin-like signal that sounded pretty good. I dug it and found it was indeed a coin, and obviously a fairly old one, as it was thoroughly encrusted. I could see it was a small cent, so I was hoping it would be an Indian Head, but it proved to be a crusty 1928 Wheat cent. Moving along the furrow where Billy said he’d found the 1854-O dime a few days earlier, I came upon a thick concentration of oyster shells, bricks, and pottery fragments, which made it obvious that a building of some sort had once stood on the spot. I saw an old rusty iron hinge lying on the surface amidst the shells, and picked up a fair-sized piece of blue “feather edge” pottery, which is like a signature on these earlier sites. There were surprisingly few clear signals in this area, however. Perhaps my low discrimination settings were tuning out a lot of iron nails, and the nails were masking some of the better targets. I turned back towards where Billy and his daughter were.
As I walked back, I heard the sound of a boat’s outboard motor through the trees. While the river and marshes are not visible from this part of the site, they’re quite close by. Then the motorboat noises were broken by a clear belltone signal from my detector, which read in the “penny-dime” range, but the audio sounded slightly undefined, as if the detector were having difficulty classifying the signal. Still, it was clear that something was there, and I dug, moving aside the shoots of a wild day lily. Roots, bark and leafy debris made it hard to dig, but finally I was able to get in and pry up a shovelful of dirt. As soon as I moved the dirt aside, I saw the unmistakable shape of a coin lying on the bottom of the hole. Totally exposed on top of the grey soil, it gleamed in the fading sunlight like only a silver coin can. At long last, my drought had ended!
Clearly, I’d just found a silver dime, and a nice, clean, bright one, at that. Thinking of all the Capped Bust and Seated Liberty coins Billy had found nearby, my adrenaline surged. But like my other coin find of the evening, it turned out to be from the early 20th century rather than the 19th century, as I’d hoped. It was a Mercury dime, and a pretty decent looking one. I could see the first three digits of the date: 1…9…1… but the final digit was hard to read and the sun was sinking lower in the sky. I turned the coin over and saw a clear “D” mintmark on the reverse.
Oh my… if that final digit of the date was a 6, I’d just made a spectacular find, since a 1916 Denver-mint Mercury dime would be worth well over a thousand dollars in this condition! I called out to Billy, and summoned the help of his younger eyesight. He examined the coin and said he thought the top of the last digit in the date was curved, but it looked like a 1918 or 1919 to him. He was right- when I took the coin home and examined it with a loupe, I could see that the lower half of the last digit was weakly struck, but it did indeed appear to be an 8 or 9. I’m pretty sure it’s an 8. Oh, well. No 1916-D dime for me, yet. But a 1918-D dime counts as a nice find. I got a piece of silver, ended my long dry spell, and got an early Mercury dime that had come out of the ground so nice that it didn’t even need to be cleaned at all.
A nice old Mercury dime, uncleaned, exactly as it came out of the ground.
Too bad it wasn’t a 1916-D, as it appeared to be for a moment!
Just after the dime turned up, I found the blade of an old broad hoe- another signature find on these old plantation sites. This particular site was a cotton plantation, I'm told.
Now that the silver drought is over, maybe I’ll add some Capped Bust, Seated Liberty, or Spanish Colonial silver to my pockets in the near future. Of course it’s now July, and July and August are the most uncomfortable months of the year to be outdoors here. But with a hotspot so close to home, I’ll rub the lucky shilling that Charlie gave me and hope for the best.
~RWS
INDEX OF DIG STORIES
“Songs from the wood make you feel much better.
Life's long celebration's here. I'll toast you all in penny cheer.”
(Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull)
More than three months have passed since I last made a DigDiary entry. I made possibly as many as ten outings in that period, but the finds were disappointing and not interesting enough to inspire me to write about them. Aside from a musketball, a 1940s Savannah electric company token, and some odds and ends, it was pretty slim pickings. Probably the most interesting thing I dug was a weird little square of copper with strange symbols on both sides, which somewhat resemble the ancient “dram” weight symbol. I believe it is an old apothecary weight for a balance scale. It was found on the same antebellum house site in Camden County where Steve Smith found an 1837 large cent in late March. (Update: it was indeed a one-dram weight from an apothecary scale, from the early 1800s.)
This tiny little square of copper with an arcane symbol was the most intriguing artifact I found during the last three months of mostly futile outings.
Recently I received a pleasant personal message over the Internet from a chatboard acquaintance named Charlie Mead, asking how my detecting had been going. When I told him I was in the midst of a long slump, he said he had a small gift for me that would turn my luck around. I forgot all about it until a package arrived from Heritage Auction Galleries. “That’s odd,” I thought. “I didn’t order any coins from Heritage.” Inside was Charlie’s gift: a fancy pen with the Heritage logo, and a coin. Aha! The coin appeared to be a British “Bullhead” shilling of King George, dated 1820. It had a tiny, neat hole drilled at the top, which is probably what made Charlie think of me- everyone knows I collect old holed coins, for my famous “Holey Coin Vest”. The odd thing about this particular 1820 shilling was that it is apparently struck in copper rather than silver, as a Bullhead shilling should have been. Almost certainly it is a contemporary counterfeit from the period, and may have been silver plated at one time. I thanked Charlie for his gift and promised to carry it in the field with me the next time I went out detecting.
As a lucky talisman, it worked, ending my long slump, so Charlie must have some minor powers as a sorcerer. But I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself in the story.
This “lucky piece” was a gift to me from Charlie Mead, to break my long detecting drought. Charlie must be a sorcerer- it did its magic well.
Coincidentally, a detecting buddy of mine once found a genuine shilling of the same type in a local park where I’ve done a lot of detecting.
(UPDATE: yes, it is an old one-dram apothecary weight. How it got out into the backwoods nowhere is anybody's guess.
Today’s site was quite near my home. While there’s nothing but pine forest there today, a large plantation once stood on the site in the 19th century. During the Civil War, Federal gunboats came up the river and shelled the plantation. Over the past few months, my friend Billy Ridenour has found numerous early coins in the sand roadbed here: a silver Spanish half-real from the 1770s, a 1798 large cent, a nickel three-cent piece, two Bust half dimes dated 1829 and 1834, and several Indian cents and Shield nickels. On my second-to-last outing, I watched him walk into a weed-choked field and dig an 1864 two-cent piece, struck the very same year those Yankee gunboats fired on the plantation house. A musketball was my only noteworthy find that day. After months of watching friends dig great old coins all around me, I was beginning to get disgusted. Time after time I’d sweated and slapped mosquitoes for hours, only to go home with a pocket full of rusty nails and small lead buckshot. However, surface finds of pottery sherds and clay pipe stems were numerous on this site, showing it had promise. Billy said he’s found more coins than buttons on this site, which is highly unusual.
Billy Ridenour finds an 1864 two-cent piece on a previous visit to the old plantation site near my home.
The coin was found in the field of waist-high weeds seen behind him in the picture. The river lies behind the trees.
I had pretty much given up on going out in the heat and humidity and battling insects for such disappointing returns, until Billy told me they’d cleared the woods across from the hotspot. I drove by and sure enough, the log trucks were hauling the lumber away. I didn’t have time to hunt it right away, but when Billy informed me he’d found two more large cents dated 1827 and 1833, plus an 1854-O Seated dime, I was intrigued. He also said he’d found some early 20th century coins like a Barber quarter and some Wheat cents. I knew it was time to get out there again, and put Charlie’s lucky talisman to the test.
I couldn’t get in touch with Billy; we’d been playing phone tag for a while. I figured there was a fair chance I’d meet him out there, though. Off I went. As I rolled over the bridge and crossed the river, the title track of one of my all-time favorite albums came on the radio: “Songs From The Wood”, by Jethro Tull- not something one hears often on the airwaves these days. Another good omen, perhaps?
(Left): the clearing on the east side of the road, showing recent timber-cutting activity.
(Right): the trees still remain on the west side of the road, obscuring any view of the river.
Remembering the old batteries in my detector were on their last gasp, I assembled a set of new, albeit mismatched ones, from two partial packs, and off I went. Soon the mosquitoes were singing in my ears, and I could see they were going to be a constant nuisance. I picked a poor day to forget my insect repellent! The first part of the newly-cleared area I hunted in proved to be nearly sterile, and mostly barren of signals. One loud blast registered strongly in the coin range but I was not surprised when it turned out to be a modern soda can, so close to where the heavy equipment had been operating. Before long I was sweating profusely and losing patience with my insect antagonists. If I didn’t go home and find some bug spray, these bloodsuckers were going to exsanguinate me! While I have had worse buzz attacks, this was no fun. I walked back towards the van to get a drink of water and to search again for the missing insect repellent. Just then I heard someone shouting at me, up the road. It was Billy! He had his seven year old daughter, Kinsey, with him, and was digging an enormous hole, pulling out large pieces of old black-glass bottles. “I think I’ve found a bottle dump!”, he said excitedly, pointing to a pile of fragmentary bottles, bits of pottery, and a clay pipe bowl. It was plainly part of an early 19th century trash pit. All of this was just across the dirt road from where he had previously found the two-cent piece and large quantities of pottery and clay pipe fragments.
Billy finds a small trash pit filled with fragments of 19th century bottles, pottery, and clay pipes. He stumbled across this find
when his detector sounded off on some iron in the hole- there were old nails and spikes and such mixed in with the glass.
I borrowed Billy’s bug spray and thoroughly doused myself with it, then set off detecting near the spot he was digging. My first signal was another modern aluminum can, just below the pine needles, but the second was a clear coin-like signal that sounded pretty good. I dug it and found it was indeed a coin, and obviously a fairly old one, as it was thoroughly encrusted. I could see it was a small cent, so I was hoping it would be an Indian Head, but it proved to be a crusty 1928 Wheat cent. Moving along the furrow where Billy said he’d found the 1854-O dime a few days earlier, I came upon a thick concentration of oyster shells, bricks, and pottery fragments, which made it obvious that a building of some sort had once stood on the spot. I saw an old rusty iron hinge lying on the surface amidst the shells, and picked up a fair-sized piece of blue “feather edge” pottery, which is like a signature on these earlier sites. There were surprisingly few clear signals in this area, however. Perhaps my low discrimination settings were tuning out a lot of iron nails, and the nails were masking some of the better targets. I turned back towards where Billy and his daughter were.
As I walked back, I heard the sound of a boat’s outboard motor through the trees. While the river and marshes are not visible from this part of the site, they’re quite close by. Then the motorboat noises were broken by a clear belltone signal from my detector, which read in the “penny-dime” range, but the audio sounded slightly undefined, as if the detector were having difficulty classifying the signal. Still, it was clear that something was there, and I dug, moving aside the shoots of a wild day lily. Roots, bark and leafy debris made it hard to dig, but finally I was able to get in and pry up a shovelful of dirt. As soon as I moved the dirt aside, I saw the unmistakable shape of a coin lying on the bottom of the hole. Totally exposed on top of the grey soil, it gleamed in the fading sunlight like only a silver coin can. At long last, my drought had ended!
Clearly, I’d just found a silver dime, and a nice, clean, bright one, at that. Thinking of all the Capped Bust and Seated Liberty coins Billy had found nearby, my adrenaline surged. But like my other coin find of the evening, it turned out to be from the early 20th century rather than the 19th century, as I’d hoped. It was a Mercury dime, and a pretty decent looking one. I could see the first three digits of the date: 1…9…1… but the final digit was hard to read and the sun was sinking lower in the sky. I turned the coin over and saw a clear “D” mintmark on the reverse.
Oh my… if that final digit of the date was a 6, I’d just made a spectacular find, since a 1916 Denver-mint Mercury dime would be worth well over a thousand dollars in this condition! I called out to Billy, and summoned the help of his younger eyesight. He examined the coin and said he thought the top of the last digit in the date was curved, but it looked like a 1918 or 1919 to him. He was right- when I took the coin home and examined it with a loupe, I could see that the lower half of the last digit was weakly struck, but it did indeed appear to be an 8 or 9. I’m pretty sure it’s an 8. Oh, well. No 1916-D dime for me, yet. But a 1918-D dime counts as a nice find. I got a piece of silver, ended my long dry spell, and got an early Mercury dime that had come out of the ground so nice that it didn’t even need to be cleaned at all.
A nice old Mercury dime, uncleaned, exactly as it came out of the ground.
Too bad it wasn’t a 1916-D, as it appeared to be for a moment!
Just after the dime turned up, I found the blade of an old broad hoe- another signature find on these old plantation sites. This particular site was a cotton plantation, I'm told.
Now that the silver drought is over, maybe I’ll add some Capped Bust, Seated Liberty, or Spanish Colonial silver to my pockets in the near future. Of course it’s now July, and July and August are the most uncomfortable months of the year to be outdoors here. But with a hotspot so close to home, I’ll rub the lucky shilling that Charlie gave me and hope for the best.
~RWS
INDEX OF DIG STORIES
0
Comments
What's the deal on the little copper thing?....Were you able to ID it as a weight?
BTW....Sweet dime! Too bad it's not the biggie, but heck, still a good find, and in great condition too.....Were the silver and copper coins Billy found in good shape too???
Jerry
An early Merc is a great find! Man, it would have been a trophy find if that was an 1916-D but 1918-D is sweet regardless.
Thanks for sharing your stories and Happy Hunting!
<< <i>Were the silver and copper coins Billy found in good shape too??? >>
Billy says the large cents he found had readable dates but were in pretty rough shape. I have seen the two Bust half dimes he dug and they were in pretty high grade but very dark- they didn't even respond to toothpaste cleaning. I think electrolysis will be the way to clean those. His two cent piece he found with me that day was fairly encrusted- one could see by looking at the shield that it was high grade when lost, but he says it didn't clean up so well. Still, it looked better than the crusty 1928 Wheatie I dug.
The 1854-O dime he says he dug was extremely worn- he guesses it could have been dropped as late as 1900.
BTW, Steve, thanks for the use of your picture of the 1816 Bullhead shilling. I did a writeup for March 27th (the night you found the 1837 cent), but didn't quite finish it. The pictures I took were not retrievable from the camera disc, unfortunately, though I still have the scan I did of your large cent and a few pics from the same site I took later, around the time I found the weird square thingiedoodle.
Congrats on the opener of your next silver streak.
I still think about Cresent and the woods cemetery around the corner from your street. I hear a calling from both sites, and I got the itch to answer.
Great story as always, and long overdue.
Tim, you're welcome back anytime. You picked the right time of year to come. Right now it is hellishly hot.
As to the cemetery you mentioned, that subdivision nearby to the east of it has seen a lot of construction, and there's a fancy gate and fence around it now, though I could still hunt in there if I wanted. The cemetery itself is totally obscured from the road now by all the brush. If they ever clear the field to the west of it (on the opposite side from the subdivision), it will be worth checking out, as that is supposedly where the house once stood. Billy says he found a silver three-cent piece in there once. But the modern trash in there is probably really bad.
Skunked. Totally. Even Billy struck out. He got all shotgun shells and I found all rusty iron, one modern rifle shell, and a piece of tin.
Oh, yeah, and an aluminum can. How could I forget that treasure.
Sweated myself soggy and fought skeeters and one horsefly that landed on my FACE and bit me. It sucked.
Yeah, that's it.
<< <i>you're welcome back anytime. You picked the right time of year to come >>
I think next February is still on. The people loved the remodel and got me a couple more jobs to do down there.
Now if I can only find someone to work for in Ohio, at harvest time, I could visit John for a pointy rock hunt.
Bummer about getting skunked...been there a few times in the past month.
<< <i>Now if I can only find someone to work for in Ohio, at harvest time, I could visit John for a pointy rock hunt. >>
That would be cool! I find more artifacts in the months of March/April than any other time of the year.
Oh, and when I have the pictures, I should add the ca. 1880s Savannah, Florida & Western railroad ("S F & W RR" marked) strongbox key I found on this same site on December 14th, 2012. (As of this posting, that was my last MD outing and therefore my last noteworthy dig.) That particular railroad went defunct in 1902, I think.
I need to work on some new posts.
The future ones from me might be more in a video format, or include video, anyway.