Detecting in South Carolina?

EastCoastCurrency

I'm mainly a currency guy, but this message board is getting me pretty pumped about metal detecting. Anyone out there know some good places in South Carolina to metal detect?

sirlamre

well, what we usually do is some research:


Go to your local library, find the old maps.

Work out where old houses were (and the yard still is, but basically untouched -- avoid burned houses, they're nail city)
Work out where old city parks used to be.
Same for old church yards *You'd be surprised what you can get permission to dig, especially if you promise to leave no gaping holes, and we KNOW from digging that many of the lawns of old churches that many many small boys who'd just been given a shiny new dime by Grandpa promptly LOST said dime trying to climb the tree just by the corner of the church.

And in the 1800s people would often have picnics in cemetaries, and you can often get permission to hunt just the pathways (not on top of the graves themselves)

Same goes for pathways anywhere--- if it's an old pathway that had lots of traffic (I know of one that led from the street to the workers entrance of an old tobacco barn - never paved, it's coughed up some good coins.


So it's mostly about finding untouched ground that's 100+ years old ---

LM can tell you that it often means the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street -- which is right-of-way, not the homeowners property -- so the city can give permission.
He's dug LOTS of stuff out of Brunswick == so has Millenium...

Whatever pictures you can find in your library that show that this or that grassy area was heavily traffic'ed and has not changed... there's silver down there...

30AnvZ28

Its here, you just have to find it!!!

lordmarcovan

I made some nice finds in Mount Pleasant, SC, while on vacation.

EastCoastCurrency

I go to Isle of Palms (on the coast of Mt. Pleasant) a couple of times a year and I am thinking about hitting the beach there with a detector. The island wasn't established until 1943 so I doubt I will find anything too interesting, but I am curious.

lordmarcovan

Here is one of the finds I made in Mt. Pleasant. It is a lead bale seal from the Dutch city of Leyden (Leiden) in Holland, and dates to the Revolutionary War era. I found a picture of an identical one in a book on colonial era relics, and the one in the book had been dug in New York on a site occupied by Continental troops, as I recall. Apparently these seals were on wool blanket material that had been shipped from Holland to America.

This is the sort of find that seems like junk at first until you realize what it is. I daresay this particular piece would probably be displayed by a museum in the Charleston area if I donated it. Doesn't look like much but it's historically significant. Also, I find it doubtful that many of the seals survive with both halves intact like this. It would be very easy to break that thin piece of bendy lead that connects the two halves. It's a wonder it survived two centuries intact.



On the same site (a big dirtpile that had been plowed up during construction of a new subdivision), I also found a dateless Spanish Colonial 1-real piece from the 1770s or so that had been made into a crude love token with a hole and the initials "SD" carved into it. Though worn just about completely slick, the coin did have a visible Mexico City mintmark and part of the legend with Charles III's name was readable. I imagine it was dropped in the early 1800s. I also got a very nice, early one-piece eagle button (ca. 1820s US Artillery, I think). I need to image that one sometime. And there were pottery sherds all over this site- including some really early slipware fragments. I picked up several pieces of slipware that would probably have predated the Revolution- they were practically identical to some fragments in the Fort Frederica museum here. (And Frederica's heyday was in the 1730s and 1740s).