2008 starts off with silver :-)
Zot
Posts: 825 ✭✭✭
In my "2007 finds" post, I mentioned hitting a dry spell for most of the second half of the year.
The warm weather in December has enabled me to keep on detecting, and I even managed a first hunt in 2008 the other day.
This proved to be the last for the season, as the temperature dropped sharply that same evening, and the ground is now frozen.
I didn't bring my camera along, but you can imagine those forest pictures I've posted before, with small patches of snow here and there.
I got about 4 hours of detecting done.
The first 3.5 hrs were miserable - a total skunkfest. I had found two copper coins in total, neither of which was anything remarkable. They were both 1800's coins though, which kept up my hopes for silver.
I was quickly losing light, and the temperature had quickly dropped to below the freezing point as well. I was thinking that my 2008 would start off in the same way as the latter half of 2007 had been going - without silver...
As one of my last targets of the day I got a strong signal. A bit too strong for my liking, as nearly all silver coins I've found here have been at 6 inches or deeper, while this one was only showing 3 inches. The ID was also bouncing around somewhat. Not too promising...
However, this particular spot was rocky terrain, and there sometimes was only about two inches of soil before hitting the rock. This meant that also shallow signals could be old stuff...
I cut a plug and scanned the hole. Target still in in the hole, where I quickly located it with my pinpointer.
In the light of the pinpointer I could see a very welcome sight: Silver! And not a small silver either!
I fished out the target and to my delight I saw it was a silver 1 markka. Ha! Only the third example I've found of these.
A nice thing about the silvers of this era is that there's an absolute killer date for most types, with only a few examples known. For the 1 Markkas it's 1870. I had the coin in my hand reverse up, and the only thing I could see at first was the last digit of the date. A zero.
Whoa! These coins were minted from 1864 to 1915, but coins were only minted in some of the years. There are no 1 Markkas from 1880, 1900 or 1910, so the only possibilities were 1890 and (gasp!) 1870.
I carefully removed some of the soil and could see the rest of the date: 1890. Damn!
Nevertheless, a nice find and a great start to 2008.
Here it is:
Finnish 1 Markka 1890 (0.868 silver)
The warm weather in December has enabled me to keep on detecting, and I even managed a first hunt in 2008 the other day.
This proved to be the last for the season, as the temperature dropped sharply that same evening, and the ground is now frozen.
I didn't bring my camera along, but you can imagine those forest pictures I've posted before, with small patches of snow here and there.
I got about 4 hours of detecting done.
The first 3.5 hrs were miserable - a total skunkfest. I had found two copper coins in total, neither of which was anything remarkable. They were both 1800's coins though, which kept up my hopes for silver.
I was quickly losing light, and the temperature had quickly dropped to below the freezing point as well. I was thinking that my 2008 would start off in the same way as the latter half of 2007 had been going - without silver...
As one of my last targets of the day I got a strong signal. A bit too strong for my liking, as nearly all silver coins I've found here have been at 6 inches or deeper, while this one was only showing 3 inches. The ID was also bouncing around somewhat. Not too promising...
However, this particular spot was rocky terrain, and there sometimes was only about two inches of soil before hitting the rock. This meant that also shallow signals could be old stuff...
I cut a plug and scanned the hole. Target still in in the hole, where I quickly located it with my pinpointer.
In the light of the pinpointer I could see a very welcome sight: Silver! And not a small silver either!
I fished out the target and to my delight I saw it was a silver 1 markka. Ha! Only the third example I've found of these.
A nice thing about the silvers of this era is that there's an absolute killer date for most types, with only a few examples known. For the 1 Markkas it's 1870. I had the coin in my hand reverse up, and the only thing I could see at first was the last digit of the date. A zero.
Whoa! These coins were minted from 1864 to 1915, but coins were only minted in some of the years. There are no 1 Markkas from 1880, 1900 or 1910, so the only possibilities were 1890 and (gasp!) 1870.
I carefully removed some of the soil and could see the rest of the date: 1890. Damn!
Nevertheless, a nice find and a great start to 2008.
Here it is:
Finnish 1 Markka 1890 (0.868 silver)
Minelab: GPX 5000, Excalibur II, Explorer SE. White's: MXT, PI Pro
0
Comments
You have some amazing finds.The coins you see as mundane I find absolutely wonderful! I'll be looking forward to seeing what else you unearth in 2008.
Mary
Glad to have you back. Nice way to start off '08
Way to start 2008... love that old silver!
Too bad it wasn't an 1870, but then again, there ain't nothing bad about it at all!
A similar thing happened to me back in July, 2006, when I found what I at first thought to be a 1916-D Mercury dime, but alas, it wasn't. Close, but no cigar. Still, I was pleased.