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DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-02-28): RETURN TO HAGEY HOUSE: THE SEQUEL

DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-02-28): RETURN TO HAGEY HOUSE: THE SEQUEL
Most of February passed me by without a detector outing. Thursday, February 28th dawned cold and frosty- our lawn was white and the birdbath frozen. This seemed odd, considering we'd been running the air conditioning only two days before. But Mother Nature often has such mood swings in southeast Georgia, around the change of seasons. She can't seem to make up her mind, sometimes.
Fortunately, it warmed up into a nice mild day, sunny and cloudless, and I was out the door at 1:00 PM. I decided to try a return visit to the Hagey residence on Union Street in Old Town Brunswick. They'd let me hunt there on January 27th, which had been my last outing.
As I started the car, the radio came on, and the song that was playing was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's "Lucky Man". An auspicious title, perhaps. As long as one doesn't listen too carefully to the lyrics.
I arrived to the surprising sight of giant dirt piles all over the front yard. Mr. Hagey was working outside, and welcomed me back graciously. He explained that the dirt piles were being built up into landscaping berms. I didn't need to worry so much about the lawn this time, since most of it was soon to be covered in fill dirt anyway. This would possibly be the last opportunity to detect some of it before it got re-landscaped.

On my last visit, I'd found a little lead toy Indian from the 1930s or 1940s. As it happens, this won the "Best Relic" award on one of the Internet forums I frequent. (Obviously, it had been a slow month there). Somebody told me I should go out and find the cowboy that went with the Indian in that old playset, but the spot where I'd dug the Indian was now underneath a four foot high dirt mound. As it happens, I did find some more lead in the yard on this visit, but not in quite as interesting a form.
I started in the side yard, where I'd found a 1944-P silver War nickel and a 1944 Mercury dime on my last visit, not to mention a few old Wheat cents from around the same period, when the occupants of the house apparently were involved with the USO during World War II.
The first signal of the day was a solid coin-range signal, four or five inches down, which seemed promising.
It turned out to be a 1944 Wheat cent, which had suffered a strange cut to one edge, perhaps from being run over by a lawnmower.

It was followed by a more modern Memorial cent, which was one of several I found on this particular afternoon. I also found a small lead blob and another big lead sinker. On my previous visit, I'd found three large lead sinkers the size and shape of bird's eggs. These were probably net sinkers. Today's sinker was different- it was just as heavy, but triangular in shape. It was becoming pretty obvious that fishermen or shrimpers once occupied the house, which isn't really that surprising in our coastal town.
I scanned a small backyard area I'd left totally untouched the last time, but it proved to be disappointing, despite the presence of two giant, centuries-old live oak trees. There were lots of loud signals that drove the detector crazy back there- I suspect there were buried cables or sprinkler lines or something. Near one of the big trees I dug a long .22 caliber shell that looked like it might have been a blank cartridge. Then, in the front yard, I found an old leather rivet. This is the one artifact I've found on the site that might date to the 19th century, though the house is slightly newer than that. (It is, however, surrounded by 19th century houses.) I have found rivets just like this on Civil War-era sites. This doesn't mean much, though- they could have made the same kind of rivet for decades.
Some surprisingly deep pulltabs came up, and played hard to get, just to add to my frustration. Then, finally, another Wheat cent... yet another 1944! With two of the silver coins of the last visit dating 1944, and now two Wheat cents on this outing also dating to that year, it was getting to be an odd coincidence. Or perhaps not, since the US Mint was quite active that year, and produced a lot of coins. My mother was born in 1944, so that makes it a good year as far as I'm concerned.
I dug more pulltabs and modern cents, and as I entered my third hour of detecting, I felt my energy waning and my legs and back tiring. I was beginning to get a sinking feeling that today was going to be a disappointment. Initially, I had placed my odds of getting silver today at better than 50 percent, but none had shown up yet, and it was becoming obvious I would not have a triple silver day like I'd had the last time.
As I began to wind it up and head back to the car, I got a signal in the side yard, quite near where I'd found the first 1944 Wheat cent this afternoon, and only a few feet from where I had dug the 1944 Mercury dime on the visit before. This signal was almost identical to the one that had produced that 1944 dime, and only a few feet away from the spot.
I dug and dug, having difficulty pinpointnig the target, but finally I got a loud signal in the loose dirt at the edge of the hole. It was up!
I couldn't see anything at first.
Then I noticed the reeded edge of a coin peeking out of the sand. It was plainly the edge of a silver dime!

Yes! Another Mercury dime! I will never, ever tire of finding these. Though I have dug more than sixty of them as of this writing, they still give me a thrill. I do love them.

So the day was a modest success, after all. I got a February outing, and I got "silvered". Mission accomplished.
I found a little bit of junk, but not too much.

The total haul in coins was fourteen coins with forty-one cents face value. There were eleven modern coins: nine Memorial cents and two clad dimes. Then the three older coins: two 1944 Wheat cents and the Mercury dime.
Guess what the date was on the Mercury dime?
Yep- you guessed it: 1944! All three of my older coins today were from 1944, as were two of my three silver coins on the previous visit.
One odd thing I noticed (beside the date 1944 coming up constantly) is that one of the Memorial cents I dug has an almost identical edge cut on it as the damaged 1944 cent that was my first find today. Strange.

When I got it home and rinsed it off, today's 1944 dime proved to be a nice one, in relatively high grade. 1944 is a common date and this is the fourth one I have found, but it adds to my silver count: I now have dug 64 Mercury dimes and a total of 189 silver coins. This one only needed a gentle soap and water rinse to regain its shine.

So I'm happy to report that February wasn't a total strikeout, after all.
-RWS
Previously on DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-01-27): THE "PAY FOR PLAY" SCHEME, HAGEY HOUSE, AND FIRST SILVER OF 2008!
Most of February passed me by without a detector outing. Thursday, February 28th dawned cold and frosty- our lawn was white and the birdbath frozen. This seemed odd, considering we'd been running the air conditioning only two days before. But Mother Nature often has such mood swings in southeast Georgia, around the change of seasons. She can't seem to make up her mind, sometimes.
Fortunately, it warmed up into a nice mild day, sunny and cloudless, and I was out the door at 1:00 PM. I decided to try a return visit to the Hagey residence on Union Street in Old Town Brunswick. They'd let me hunt there on January 27th, which had been my last outing.
As I started the car, the radio came on, and the song that was playing was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's "Lucky Man". An auspicious title, perhaps. As long as one doesn't listen too carefully to the lyrics.
I arrived to the surprising sight of giant dirt piles all over the front yard. Mr. Hagey was working outside, and welcomed me back graciously. He explained that the dirt piles were being built up into landscaping berms. I didn't need to worry so much about the lawn this time, since most of it was soon to be covered in fill dirt anyway. This would possibly be the last opportunity to detect some of it before it got re-landscaped.
On my last visit, I'd found a little lead toy Indian from the 1930s or 1940s. As it happens, this won the "Best Relic" award on one of the Internet forums I frequent. (Obviously, it had been a slow month there). Somebody told me I should go out and find the cowboy that went with the Indian in that old playset, but the spot where I'd dug the Indian was now underneath a four foot high dirt mound. As it happens, I did find some more lead in the yard on this visit, but not in quite as interesting a form.
I started in the side yard, where I'd found a 1944-P silver War nickel and a 1944 Mercury dime on my last visit, not to mention a few old Wheat cents from around the same period, when the occupants of the house apparently were involved with the USO during World War II.
The first signal of the day was a solid coin-range signal, four or five inches down, which seemed promising.
It turned out to be a 1944 Wheat cent, which had suffered a strange cut to one edge, perhaps from being run over by a lawnmower.
It was followed by a more modern Memorial cent, which was one of several I found on this particular afternoon. I also found a small lead blob and another big lead sinker. On my previous visit, I'd found three large lead sinkers the size and shape of bird's eggs. These were probably net sinkers. Today's sinker was different- it was just as heavy, but triangular in shape. It was becoming pretty obvious that fishermen or shrimpers once occupied the house, which isn't really that surprising in our coastal town.
I scanned a small backyard area I'd left totally untouched the last time, but it proved to be disappointing, despite the presence of two giant, centuries-old live oak trees. There were lots of loud signals that drove the detector crazy back there- I suspect there were buried cables or sprinkler lines or something. Near one of the big trees I dug a long .22 caliber shell that looked like it might have been a blank cartridge. Then, in the front yard, I found an old leather rivet. This is the one artifact I've found on the site that might date to the 19th century, though the house is slightly newer than that. (It is, however, surrounded by 19th century houses.) I have found rivets just like this on Civil War-era sites. This doesn't mean much, though- they could have made the same kind of rivet for decades.
Some surprisingly deep pulltabs came up, and played hard to get, just to add to my frustration. Then, finally, another Wheat cent... yet another 1944! With two of the silver coins of the last visit dating 1944, and now two Wheat cents on this outing also dating to that year, it was getting to be an odd coincidence. Or perhaps not, since the US Mint was quite active that year, and produced a lot of coins. My mother was born in 1944, so that makes it a good year as far as I'm concerned.
I dug more pulltabs and modern cents, and as I entered my third hour of detecting, I felt my energy waning and my legs and back tiring. I was beginning to get a sinking feeling that today was going to be a disappointment. Initially, I had placed my odds of getting silver today at better than 50 percent, but none had shown up yet, and it was becoming obvious I would not have a triple silver day like I'd had the last time.
As I began to wind it up and head back to the car, I got a signal in the side yard, quite near where I'd found the first 1944 Wheat cent this afternoon, and only a few feet from where I had dug the 1944 Mercury dime on the visit before. This signal was almost identical to the one that had produced that 1944 dime, and only a few feet away from the spot.
I dug and dug, having difficulty pinpointnig the target, but finally I got a loud signal in the loose dirt at the edge of the hole. It was up!
I couldn't see anything at first.
Then I noticed the reeded edge of a coin peeking out of the sand. It was plainly the edge of a silver dime!
Yes! Another Mercury dime! I will never, ever tire of finding these. Though I have dug more than sixty of them as of this writing, they still give me a thrill. I do love them.
So the day was a modest success, after all. I got a February outing, and I got "silvered". Mission accomplished.
I found a little bit of junk, but not too much.
The total haul in coins was fourteen coins with forty-one cents face value. There were eleven modern coins: nine Memorial cents and two clad dimes. Then the three older coins: two 1944 Wheat cents and the Mercury dime.
Guess what the date was on the Mercury dime?
Yep- you guessed it: 1944! All three of my older coins today were from 1944, as were two of my three silver coins on the previous visit.
One odd thing I noticed (beside the date 1944 coming up constantly) is that one of the Memorial cents I dug has an almost identical edge cut on it as the damaged 1944 cent that was my first find today. Strange.
When I got it home and rinsed it off, today's 1944 dime proved to be a nice one, in relatively high grade. 1944 is a common date and this is the fourth one I have found, but it adds to my silver count: I now have dug 64 Mercury dimes and a total of 189 silver coins. This one only needed a gentle soap and water rinse to regain its shine.

So I'm happy to report that February wasn't a total strikeout, after all.
-RWS
Previously on DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-01-27): THE "PAY FOR PLAY" SCHEME, HAGEY HOUSE, AND FIRST SILVER OF 2008!
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Comments
Sugar magnolia blossoms blooming, heads all empty and I don't care ...
<< <i>The .22 casing is an old bird shot shell. They were filled with pin head size bb's and crimped to a point on the end. >>
That makes sense. I wondered if there was such a thing.
Another great tale by a fine storyteller. Thanks.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
My digital cameo album 1950-64 Cameos - take a look!
Good point RickO. I once had a load of gravel delivered for the driveway. As I was walking up the drive, to see
if I needed to smooth it with the tractor, I spotted a fairly nice Indian Head cent lying on top of the gravel.
I assume it was left in the truck from a previous load of dirt.
Don't see how it could have come from the gravel quarry. You just never know.
K
designset
Treasury Seals Type Set
<< <i>sounds like to me some child in 1944 had a hole in his pocket >>
Not necessarily, but one time, a few blocks south of this location, on a sidewalk strip, I dug something like 28 Wheat cents out of the same hole. With the exception of a 1918-D and one other earlier date, all of the coins were dated 1944, and had obviously been new when dropped. It was pretty apparently a "kiddie cache". Quite often the kiddie caches include marbles or small toys, too.
<< <i>One question, were the dirt piles brought in or dug?... Sometimes dirt piles can produce interesting finds as well. >>
Good point, Rick, but in this case, it was definitely brought in, and it was pretty sterile- in other words, devoid of signals.
<< <i>I once had a load of gravel delivered for the driveway. As I was walking up the drive, to see
if I needed to smooth it with the tractor, I spotted a fairly nice Indian Head cent lying on top of the gravel.
I assume it was left in the truck from a previous load of dirt.
Don't see how it could have come from the gravel quarry. You just never know. >>
Now that's an interesting tale. I heard of some guy in Darien (the town just north of here), washing his car in his dirt driveway, and the water from the hose apparently created some small washouts. He noticed a coin lying in one of the washouts, and picked it up. It was a Flying Eagle cent.
great finds too
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
Silver Dollar (year unknown) in my backyard back in 1955 in Montana.
Someday maybe a digger will find a monster noise going over that can!
I buried a bunch of Memorial cents near home plate on a baseball diamond at my summer camp when I was a kid, for some reason which eludes me now. I guess I just wanted to make a "time capsule". I went back several years later and found them. (Edit- without a detector.)
<< <i>You never recovered your kiddie cache? Man, you oughtta go back there.
I buried a bunch of Memorial cents near home plate on a baseball diamond at my summer camp when I was a kid, for some reason which eludes me now. I guess I just wanted to make a "time capsule". I went back several years later and found them. (Edit- without a detector.) >>
-------------
Did go back in 1996 but unfortunately the paces of a six year old, and the
memory today (!) is less than precise. The owner was very polite so I told him the
general area but have not heard from him.
The good news while there, I learned the town of Havre Montana was acceded land for a Mall parking lot under which
I knew was what was an old Native American "Buffalo Run". I wandered down from the old cliff-edge, into the
trash area (a deep wash) and uncovered by recent rain were 2 so-called "Skull Crushers" with incised central groves for
rawhide rope attachements (look like big Tomahawks) as well as a busted up Bison calf skull. The Smithsonian in DC
ID'd them as consistant with the impliments used by squaws to finish off Bison that were driven over the old cliff edge.
The Smithsonian said they were Belt Quartzite Formation, but being out of place were not dateable or of research interest.
Still amazing what shows up near the surface ground (or a beach) after a big rain storm!
---------Enjoy your hunts, keep posting em!