DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-03-23 & 2008-03-30): TWO SUNDAY OUTINGS
lordmarcovan
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Note to Collectors Universe readers: I'm sorry I teased y'all and then took so long to deliver the goods, but here, finally, is my latest "Digs O' the Day" installment. Hopefully it's worth the wait, since you're getting "two for one" this time.
Two for one also means it's rather long, and a lot of reading, but if you're more of a "just show me the pictures" type, there are plenty of those, too.
Enjoy my last two outings!
(I did, and there WILL be a sequel.)
DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-03-23): AN EASTER SUNDAY EXPEDITION
On Easter Sunday, March 23rd, it was a glorious spring day here in the Golden Isles, with temperatures in the upper seventies and plenty of sunshine and birdsong. The azaleas were in full bloom. Sadly, I was also to discover that the return of spring also heralds the return of the tiny but ferocious South Georgia sand gnat (quasi-scientific name Bloodthirsteus exasperateus). Alas, one must take the bad with the good. Were it not for insects and humidity, this area would be a veritable paradise.
I met my friend Ty Herig, who is my personal "detecting ambassador". He'd gained us permission to hunt some yards of several Victorian homes in Old Town Brunswick. Just getting the green light to detect at ONE Victorian house usually excites me, but Ty had several lined up, which we could visit in any order we chose. The day had promise!
Our first stop was a large grey brick structure on the south side of Halifax Square. It was a bit "newer" than many of the surrounding houses, having probably been built sometime between 1910 and 1920, but that's old enough for some silver coins, particularly in a large, untouched, never-detected yard.
We immediately set to work, and found the yard to be surprisingly clean. Ty bent to dig a target near the front steps. It proved to be a modern Memorial cent. I got nothing but a pulltab for a while.
A bright red cardinal perched atop the azaleas near the porch of the old house. I went for my camera, but he flitted away before I could snap a picture of him.
We hunted furiously and got a whole lot of nothing. A few more surprisingly deep pulltabs came up. Ty found some more Memorial cents, including a 1971-S. I remained coinless, until finally I got a Memorial cent of my own.
Where were the Mercury dimes? The Wheat cents? The silver quarters? This place was turning out to be a big disappointment, especially considering how promising it had looked to us initially. The goodies HAD to be here, but for some reason, we just weren't finding them. So it goes, sometimes. I suppose if detecting were easy all the time, a whole lot more people would be out there doing it.
Finally, I got a rather deep-sounding signal that registered in the zinc cent range on the detector's meter, but was at least six inches down- far too deep for a modern zinc cent. This is often the first clue that an Indian Head cent or an old button is about to be dug.
What I found was about the right age to have been an Indian cent. It wasn't a coin, though- just a fragment of an old harmonica reed, which is a very common find on these older sites. Harmonica ownership must have been very high in 19th century America. About a foot away, I dug a second piece of it.
That was about it. Ty wondered aloud if the house had been hunted before, but I rather doubt that. I just think it had had turf added or fill dirt brought in at one point. The goodies were probably there, but were now buried too deeply. That, or luck just wasn't with us that day. Oh, well.
We decided to return to an old Victorian home on London Street, which had proven quite productive on December 15th. That yard had produced nice results, so I was eager to get back there.
We began to hunt the side yard there, where so many good finds had been made before, including the best-preserved Indian cent I'd ever found.
Making an effort to go slowly and find the overlooked targets, we put our coils to the soil and began searching.
Along the curb, in an area upon which I'd laid a tight grid pattern back in December, Ty found a 1913 Wheat cent. Shortly thereafter, he dug a second Wheatie, only a foot or two away. It was a 1912. For a relatively new detectorist with a $20.00 secondhand machine, he was doing quite well for himself. His third Wheatie was also in the same area, but was dated much later. It was a 1955-D. I finally coaxed out my first and only one of the day: a 1942.
Ty's coin finding achievements in our previously-covered ground were telling me it was time to slow down and concentrate. Finally, by slowing down and tightening up my sweep, I got a clear but faint signal in the coin range. It had some depth to it, and proved to be an interesting old silver cufflink, clearly marked "STERLING". It had a swirly sort of Art Nouveau look to it. Finally, I'd found some silver! It wasn't the silver coin I'd hoped for, but it was still a nice find. I'll take silver and gold in any form I can find it.
Ty dug down deep and found an old belt buckle with traces of silver plating on it. After a while, we began to tire and went back to Ty's house, which happened to be another old Victorian in which he'd recently rented a downstairs apartment. The house was probably built around 1890 or so. His yard is not very large, but I coaxed a clad dime, some more Memorial cents, and an old suspender buckle from it. There's probably an old coin or two there, but there are also a lot of pipes and sprinkler systems and wires and things that make hunting difficult. Maybe he'll turn something up there eventually.
Ty randomly mentioned that he also had permission at ANOTHER Victorian house on the north side of Halifax Square. It is a once-grand three-story structure, which is now sadly crumbling away from neglect. I'd had my eye on that yard for some time. Even though it was near dark and our time was quite short, we gave it a go. The finds proved to be nearly nothing- I worked hard and ended up with only a brass electrical part of some sort, probably a battery clasp.
For a day spent at no less than four old homes, it proved to be a lackluster outing. The cufflink was nice, but I was a little disappointed, particularly as three of the four yards we'd hunted were supposedly untouched. Still, we'd only hunted very briefly at Ty's house and the house on the north end of Halifax Square, and the house at the south end of Halifax obviously had undergone sod replacement or fill dirt or something else that put the finds out of reach. Ironically, the only house that produced was the London Street house, which was the only one that had been hunted before.
On my way home, as I listened to a little classical music, the satellite radio display informed me that I was hearing the Strauss "Treasure Waltz". I'd never heard of it, but the title made me smile.
Because of my slight disappointment with the day's finds, I put off doing a writeup for Easter Sunday, which is why it's now being written a week later, at the same time as the writeup for the following Sunday's outing, which you'll read below.
DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-03-30): MORE VICTORIAN VISITATIONS
Sunday, March 30th was cool and overcast, with a light breeze and a slate grey sky. There were a few faint hints of fog wisping around during the morning hours. While not as sunny and warm as the Sunday before, it was an ideal day for detecting, since it was cool and the breeze was strong enough to blow away the dreaded "no-see-ums"- those annoying sand gnats. My wife said she'd heard the temperature was not supposed to top 65 degrees all day. Fine by me. It felt more like November than March, but I like Novembers and autumn as much as I do springtime.
As I drove into Brunswick to meet my friend Ty Herig for some metal detecting, the radio was playing some fine Irish music, which seemed to fit the weather and my mood quite perfectly. There's something about the conjoined sound of harps and fiddles and uillean pipes that just perfectly complements a grey, foggy day. I suppose it resonates somehow with the blood of my paternal Irish ancestors that runs through my veins. Surely they knew all about the contrasting beauty of green grass and grey skies on misty mornings.
I was passed by a car that had two bumper stickers. The first said, "JESUS IS COMING. ARE YOU READY?"
Hmm. Not quite yet, I guess. I'm still a work in progress.
The second said, "DON'T LET THE CAR FOOL YOU- ALL OF MY TREASURE IS IN HEAVEN!".
Well, OK, then. That's good. I hope to earn and store up some treasure in heaven, myself, but I don't think there's anything wrong with also chasing after a little earthly treasure down here, do you?
This Sunday's hunt began where the previous Sunday's hunt had left off: in the yard of a massive three-story Victorian house on the northern end of Halifax Square. It is a once-fine edifice which has seen better days, and now it sits forlorn and vacant, slowly and tragically falling to pieces. Several of the columns supporting the porches and balconies had rotted away and were being shored up with wooden beams. Perhaps someone will save this place before it burns or falls down, but from all appearances, its future looks rather bleak. At least I could salvage a little Victorian-era silver from the yard, hopefully.
Silver? It didn't happen. All I got was one tiny blob of lead. Ty found several 1920s copper roofing nails with big square heads on them. When he found the first one, I predicted it wouldn't be the last to turn up that day, and I was right- he dug two more. Those can be a plague on some sites- they'll read solid "penny-dime" on a detector every time, and they get down fairly deep in the ground, thereby raising false hopes of an older coin. Like the house on the south end of the square, this one was proving to be rather surprisingly "skunky". But we still had plenty of other places where Ty has permission to hunt.
Off we went to a house on Union Street, for which Ty had been granted permission, but which he'd never actually seen until we drove up to the designated address. It was post-Victorian, but old enough to have the definite potential for silver. The yard was full of fairly deep modern Memorial cents, though, which actually got frustrating after a while. Ty managed to dig a clad quarter and plenty of other modern change, plus an interesting button (which appeared to be quite old) from the backyard. I soon got impatient at this place, as well. Lots of coins are fine, but I wanted to find OLDER coins. I was suffering from a bad case of "The Grass Is Greener Elsewhere" Syndrome.
So we went back to the London Street house which had been so bountiful in December and had produced a silver cufflink and some other goodies on the previous March 23rd visit, the Sunday before. This vacant old green house looked almost as forlorn and neglected as its cousin on the north side of Halifax Square, but its particular state of decay fortunately hadn't proceeded quite so far yet. Still, the paint was flaking away and the slats of many of the shutters had fallen out and were laying scattered on the ground below.
What a wonderful old house, and a great yard. Not only had it produced some nice finds for us, but it had character, and it was plain to see that this had once been a real showplace, with nice landscaping and manicured hedges. Even in neglect, it had a wild, untamed beauty to it. The weeds growing in the yard were in bloom. When one gets right down to it, what are flowering weeds but another (albeit less-respected) type of wildflower? Nearby stood a large, white climbing rose. My wife has a passion for old-fashioned roses and had asked me to make her some cuttings if I ever got the opportunity while out detecting. Knowing that nobody would really notice or care, I cut a branch from the rosebush. It had wicked thorns that vaguely resembled sharks' teeth, but I was careful not to stab my fingers. The blooms had a nice scent to them. When I brought the branch home, my wife was pleased and made three cuttings from it, and hopefully their progeny will one day grow on our front fence.
Ty and I began our search, proceeding slowly and carefully. I didn't find much at first, since I prefer to limit my digging to signals that are clear enough to be repeatable. All I was getting were a bunch of unrepeatable bleeps and blips. Ty found a crusty, corroded toy cap pistol of roughly 1950s vintage. In a comedic moment, he came around the corner of the house and pointed it at me, telling me to give up all my silver, but sadly, I didn't have any to give up.
Then I got a faint and rather "iffy" signal along the walk in front of the house. After I cut and removed the plug, I noticed something white in the edge of the hole. I thought it was an oyster shell or a piece of old china at first, but it turned out to be a modern pipe, perhaps part of a sprinkler system. This was not encouraging, particularly as my electronic probe indicated the target was in the dirt ABOVE the pipe. However, I soon realized that the pipe, being PVC plastic, could not have been the source of the detector signal, so when I dislodged the dirt and it fell free, the target tumbled to the bottom of the hole and I saw a faint gleam of gold for a second! A quick rush of adrenaline surged through my system.
It was not gold, but gold plated, and was a small button with an eagle on it. Not only was it plainly quite old, but its gilt surfaces, back, and shank were all intact. The design featured an eagle on a lined field, with three arrows in its left talon and a rope border surrounding the inscription: "CADET / U.S.M.A.".
Ty took it to be a Marine Corps button at first, but I am vaguely familiar with the design of those, and I knew the "U.S.M.A." on this one meant it had once been worn by a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
I knew it wasn't modern from the style of manufacture and the type of eagle on it, but couldn't really gauge how old it was until I got it home and looked it up in Alphaeus Albert's Record of American Uniform and Historical Buttons. It has a Scovill backmark and appears to be a smaller variant (cuff or cap button) of Albert variety number SU6, with an RV (Relative Value) of 2. This makes it a relatively common button that would have been worth only about two dollars when Albert's book was published in 1976. Converting Albert RV ratings to the modern marketplace is tricky, but I would optimistically imagine it is worth at least 20 dollars today, perhaps $20-30 to the right collector. The monetary worth of such a find has never really been very important to me, however- its history is what makes it appealing. A find like this makes my day, every time. This type button was prescribed by the government in 1851, which explains why the eagle on it resembles the one on so many Civil War buttons.
Local rumor has it that there was a Civil War encampment on this lot before the house was built, but that would have been a Confederate unit. Unless one of the Confederate soldiers had been a West Point cadet prior to Georgia's secession and the war (and reused the mismatched button, which poor Confederate soldiers were sometimes known to do), this button was much more likely to have been dropped post-war and much later. I would imagine this type of button was probably used for most of the latter half of the 19th century.
The absentee owners of the house drove up to the curb (visiting from Atlanta, where they live), and Ty went to speak with them. He showed them the gigantic spoked drive wheel of an old sewing machine which he had just dug- what an enormous target! We all laughed. Then the discussion went to the finds of the day, and I showed them my U.S.M.A. cadet button. The lady owner said that it fit nicely with what they knew of the history of the house, as one of the original owners had supposedly been a Supreme Court justice in the late 1800s, and probably had a son who'd been a cadet. This tentatively puts the date of the button's loss at somewhere around the time when the house was built, circa 1890. The button being found in the dirt ABOVE a modern PVC sprinkler pipe is not so unusual, considering how small items like this often get overlooked. It may have been dug up during the installation of the pipe, then backfilled when the work was done.
Almost as an afterthought, Ty asked the couple from Atlanta if they owned any other old vacant houses where we could hunt. (In addition to this London Street house, they also own the crumbling giant on the north side of Halifax Square, where this day's hunting had begun). They said sure- they owned a house just right around the corner, and pointed over to Union Street, less than a block away and only two doors down! Ty and I exchanged glances. After we thanked them, they drove off, and we decided to rush around the corner to see what bonanza awaited us in yet another untouched old yard, and how much we could unearth in the remaining daylight.
When we rolled up in front of the place, I immediately found myself quite excited. More than a decade earlier, I had dug two silver coins from the sidewalk strip right in front of this very same house. One was a 1907 Barber dime, and the other a 1920-D Mercury dime. (Thanks to my careful documentation of coin finds, I can tell you that I dug those on April 26th, 1995. They had been about four feet away from each other, and two and a half to three and a half inches deep in the ground.) If my past finds from the public sidewalk strip in front of the house were that nice, I could only imagine what sort of goodies lay in the unsearched yard! Surely more silver coins were waiting to be liberated from the ground there!
I eagerly set out, swinging the coil. The first signal I got whetted my appetite and only served to increase my sense of anticipation. When I saw that signature olive-drab patina on the Lincoln cent in the dirt, I knew it was a Wheatie, and an early one, at that. I could see it was dated in the 'teens, and even with my less acute middle-aged eyesight, I could see that it bore the "S" mintmark of San Francisco, which is always nice to see on early Lincoln cents. It was a 1919-S.
Ty explored the backyard, and reported that it was enormous. That sounded like good news to me, until I went back to have a look, and saw that it was a veritable jungle. Like the London Street lot we'd just left, this yard looked to have once had a wide variety of plantings that had since gone wild and run rampant over almost everything. Very little actual lawn remained uncovered, which will make future detecting in that particular area challenging.
I went back to the front yard, which looked fine for detecting. Ty lingered a while in the back. Though its backyard had grown wild, this particular house was in much better repair than the other two owned by our Atlanta hosts. In fact, it almost looked as though someone was living there. Ty beckoned me back to the side of the house and had me stop and listen. He said he heard music coming from inside. I kidded him about hearing ghosts, but I heard it, too- it was hard to make out, but it almost sounded like there was a radio on inside. The music was faint and might've been coming from somewhere else, though. As we had permission from the owners to be there, I suggested we didn't have to worry much. I returned again to the front yard.
Across the northern half of the front yard, there was a strip of bare dirt that looked like a line for a pipe or a cable had been recently dug. In the loose soil, there were all kinds of little fragments of old bottles. Most were of aqua-colored glass that had oxidized to a pretty iridescent sheen, and I think there was a piece or two of lavender-colored amethyst glass as well. There were also bits of old coal and other trademark turn-of-the-century indicators, which weren't surprising on a late-Victorian site like this. I like seeing old glass and pottery in the soil. It usually means that other goodies are present as well.
I got a loud, almost earblasting signal in the loose dirt, and dug down about six inches to recover a terrific old brass padlock. It bore the inscription "ST. LOUIS" on both sides, in a sort of Art Deco or Art Nouveau style. Whether or not "ST. LOUIS" was the brand name or just the place it was made, I do not yet know, but my subsequent Internet searches have revealed that commemorative padlocks were made and used at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The online pictures of those looked a bit different, however. Still, this lock is certainly from the early 20th century, and it's in great shape. I have found a lot of padlocks over the years, though this is only the second antique brass one I've dug. Usually one finds them locked, or broken from having been cut open. This one, however, had fallen into the dirt intact, open, and unlocked. It swings open easily, and with a little oiling and dirt removal, I'll bet it would still work, if I snapped it shut- but I won't, since I don't have the key, obviously. From the shape of the keyhole, it doesn't look to have a particularly sophisticated mechanism inside.
Ty came around from the backyard and made a strange whinnying sound. I thought he'd lost his marbles for a moment- it was rather odd until I noticed he was holding out his hand towards me. In his upturned palm was an old lead toy horse. Unfortunately the horse had lost his hindquarters and only a pair of legs remained from the little jockey attached to his back, or it would have been a great little relic. I told him about the lead toy Indian I'd found on a recent hunt.
As our time drew short, I dug a pair of small brass rectangles, which must have been scraps of some sort, as they were plain and unmarked. As Ty watched, I then found a flat, rounded blob of lead, and he got a jolt when he mistook the rounded edge of it for a big silver coin at first. One of the last interesting targets was an old butterfly-style clock key. With the addition of another piece of junk or two, that was about it for the day. I call it a good day's outing, and I look forward to returning to a couple of these yards- there are certainly some finds left to be made there. You can be sure I'll return to the this last one we hunted, and I'll let you know what turns up!
-RWS
INDEX OF PAST ADVENTURES AND FINDS
Two for one also means it's rather long, and a lot of reading, but if you're more of a "just show me the pictures" type, there are plenty of those, too.
Enjoy my last two outings!
(I did, and there WILL be a sequel.)DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-03-23): AN EASTER SUNDAY EXPEDITION
On Easter Sunday, March 23rd, it was a glorious spring day here in the Golden Isles, with temperatures in the upper seventies and plenty of sunshine and birdsong. The azaleas were in full bloom. Sadly, I was also to discover that the return of spring also heralds the return of the tiny but ferocious South Georgia sand gnat (quasi-scientific name Bloodthirsteus exasperateus). Alas, one must take the bad with the good. Were it not for insects and humidity, this area would be a veritable paradise.
I met my friend Ty Herig, who is my personal "detecting ambassador". He'd gained us permission to hunt some yards of several Victorian homes in Old Town Brunswick. Just getting the green light to detect at ONE Victorian house usually excites me, but Ty had several lined up, which we could visit in any order we chose. The day had promise!
Our first stop was a large grey brick structure on the south side of Halifax Square. It was a bit "newer" than many of the surrounding houses, having probably been built sometime between 1910 and 1920, but that's old enough for some silver coins, particularly in a large, untouched, never-detected yard.
We immediately set to work, and found the yard to be surprisingly clean. Ty bent to dig a target near the front steps. It proved to be a modern Memorial cent. I got nothing but a pulltab for a while.
A bright red cardinal perched atop the azaleas near the porch of the old house. I went for my camera, but he flitted away before I could snap a picture of him.
We hunted furiously and got a whole lot of nothing. A few more surprisingly deep pulltabs came up. Ty found some more Memorial cents, including a 1971-S. I remained coinless, until finally I got a Memorial cent of my own.
Where were the Mercury dimes? The Wheat cents? The silver quarters? This place was turning out to be a big disappointment, especially considering how promising it had looked to us initially. The goodies HAD to be here, but for some reason, we just weren't finding them. So it goes, sometimes. I suppose if detecting were easy all the time, a whole lot more people would be out there doing it.
Finally, I got a rather deep-sounding signal that registered in the zinc cent range on the detector's meter, but was at least six inches down- far too deep for a modern zinc cent. This is often the first clue that an Indian Head cent or an old button is about to be dug.
What I found was about the right age to have been an Indian cent. It wasn't a coin, though- just a fragment of an old harmonica reed, which is a very common find on these older sites. Harmonica ownership must have been very high in 19th century America. About a foot away, I dug a second piece of it.
That was about it. Ty wondered aloud if the house had been hunted before, but I rather doubt that. I just think it had had turf added or fill dirt brought in at one point. The goodies were probably there, but were now buried too deeply. That, or luck just wasn't with us that day. Oh, well.
We decided to return to an old Victorian home on London Street, which had proven quite productive on December 15th. That yard had produced nice results, so I was eager to get back there.
We began to hunt the side yard there, where so many good finds had been made before, including the best-preserved Indian cent I'd ever found.
Making an effort to go slowly and find the overlooked targets, we put our coils to the soil and began searching.
Along the curb, in an area upon which I'd laid a tight grid pattern back in December, Ty found a 1913 Wheat cent. Shortly thereafter, he dug a second Wheatie, only a foot or two away. It was a 1912. For a relatively new detectorist with a $20.00 secondhand machine, he was doing quite well for himself. His third Wheatie was also in the same area, but was dated much later. It was a 1955-D. I finally coaxed out my first and only one of the day: a 1942.
Ty's coin finding achievements in our previously-covered ground were telling me it was time to slow down and concentrate. Finally, by slowing down and tightening up my sweep, I got a clear but faint signal in the coin range. It had some depth to it, and proved to be an interesting old silver cufflink, clearly marked "STERLING". It had a swirly sort of Art Nouveau look to it. Finally, I'd found some silver! It wasn't the silver coin I'd hoped for, but it was still a nice find. I'll take silver and gold in any form I can find it.
Ty dug down deep and found an old belt buckle with traces of silver plating on it. After a while, we began to tire and went back to Ty's house, which happened to be another old Victorian in which he'd recently rented a downstairs apartment. The house was probably built around 1890 or so. His yard is not very large, but I coaxed a clad dime, some more Memorial cents, and an old suspender buckle from it. There's probably an old coin or two there, but there are also a lot of pipes and sprinkler systems and wires and things that make hunting difficult. Maybe he'll turn something up there eventually.
Ty randomly mentioned that he also had permission at ANOTHER Victorian house on the north side of Halifax Square. It is a once-grand three-story structure, which is now sadly crumbling away from neglect. I'd had my eye on that yard for some time. Even though it was near dark and our time was quite short, we gave it a go. The finds proved to be nearly nothing- I worked hard and ended up with only a brass electrical part of some sort, probably a battery clasp.
For a day spent at no less than four old homes, it proved to be a lackluster outing. The cufflink was nice, but I was a little disappointed, particularly as three of the four yards we'd hunted were supposedly untouched. Still, we'd only hunted very briefly at Ty's house and the house on the north end of Halifax Square, and the house at the south end of Halifax obviously had undergone sod replacement or fill dirt or something else that put the finds out of reach. Ironically, the only house that produced was the London Street house, which was the only one that had been hunted before.
On my way home, as I listened to a little classical music, the satellite radio display informed me that I was hearing the Strauss "Treasure Waltz". I'd never heard of it, but the title made me smile.
Because of my slight disappointment with the day's finds, I put off doing a writeup for Easter Sunday, which is why it's now being written a week later, at the same time as the writeup for the following Sunday's outing, which you'll read below.
DIGS O' THE DAY™ (2008-03-30): MORE VICTORIAN VISITATIONS
Sunday, March 30th was cool and overcast, with a light breeze and a slate grey sky. There were a few faint hints of fog wisping around during the morning hours. While not as sunny and warm as the Sunday before, it was an ideal day for detecting, since it was cool and the breeze was strong enough to blow away the dreaded "no-see-ums"- those annoying sand gnats. My wife said she'd heard the temperature was not supposed to top 65 degrees all day. Fine by me. It felt more like November than March, but I like Novembers and autumn as much as I do springtime.
As I drove into Brunswick to meet my friend Ty Herig for some metal detecting, the radio was playing some fine Irish music, which seemed to fit the weather and my mood quite perfectly. There's something about the conjoined sound of harps and fiddles and uillean pipes that just perfectly complements a grey, foggy day. I suppose it resonates somehow with the blood of my paternal Irish ancestors that runs through my veins. Surely they knew all about the contrasting beauty of green grass and grey skies on misty mornings.
I was passed by a car that had two bumper stickers. The first said, "JESUS IS COMING. ARE YOU READY?"
Hmm. Not quite yet, I guess. I'm still a work in progress.
The second said, "DON'T LET THE CAR FOOL YOU- ALL OF MY TREASURE IS IN HEAVEN!".
Well, OK, then. That's good. I hope to earn and store up some treasure in heaven, myself, but I don't think there's anything wrong with also chasing after a little earthly treasure down here, do you?
This Sunday's hunt began where the previous Sunday's hunt had left off: in the yard of a massive three-story Victorian house on the northern end of Halifax Square. It is a once-fine edifice which has seen better days, and now it sits forlorn and vacant, slowly and tragically falling to pieces. Several of the columns supporting the porches and balconies had rotted away and were being shored up with wooden beams. Perhaps someone will save this place before it burns or falls down, but from all appearances, its future looks rather bleak. At least I could salvage a little Victorian-era silver from the yard, hopefully.
Silver? It didn't happen. All I got was one tiny blob of lead. Ty found several 1920s copper roofing nails with big square heads on them. When he found the first one, I predicted it wouldn't be the last to turn up that day, and I was right- he dug two more. Those can be a plague on some sites- they'll read solid "penny-dime" on a detector every time, and they get down fairly deep in the ground, thereby raising false hopes of an older coin. Like the house on the south end of the square, this one was proving to be rather surprisingly "skunky". But we still had plenty of other places where Ty has permission to hunt.
Off we went to a house on Union Street, for which Ty had been granted permission, but which he'd never actually seen until we drove up to the designated address. It was post-Victorian, but old enough to have the definite potential for silver. The yard was full of fairly deep modern Memorial cents, though, which actually got frustrating after a while. Ty managed to dig a clad quarter and plenty of other modern change, plus an interesting button (which appeared to be quite old) from the backyard. I soon got impatient at this place, as well. Lots of coins are fine, but I wanted to find OLDER coins. I was suffering from a bad case of "The Grass Is Greener Elsewhere" Syndrome.
So we went back to the London Street house which had been so bountiful in December and had produced a silver cufflink and some other goodies on the previous March 23rd visit, the Sunday before. This vacant old green house looked almost as forlorn and neglected as its cousin on the north side of Halifax Square, but its particular state of decay fortunately hadn't proceeded quite so far yet. Still, the paint was flaking away and the slats of many of the shutters had fallen out and were laying scattered on the ground below.
What a wonderful old house, and a great yard. Not only had it produced some nice finds for us, but it had character, and it was plain to see that this had once been a real showplace, with nice landscaping and manicured hedges. Even in neglect, it had a wild, untamed beauty to it. The weeds growing in the yard were in bloom. When one gets right down to it, what are flowering weeds but another (albeit less-respected) type of wildflower? Nearby stood a large, white climbing rose. My wife has a passion for old-fashioned roses and had asked me to make her some cuttings if I ever got the opportunity while out detecting. Knowing that nobody would really notice or care, I cut a branch from the rosebush. It had wicked thorns that vaguely resembled sharks' teeth, but I was careful not to stab my fingers. The blooms had a nice scent to them. When I brought the branch home, my wife was pleased and made three cuttings from it, and hopefully their progeny will one day grow on our front fence.
Ty and I began our search, proceeding slowly and carefully. I didn't find much at first, since I prefer to limit my digging to signals that are clear enough to be repeatable. All I was getting were a bunch of unrepeatable bleeps and blips. Ty found a crusty, corroded toy cap pistol of roughly 1950s vintage. In a comedic moment, he came around the corner of the house and pointed it at me, telling me to give up all my silver, but sadly, I didn't have any to give up.
Then I got a faint and rather "iffy" signal along the walk in front of the house. After I cut and removed the plug, I noticed something white in the edge of the hole. I thought it was an oyster shell or a piece of old china at first, but it turned out to be a modern pipe, perhaps part of a sprinkler system. This was not encouraging, particularly as my electronic probe indicated the target was in the dirt ABOVE the pipe. However, I soon realized that the pipe, being PVC plastic, could not have been the source of the detector signal, so when I dislodged the dirt and it fell free, the target tumbled to the bottom of the hole and I saw a faint gleam of gold for a second! A quick rush of adrenaline surged through my system.
It was not gold, but gold plated, and was a small button with an eagle on it. Not only was it plainly quite old, but its gilt surfaces, back, and shank were all intact. The design featured an eagle on a lined field, with three arrows in its left talon and a rope border surrounding the inscription: "CADET / U.S.M.A.".
Ty took it to be a Marine Corps button at first, but I am vaguely familiar with the design of those, and I knew the "U.S.M.A." on this one meant it had once been worn by a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
I knew it wasn't modern from the style of manufacture and the type of eagle on it, but couldn't really gauge how old it was until I got it home and looked it up in Alphaeus Albert's Record of American Uniform and Historical Buttons. It has a Scovill backmark and appears to be a smaller variant (cuff or cap button) of Albert variety number SU6, with an RV (Relative Value) of 2. This makes it a relatively common button that would have been worth only about two dollars when Albert's book was published in 1976. Converting Albert RV ratings to the modern marketplace is tricky, but I would optimistically imagine it is worth at least 20 dollars today, perhaps $20-30 to the right collector. The monetary worth of such a find has never really been very important to me, however- its history is what makes it appealing. A find like this makes my day, every time. This type button was prescribed by the government in 1851, which explains why the eagle on it resembles the one on so many Civil War buttons.
Local rumor has it that there was a Civil War encampment on this lot before the house was built, but that would have been a Confederate unit. Unless one of the Confederate soldiers had been a West Point cadet prior to Georgia's secession and the war (and reused the mismatched button, which poor Confederate soldiers were sometimes known to do), this button was much more likely to have been dropped post-war and much later. I would imagine this type of button was probably used for most of the latter half of the 19th century.
The absentee owners of the house drove up to the curb (visiting from Atlanta, where they live), and Ty went to speak with them. He showed them the gigantic spoked drive wheel of an old sewing machine which he had just dug- what an enormous target! We all laughed. Then the discussion went to the finds of the day, and I showed them my U.S.M.A. cadet button. The lady owner said that it fit nicely with what they knew of the history of the house, as one of the original owners had supposedly been a Supreme Court justice in the late 1800s, and probably had a son who'd been a cadet. This tentatively puts the date of the button's loss at somewhere around the time when the house was built, circa 1890. The button being found in the dirt ABOVE a modern PVC sprinkler pipe is not so unusual, considering how small items like this often get overlooked. It may have been dug up during the installation of the pipe, then backfilled when the work was done.
Almost as an afterthought, Ty asked the couple from Atlanta if they owned any other old vacant houses where we could hunt. (In addition to this London Street house, they also own the crumbling giant on the north side of Halifax Square, where this day's hunting had begun). They said sure- they owned a house just right around the corner, and pointed over to Union Street, less than a block away and only two doors down! Ty and I exchanged glances. After we thanked them, they drove off, and we decided to rush around the corner to see what bonanza awaited us in yet another untouched old yard, and how much we could unearth in the remaining daylight.
When we rolled up in front of the place, I immediately found myself quite excited. More than a decade earlier, I had dug two silver coins from the sidewalk strip right in front of this very same house. One was a 1907 Barber dime, and the other a 1920-D Mercury dime. (Thanks to my careful documentation of coin finds, I can tell you that I dug those on April 26th, 1995. They had been about four feet away from each other, and two and a half to three and a half inches deep in the ground.) If my past finds from the public sidewalk strip in front of the house were that nice, I could only imagine what sort of goodies lay in the unsearched yard! Surely more silver coins were waiting to be liberated from the ground there!
I eagerly set out, swinging the coil. The first signal I got whetted my appetite and only served to increase my sense of anticipation. When I saw that signature olive-drab patina on the Lincoln cent in the dirt, I knew it was a Wheatie, and an early one, at that. I could see it was dated in the 'teens, and even with my less acute middle-aged eyesight, I could see that it bore the "S" mintmark of San Francisco, which is always nice to see on early Lincoln cents. It was a 1919-S.
Ty explored the backyard, and reported that it was enormous. That sounded like good news to me, until I went back to have a look, and saw that it was a veritable jungle. Like the London Street lot we'd just left, this yard looked to have once had a wide variety of plantings that had since gone wild and run rampant over almost everything. Very little actual lawn remained uncovered, which will make future detecting in that particular area challenging.
I went back to the front yard, which looked fine for detecting. Ty lingered a while in the back. Though its backyard had grown wild, this particular house was in much better repair than the other two owned by our Atlanta hosts. In fact, it almost looked as though someone was living there. Ty beckoned me back to the side of the house and had me stop and listen. He said he heard music coming from inside. I kidded him about hearing ghosts, but I heard it, too- it was hard to make out, but it almost sounded like there was a radio on inside. The music was faint and might've been coming from somewhere else, though. As we had permission from the owners to be there, I suggested we didn't have to worry much. I returned again to the front yard.
Across the northern half of the front yard, there was a strip of bare dirt that looked like a line for a pipe or a cable had been recently dug. In the loose soil, there were all kinds of little fragments of old bottles. Most were of aqua-colored glass that had oxidized to a pretty iridescent sheen, and I think there was a piece or two of lavender-colored amethyst glass as well. There were also bits of old coal and other trademark turn-of-the-century indicators, which weren't surprising on a late-Victorian site like this. I like seeing old glass and pottery in the soil. It usually means that other goodies are present as well.
I got a loud, almost earblasting signal in the loose dirt, and dug down about six inches to recover a terrific old brass padlock. It bore the inscription "ST. LOUIS" on both sides, in a sort of Art Deco or Art Nouveau style. Whether or not "ST. LOUIS" was the brand name or just the place it was made, I do not yet know, but my subsequent Internet searches have revealed that commemorative padlocks were made and used at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The online pictures of those looked a bit different, however. Still, this lock is certainly from the early 20th century, and it's in great shape. I have found a lot of padlocks over the years, though this is only the second antique brass one I've dug. Usually one finds them locked, or broken from having been cut open. This one, however, had fallen into the dirt intact, open, and unlocked. It swings open easily, and with a little oiling and dirt removal, I'll bet it would still work, if I snapped it shut- but I won't, since I don't have the key, obviously. From the shape of the keyhole, it doesn't look to have a particularly sophisticated mechanism inside.
Ty came around from the backyard and made a strange whinnying sound. I thought he'd lost his marbles for a moment- it was rather odd until I noticed he was holding out his hand towards me. In his upturned palm was an old lead toy horse. Unfortunately the horse had lost his hindquarters and only a pair of legs remained from the little jockey attached to his back, or it would have been a great little relic. I told him about the lead toy Indian I'd found on a recent hunt.
As our time drew short, I dug a pair of small brass rectangles, which must have been scraps of some sort, as they were plain and unmarked. As Ty watched, I then found a flat, rounded blob of lead, and he got a jolt when he mistook the rounded edge of it for a big silver coin at first. One of the last interesting targets was an old butterfly-style clock key. With the addition of another piece of junk or two, that was about it for the day. I call it a good day's outing, and I look forward to returning to a couple of these yards- there are certainly some finds left to be made there. You can be sure I'll return to the this last one we hunted, and I'll let you know what turns up!
-RWS
INDEX OF PAST ADVENTURES AND FINDS
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Comments
-Paul
Alphaeus Albert's Record of American Uniform and Historical Buttons
I have a few buttons that I've been trying to identify. I haven't looked at them for awhile, but knowing which book to look 'em in, sure gives me some motivation to get the book and inspect the buttons I have a bit closer.
Thanks for the tip!
Here's one good place to get it. (But by all means you should search Amazon and other places if you want a cheaper used copy.) There is another button book by somebody named Tice that I borrowed once, and it was more recent and quite good. I probably should get a copy of that someday. Albert was the granddaddy of them all when it came to collectible buttons, though.
The Albert book does NOT cover civilian buttons, but no single volume (or even a hundred volumes) could, of course. But thanks to its backmark index of button manufacturer's marks, I have been able to date one or two of my civilian buttons from the more esoteric makers. I dug one button on an old plantation site that proved to have been made by a company that had only been in business for one year: 1843. That was really great.
Another great read!
Very nice finds and great places to hunt. I smell silver in dem dar yards. Keep on pluggin'.
wes
Too many positive BST transactions with too many members to list.
<< <i>Another great story. Like I said before, you should compile them into a book- I'd buy one! >>
Well, I'm workin' on it, one episode at a time. This is why I spend a little longer writing them up and proofreading them now (hopefully to good effect).
Until about two years ago, they were just random postings on these forums. Then in 2006 I started to think maybe they COULD make a book one day, if collected and properly cleaned up and polished a little. 2007 saw the advent of my own Lord Marcovan's Treasure Territory forum, on 24hourforums.com. Now I have a place to collect and archive them all, where they won't sink into oblivion as fast as they always do here.
The question is, would anyone buy a book if they'd already read its contents for free online? The answer is a distant "maybe", if I added some detecting tips and pointers (and found myself a technical advisor for the techie end of things, since detectors are electronic devices and I am a tech doofus). I suppose I could always write some memoirs of my past "glory days" in the 1990s, when I detected four or five times a WEEK instead of 12-15 times a YEAR. I made some nice finds that never got written up because I was always digging, not writing, and I didn't own a computer or camera then. I guess the older stories could always be an exclusive incentive to buy the printed version of the book.
Shoot, if I wrote up all the stories from my pre-Internet, pre-camera days, I WOULD have a book.
But the stories don't exactly write themselves, and that will be a lot of work. Thanks for the encouragement. If I get enough, I just might see the project through to completion one day. In the meantime, it's just sort of a blog.
K
I was a Monkey
Thanks.
<< <i>Nice post. Aren't there any treasure hunting or coin magazines that want material like this? >>
Oh, sure. I'm sort of waiting for them to come to me, at least until I have a little more material. If Western & Eastern Treasures or American Digger offered me a regular column, I'd jump at it, of course.
HOWEVER, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of detectorists and treasure hunters who are FAR more skilled and/or lucky than I am. Not all of them are storytellers, though. In fact, relatively few of them are. The really successful ones tend to be a tightlipped lot, partly for good reason. I have to work on the storytelling end of it, because that's my only advantage over the "bigger fish". There are people who routinely go out and dig things like multiple large cents and colonial coins on a single visit, not to mention the finders of gold coins and Pine Tree shillings and, heaven help us, those lucky sods in Great Britain and Europe, who have thousands of years of history to dig into. One or two of THEM are storytellers in addition to being amazing detectorists, and let me tell you, their blogs are a true joy to read.
<< <i>Thanks for sharing, Rob. I don't normally think I could read a post that long if not for your writing style. >>
Gotta admit, I wouldn't either. I'm a bit of a lazy reader and a "scan the pictures" kind of guy myself, unless somebody really grabs my interest.
My "zoom in close" style of writing was born of frustration with folks who don't give enough detail. To use an example, I once read a book that had a photograph of an old map (presumably of the area that had been hunted), and there were all sorts of relics and coins spread out across the map. The caption said something like, "The results of a single day's hunt. Coins dating back to 1864 were found". And then... NOTHING! No details on what the coins were, none of the backstory, no other pictures. The one picture showed enough to tantalize- one or two pieces were recognizable, but otherwise it was too small, dark, and grainy (like your typical tiny eBay picture of a coin lot).
So I resolved to give all the details in my stories- the dates of the coins, the depths they were found at, what the weather was like, what I had for breakfast, and what I heard on the radio on the way home. Maybe TOO MUCH detail, I know. (But surely that's better than a thumbnail sketch that only showcases the finds and doesn't say anything about their context or how they were found?)