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Long drought ends with 1848 large cent
rhedden
Posts: 6,621 ✭✭✭✭✭
I have had very little time to spend on detecting this year, and the sites I explored so far were mostly disappointing. I tend to focus only on older sites in central PA that might produce a large cent or bust/seated coin, so the finds are few and far between. No silver Roosies or Mercs to keep me happy, in other words. Last evening's short hunt was a good one, producing an 1848 Braided Hair cent. It isn't in great condition, but it isn't destroyed, either. This coin was about 3 inches deep, and it was sitting on top of a large, rusty iron bracket of some sort, so it was a minor miracle that my White's Spectrum was able to sort out this mixed signal and tell me to dig. I think the object that was below the large cent might have been a severely rusted steel belt buckle, so it's possible that the coin was mounted in a buckle that was lost. This site was a small town that temporarily sprung up from 1848-1868 due to a local iron ore mine. There is no trace of the town, which mostly lies underneath two intersecting roads now, unfortunately. Hunting this site basically involves crawling around in brush near the edge of the road, and it's infested with rose bushes and thorny barberry bushes, making hunting rather miserable. I will return for more of this thorny misery next week, because I don't ind finding large cents!
This makes my seventh dug large cent. The others are: dateless 1794 Lib. Cap and badly corroded 1808 Classic Head from MD; 1838 from PA; and 1827, 1837, and holed 1847 from upstate NY. Still looking for that lost chain cent!
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Jerry
My large cent drought has been ongoing since an 1850 came up about oh, what... four years ago, now?
I only have three, ever: a dateless Draped Bust, an 1837 coronet, and the 1850.
You are far ahead of me in the "big penny" score.
But oh boy, when you do find a coin on such a site, it's a goodie.
As you have so adeptly proven.
PS- Millennium there snagged an 1848 from under my very nose on a relic site down here. I had found a beer can in the exact same spot the night before, and didn't recheck my hole. So here comes Steve the very next night and plucks an 1848 cent, right out of my old hole! Grrr!
Serves me right, I suppose. I did get a crusty 1876 Indian as a consolation.