Detecting year 2009

Zot

I’ve been terrible at posting stuff in 2009, so this summary is long overdue. It even includes a find or two from 2008 that I haven’t posted before.

All in all, the year wasn’t that great. I’ve had ridiculous difficulties in finding silver coins, and am into my longest ever dry spell for gold rings. Grr.
Anyway, here we go:

My most rewarding coin find of the year came from here. I had just arrived at the site and assembled my machine when I took this picture

Silver country (hopefully)



I started detecting in the darker brown area you see towards the bottom right in the picture.

Right off the bat, literally 5 seconds in, I get an awesome signal. Super high pitch, but I wasn’t very excited as it was only 3 inches down (the soil is quite soft, and older coins in this area tend to be at least 6” down).

My excitement quickly rose when I saw a reeded silver edge in the hole!
(approx. in the middle of the picture)

Silver ahead!



It was a nice silver coin, a Finnish 1 Markka from 1874. Only #4 of this type for me.

I checked the hole again. Ha! Still a signal in there, and a good one too!


I was delighted to find a second example of the same coin, right next to the first one. This was an 1874 as well. This turned out to be the best hole of the year. Here are both coins:



And individually:





This was my first time in this area, so I was thrilled with this great start.
Obviously, I pounded it to death after this (including several additional outings), but I haven’t found much else there since. One or two copper coins from the same time period, but that’s it.

I’ve probably spent near 50 hours in this general area, so it’s quite remarkable that I stumbled upon these two coins within the first 5 seconds. Had I started somewhere else, I probably would have concluded that this area wasn’t very productive, and would never have found these two coins..

This day turned out to be the “day of multi-silver holes”, as I found these later that evening:

Three Swedish 1 Krona coins (1943,1945,1948 – 0.400 silver), all in the same hole



It was dark by the time I was done, and while I was digging one of my last holes I could hear some frantic huffing and puffing in the bushes nearby. This guy turned up to have a look at my finds:



***

I didn’t find anything particularly old this year. I believe this was my oldest coin, but it gets a nice bonus for its “mystery factor” – I couldn’t see what it was straight away (and I even managed to keep my cool and not clean it until I got home)

A large coin…. but what is it??



French 10 Centimes 1864




***

Every year, a few oddball coins turn up.
I managed to add two new countries to my list of dug coins, which is always nice:

Belgium 5 Centimes 1924



Latvia 50 Santimu 1992



This next one had me really confused for a moment. I was detecting on a beach, so was expecting modern Euro coins when it turned up. At a glance is looked like a 2 Euro coin, but was the wrong size (too big). It looked like a 2 Euro coin that some big guy had been sitting on

British 2 pounds 2006



For what it's worth, I also got a new "oldest US coin", a 1 cent from 1916.
Maybe I find a US silver coin one of these days...

In modern coins, I picked up €52,34 (approx $75)

***

For jewelry, the year was outright lousy .
I didn’t find a single gold ring (closest was a 20k gold plated ring, but I’m not counting that as really being "gold").
Here it is anyway:


I got so desperate for gold that I made a gold panning trip up north, as you may have read about here
Here are the meager finds from that trip:



These are my best jewelry finds for the year:

Sterling silver guy



Sterling silver ring

It’s a replica of a very old design, but is a modern ring. This one took some major digging to get – I found it on a trashy beach where I must have dug around 500 targets that day.



This old silver ring was my best jewelry find of the year. It’s very small. Here it’s being dug:



..and here’s a better view:


***

Now only a few random finds remain:

This bear is related to something medical, as it carries that logo:



Ladies' watch - unfortunately not very old as it's a quartz watch



Komsomol (VLKSM) membership badge – Communist Union of Youth

If you wish to read more about this organization, you can type VLKSM into Wikipedia.



***

That’s it!
Happy new year to all! I hope you have a great 2010 with tons of great finds!

-Z

ricko

Nice finds Zot.... although scarce, they look good. Hope to see you here more often. Cheers, RickO

pcgs69

Some nice finds you've gotten in 2009.

just curious, how old is the ring with this description "This old silver ring was my best jewelry find of the year. It’s very small."?

HH

Zot

<< <i>just curious, how old is the ring with this description "This old silver ring was my best jewelry find of the year. It’s very small."? >>



1904

Riccar

Nice recap Zot

demodigger

there must alot of common coins found. coins that would make any of here happy to dig. i'd love to see some of the old trash and non coin/jewelry items you find.

dustified1234567

Was that foresty area of any historical significance? Or was it just a place you decided to look? Either way great finds.

DimeAdozen

Nice finds.. You don't live in the woods.. Do you ???