Sooper Dave
Bronze Member
A BIG First For Me But She's Tiny...
Went out after work yesterday with LDC. We went back to a park that we had gone to once before, where LDC had found two silver dimes at. The grass had been cut, so we thought it would help us sniff out a few more keepers. After a couple of hours of detecting we had only found some clad & couple of wheats, and it was getting late. We left the park looking for another spot based on some info from a nice guy that stopped to talk about the hobby. That led us to a door knock of another fellow that knew a lot of history in the area, and that took us to the owner of an old abandoned house that we wanted to hunt. The gentleman that owns the old house is a serious relic hunter and showed us his incredible collection of CW finds. We spent a lot of time talking and looking at all his displays, but could spend hours there to see it all. He gave us the OK to look around the house, but by then it was getting dark. We decide to give it a quick go since we were right there. I put my 6x8 coil on and ran in TTF and the Etrac was telling me my battery was just about dead when I started working close to the house with all the old nails. I got a iffy Indian sort of signal and dug my plug. I located the coin and started to remove the dirt, when I see this very thin, very small silver coin with a hole in it. At this point I'm fired up that this could be what I was hoping for. I quickly run over to my truck to get my water to rinse it off, hold it up to the light in my truck and sure enough it's my first Seated coin and it's an 1839 Half Dime! It is very worn, holed and has an A scratched on it, but it's my oldest US coin and I think it's awesome. I wish could hear the stories from 174 years of history. I ran over to LDC to tell him what I found, he had just pulled up a French coin from the 40's. We hated to leave, but it was too dark to hunt and had to get back home. It's wild to think about the series of events that took place to get to this little coin, and makes for a fun story. We are hoping to get a second hunt at this place to see if it holds any more surprises. HH David
Went out after work yesterday with LDC. We went back to a park that we had gone to once before, where LDC had found two silver dimes at. The grass had been cut, so we thought it would help us sniff out a few more keepers. After a couple of hours of detecting we had only found some clad & couple of wheats, and it was getting late. We left the park looking for another spot based on some info from a nice guy that stopped to talk about the hobby. That led us to a door knock of another fellow that knew a lot of history in the area, and that took us to the owner of an old abandoned house that we wanted to hunt. The gentleman that owns the old house is a serious relic hunter and showed us his incredible collection of CW finds. We spent a lot of time talking and looking at all his displays, but could spend hours there to see it all. He gave us the OK to look around the house, but by then it was getting dark. We decide to give it a quick go since we were right there. I put my 6x8 coil on and ran in TTF and the Etrac was telling me my battery was just about dead when I started working close to the house with all the old nails. I got a iffy Indian sort of signal and dug my plug. I located the coin and started to remove the dirt, when I see this very thin, very small silver coin with a hole in it. At this point I'm fired up that this could be what I was hoping for. I quickly run over to my truck to get my water to rinse it off, hold it up to the light in my truck and sure enough it's my first Seated coin and it's an 1839 Half Dime! It is very worn, holed and has an A scratched on it, but it's my oldest US coin and I think it's awesome. I wish could hear the stories from 174 years of history. I ran over to LDC to tell him what I found, he had just pulled up a French coin from the 40's. We hated to leave, but it was too dark to hunt and had to get back home. It's wild to think about the series of events that took place to get to this little coin, and makes for a fun story. We are hoping to get a second hunt at this place to see if it holds any more surprises. HH David
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(no pun intended)
....almost looks like it might have a faint "o" mint mark under the wreath.
