First Silver is a 2lb Chunk!

homestead-hunter

homestead-hunter

Full Member
Jan 18, 2013
185
83
Roswell, New Mexico
Detector(s) used
Garrett GTI 2500
BH Elite 2200
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
went out to the old ghost town and my buddy found an 1888 morgan possible "O" and some silver spoons. I have been waiting for my first silver and it came...a 2lb chunk of pure silver.

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That is not a "splash". It is obviously a cast piece, and it exhibits heavy corrosion consistent with being an acid battery terminal.

And "silver wasn't worth as much"??? A single ounce of silver was an entire days pay in the late 1800s yet you claim a smelter would let 2 pounds walk away? Would YOU let someone walk out of your business with a months salary of "splash" in their pocket? Don't confuse "price" with "worth".
 

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Back then you are talking about a crude operation out in the middle of nowhere. Mickey Mouse stuff. Breakdowns happened stuff got away from them. 8-)
 

700 bucks!!! Better get a safe deposit box. Lol.

I've dug a ton of stuff very similar looking that my detector id'd as silver but I sold it all to the scrap yard. I guess I could have been loaded, think ill stop looking for jewelry and coins and find slag and fire trash instead
 

It must be great to go along and just dig only Gold or Silver, and leave all those outher targets in the ground, because your detector told you they weren't.

SS
 

homestead-hunter said:
went out to the old ghost town and my buddy found an 1888 morgan possible "O" and some silver spoons. I have been waiting for my first silver and it came...a 2lb chunk of pure silver.

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I really hope it is .999 silver. That would just be insane. Good luck to you - Prosper in 2013!
 

I just found a chunk of 97% zinc 2 weeks ago. The inside was shiny and sparkly like yours... BUT.. mine rang up on the AT PRO between the nickel and gold range. Mine weighed in at a lb and a half... And even the small chunk i broke off measured in the same range. Call a scrapyard in your area and ask if they have a gun that identifies percentages of metal in an object. My first guess wouldve been zinc based off of looks... But if its ringing silver i have to think differently. best of luck
 

It does'nt even look remotely close to any kind of silver, raw or otherwise, that I have ever seen. For your sake, at this point I hope it is ... lol ! I can understand your excitement about it. I had a 1916-S mercury dime that I swore had a "D" mintmark. My mind wanted it to be so bad that a "D" was all I could see. I was corrected by some knowledgable folks and I was sent home with my tail tucked between my legs .. lol ! Good luck with that, it will be a stellar find if it's really silver.
 

Looks like a nice find. Was you around a smelter? There is plenty of test you can do to test for silver. One is called a mustard test. Look it up and try it. Im in Las Cruces so if you do any hunting down this way let me know. We are having a dust storm from Hades right now. I actually have to put on safety glasses to detect this morning lol. I pulled a piece of silver out of the ground today too. It said bic on it,lol. I wasn't too disappointed as I dug it at 10" inches, lol. I didnt even have the power turned up yet. Happy Hunting, keep posting. Oh, just for giggles I always find Pancho Villa's last bullet when I go out lol.
 

Blskypilot said:
700 bucks!!! Better get a safe deposit box. Lol.

I've dug a ton of stuff very similar looking that my detector id'd as silver but I sold it all to the scrap yard. I guess I could have been loaded, think ill stop looking for jewelry and coins and find slag and fire trash instead
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I can vouch for that. Lol.
 

It looks like corroded Zinc to me, and can be tested with a torch as Zinc melts at less than 1,000 degrees fahrenheit. Alternately, you can get some muriatic/hydrochloric acid and drop it on: if it evolves bubbles (hydrogen gas) it is almost certainly zinc, and certainly not Silver whatever else it is, if not primarily Zinc. Many people like using Nitric Acid (I have over a half gallon of concentrated Nitric myself) and I've tested sliver ranging from 22.5% to 99.9% fine silver. Only at below around 50% will there be a noticable reaction with the copper and whatnot, though after a while the puddles on the 50% or-so pure items will become greenish with the colorful and soluble salts of copper.

Anyway, Your friends or local hardware stores likely have at least Hydrochloric acid, so drop some of it on there in a well-ventilated environment. If it starts reacting then it is NOT silver. The readings from your, or anyone else's detector are not going to reflect accurately the elemental nature of a 2 pound piece of metal, lol. It's called common sense people!

Also, the statement that an ounce of silver was equivalent to a day's wages in the late 1800s is far too generalized to be of any solid informational worth. The values ranged between around 40 cents or so an ounce to over 1.11 an ounce from the 1850s to 1920 or so; depending upon supply and global economic conditions (which fluctuated wildly). Most of the time an ounce of silver was worth well less than a dollar, and that ounce represented only a fraction of the value of a hard day's of work by an unskilled laborer, who would earn between 1 and 3 dollars a day prior to 1900, depending upon the job, and their ethnic and gender status. Look it up in the official US statistical charts from 1790 onwards, (I have my 2 volume set, printed in 1975, dunno if it can be accesed on the intarweb though.)

Now, to play the apologist at least in part on the behalf of the OP, I have come across demonstrably silver (coin silver and sterling) items, all silverware, that were tossed in old ash and garbage dumps. They come out black, chalky grey, or otherwise very ugly and look nothing like the silver that would come out of normal soil. I am not certain, but I believe that the extremely high sulphur/sulphide and sulfuric/sulfurous acid content of the coal ash and clinker, blus other caustic chemicals dumped, caused the silver items to react a great deal and made them look about as trashy as this 2 pound piece of whatever. There is some small hope that it may be silver, but i sincerely doubt it.
 

Wait..........you mean to tell me all those dug soda cans I've been tossing into the recycle bin are really silver! Arrrrgggghhhhhh!!!:censored:

Hope it's understood all that rings up gold may not really be gold, or silver. You must have been pretty fortunate up until now. Good luck and very happy hunting!
 

Relax People !

Nice finds homestead-hunter.
Keep us updated
 

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