Found strange metals on first ever hunt today. Help please!

[Gorilla_Hands]

Hello everyone!
I sincerely apologize this is so long but I wanted to try to be as informative as I can be about this find and so everyone knows the whole story. I am new to metal detecting (and a new member) and just recently traded some redundant tools I had laying around and ended up with two cheap detectors. Of course I would have liked a nice one but these will do fine to start in my opinion. So anyway, I went to my Mom's house today to have a late Thanksgiving dinner and after filling my gut I decided to sweep around the back yard to try out my new toys.


I had a nephew with me so we both got to sweep around. Right off the bat I dug up an 1848 U.S. One Cent coin with what looks like a square nail hole in it. I threw a pic of it in on the bottom of the page. Might not be worth much but I was ecstatic that I actually found a coin with my first time ever using a detector. So after about 45 minutes of finding junk like old chain, nails, etc. we were heading back to the house but decided to sweep as we walked and BOOM! A huge hit pegging the needle all the way over with it set on discover mode (not all metals mode). So we found a metal blob which at first I thought was lead or an old deformed bullet. Then a couple of feet away the same thing happened but this time it was a lighter feeling chunk of something. Then another few feet away we found the last one that looked almost identical to the second find but felt like a different density. When we first found any of these they were dirty of course but looked kind of like a melted, deformed solid rock with some metal showing when wiped with a finger. The second two look like aluminum. We thought maybe some small meteorite pieces for sure. So then I went home and cleaned them off with water and got my small rare Earth magnet out and no pull at all from all three pieces.


I then began to look up meteorites on the web. The first site I came across is the one that is ran by the "Meteorite Men" from the Science channel and they said that a non-ferrous meteorite is extremely rare so I assume these aren't what I hoped. Now for the details...First off my Mom's back yard is in Cape Girardeau, Mo and is around 2.5 miles from the Mississippi river. This is the only inland cape in the U.S.. It is also right next to a creek that is about 50 feet wide and mostly around 15 feet deep with steep banks and low water. It has never even came close to coming to the top of the banks since we moved into the house in 1994. The ground is varying colors of dirt but mostly chocolate brown with tons of what I call creek type rock or cobble in it. A few feet down it gets kind of clay like in some places. She has 3 acres with the back being about 3/4 of the property. This was at the edge of the city limits in 1994 and was surrounded by some small cattle farms up until the recent years. I'm also unaware of any out buildings ever being here.


I don't think this land was farm land within the last 100 years or so but I can't be for sure. We heard at one time not too long after we bought the land and house (I don't remember from who) that there was a house here that burned to the ground and this one was built on the same spot in 1979. Where we found these pieces was at least 75+ yards away from the house. I have no idea what could have been done on this land for these things to be here but I can tell you that it is not a melted beer can from a camp fire and there haven't been any fires in this spot from 1994-present. Other places on the property, yes but not even close. I have put aluminum cans into fires many times and they pretty much turn to ash/nothing. Also if these were aluminum I wouldn't think they would be like this and with different densities. The first one looks like lead and is very heavy like lead but seems a little hard to be so. The other two are lighter in color resembling aluminum (but different densities and sounds when dropped) and seem just a little softer than the first one.


I weighed them all on a digital scale that I have that goes to 86 pounds and does read in grams but not tenths. The lead like piece weighs 18-20 grams, the larger aluminum piece is the same, and the smaller aluminum like piece is 10 grams. They are non-porous and seem to have been molten strange. They do kind of look like a metal was poored on the ground and solidified there but I have no clue. I did take a Dremel with a fine wire wheel to them but left one side alone on the aluminum type ones to see them better but I don't think I damaged them in any horrible way. The side I left alone has just been rubbed with cold water.


Maybe nothing, maybe something. I don't know. I don't know how to test them without destroying them so maybe I can find some help here before trying other possibly costing ideas. Please take a look at the pictures and note the weights and give me your opinions whether they be good or bad news. All will be considered and I thank everyone in advance. Hopefully I have something here that can help pay some bills.

 

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[yelnif]

Hello Gorilla_Hands, Welcome to T-Net. Congrats on finding your first cent. It looks like someone already used it for a fob or keepsake. The edge of the square punched hole is worn rounded as it has been hanging from some attachment. You might do the same as it is your first. Way cool. I have no idea what your blob finds are but they may turn out to be HH

 

[Gorilla_Hands]

Yeah I don't know about these blobs. Probably nothing but hopefully I'll find out eventually. I know it has never been detected here so I figured it would be the best spot to start and it's family land. I think that hole in that coin was put there a long long time ago because it is bent there from them punching whatever through and it definitely doesn't look like anything by modern tools. That's why I figure it was one of those old square nails. Thanks for your reply.

 

[mick56]

Sure looks like aluminum that was melted in a fire.

 

[BosnMate]

Could be melted aluminum can, could be clinkers from a forge fire. Are they heavy like lead? Could be plumbers lead where they were
doing a drain pipe years ago. We get a lot of aluminum can remains at the beach, where people have fires, drink beer and throw the
empties into the fire. Could be a meteorite I suppose, but my best swag would be melted aluminum.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Like Yelnif, I congratulate you on finding your first US "Large-Cent." That is a significant milestone for any new metal-detectorist. Let me also point out, very-very few of us can say we found a pre-20th-Century coin on our very first hunt. Again, congratulations!

About the blobs:
They are indeed one of the varieties of so-called "White-Metals" whose melting-temperature is low enough to be melted in an ordinary fire (such as a trash-burning fire).
White metal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I notice that all of the blobs you found are shiny, due to your cleaning of them with a wirebrush. That removed the "patina" which can indicate the metal's identity. Depending on their weight, your blobs could be either Aluminum or Solder... which is most often an alloy of lead with tin or lead with zinc, that melts at a comparatively low temperature instead of the 2,000-plus degrees needed to melt most other types of metals.

If you care enough to ID the metal in the blobs, you can buy a Metal-Identification testing kit fairly inexpensively on Ebay. Or, some coin-shops and pawn-shops will test the metal for a small fee, or for free.

Welcome to TreasureNet -- and especially, the What-Is-It forum. May you continue to have good fortune in your metal-detecting trips.

 

[Gorilla_Hands]

franklin-That would be cool if it was silver but who knows. Surely not me. Lol.

BosnMate- Not sure what clinkers are but the darker colored one is heavy like lead but seems to be harder. I suppose it could be but there are no utilities within 200 yards anywhere nor should there ever have been. Also I don't think it would have been a place to have many fires unless it was a long long time ago but I have no way to know.

TheCannonballGuy- I guess there could have been trash burning there because there wasn't always trash service there but all of the burn piles or places where the barrels were are also far from there as with any utilities or septic leads. They do look like they could have been a low melting point metal poured on the the ground and could be aluminum and do seem to be that. I know for a fact they aren't solder though as I have worked with it for years (electrical and plumbing) and its too hard to be that. The strange thing is that the one that has the tail has kind of a ring to it when you drop it on a table or something when the other two do not. The patina is in the pictures of the two aluminum type ones that has a dirty brownish color. I didn't use anything on that side of them but water and a finger rub so what you see in those pictures is the patina from being in the soil. I agree that they are probably aluminum but the one that has a ring to it makes it strange. Possibly silver? I'm not really familiar with it. I would take a torch to them but I think that would be kind of stupid and I don't want to deal with that mess if they do melt. Lol. I don't think they are meteorites by their shape but again, I'm not experienced with them. Lastly, thanks for the comment about the coin. I was kind of shocked when I found that and think I got the bug. I will continue to work on this and will call around tomorrow to see if I can find a free place to test them and if not then might go the eBay test kit direction in the end because it would be good to have around for future finds anyway. Thanks to everyone for the replies so far and I will post if and when I find out something. In the meantime keep the opinions coming. Happy hunting!

 

[nsdq]

looks like lead or melted galena

 

[Gorilla_Hands]

Okay. So I figured they're obviously not meteorites because the shape just doesn't seem to fit so my nephew and I said "What the heck?" and decided to try to melt them with my propane torch. I have a pair of hardened Klein side cutters from my cable install days (which are one of my best friends, ha ha) and cut the tail off of that one to have a piece to melt and then low and behold...No ring sound when dropped. They all sound like a stone being dropped on the table or concrete floor. So it must be the same as the other aluminum like one. Did the same to all three and they cut kind of like what they look like. Now we were able to melt all three of them with the torch and as I heated them up they all turned bright orange after about 3-5 minutes under the blue flame and I took a screwdriver and was able to stir them around. They never pooled like some metals but they were also not ashy or flaky like aluminum does. They re-solidified fairly quickly once the flame was removed but I did have them in the corner of a 1/4" 2x2" steel angle turned like an upside down V mounted in the bench vise. They darker, heavier piece that is in my first picture that looks like a bean was the hardest to cut and took quite a bit of force with the cutters. No way it could be lead. It has a kind of sparkly inside. Maybe someone melted something down and buried it for a reason? Maybe but I don't know. Could it maybe be pewter or something like that? It's just strange. Could all just be pot metals but why or how they were melted and in this unlikely location is a mystery. I might take pictures of the inside tonight or tomorrow just in case you guys would want to see them to see if it would help identify it. Still working on getting somewhere to get a test. I've just been so busy I haven't had a chance. I will keep posted though. Thanks! -Matt

 

[AU Seeker]

What you have found could be what has been mentioned already, is could also be babbitt, which is a bearing material, older machines had to have there bearing poured, you just couldn't pull out the old bearing, you had to remove the old bearing material and then pour molten babbitt into the bearing cavity, which then harden and the excess that coming out of the bearing housing was trimmed and you had a new bearing, in the process of pouring the new bearing molten babbitt would over flow and or be spilled on the ground, which would leave blob like pieces similar to what you have found.

Babbitt is still being used for bearings in modern cars and trucks, etc., but it is layered on a thin steel shell, machined and ready for your application, which makes the bearings easier to replace.

Babbitt (metal) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[FreeBirdTim]

Blobs of lead solder would be my guess. Does your Mom's house have copper rain gutters now or in the past? They used to solder those together back in the old days. If it hardens quickly after you remove the flame, it's probably solder. I know I drop a lot of solder on my cellar floor whenever I sweat copper water pipes together.