paleomaxx
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- Aug 14, 2016
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This was it; the absolute top of my bucket list goals for 2019, a Fugio Cent! I've found plenty of amazing coppers this year, but none of them match the sheer history associated with these pieces so I've been dying to pull one out of the ground. And wouldn't you know, it was the third plug on a brand new permission. This house is next to another permission I've had for a year. The neighbor saw me while I was doing another sweep on the yard and we chatted a bit about what I do. Their house is also late 18th century and thankfully I got the green light to check it out too.
The first couple targets were deep bits of roofing aluminum which isn't a great sign. The third signal was a 94-95 which is usually a clad quarter. Instead I see a green disk in the plug so I'm thinking 'awesome a large cent.' Pretty thick encrustation, but I was looking over it and there wasn't a bust. I flipped it over and saw a circle in the center with lettering and there's only one copper I know that has that! My expectations were low on the condition given how moist the soil was, but I was hoping that the design would at least be obvious. Here's what I started with before cleaning:
I used zero water on it; just letting it dry a little to see how stable the patina would be. It was actually looking like very little of the usual flaky green patina was present so I let it dry the rest of the way and slowly picked it with a bamboo skewer. I tend to use those over toothpicks since they're a little harder and I can whittle the tip into different shapes depending on what I want to do. After getting most of the dirt off I carefully took encrusted copper salts off of the details. Finally I used Andre's brush tool on the flat areas, but sparingly since I find it tends to reduce the sharpness of lettering on colonial coppers. The results were much better than I anticipated:
All the main features are visible and some quite distinct. There are even clear die cracks on the obverse and reverse. Incredibly there's enough detail that I was able to nail down the die variety, Newman 7-T which is R-4, very scarce! The die cracks are apparently diagnostic of coins produced later in the run for this particular variety and the crack going through the sun and the crack through the lettering eventually meet before the die was considered unusable.
Obviously I was excited to check out the rest of the yard and only a few feet away I pulled out the most beautiful civilian flat button I've ever found:
Virtually all of the gold gilt remains and the deeply engraved flower as well as the scalloped edges are features I've never seen before. After this piece though the yard vitually went dead of targets. There were bits of modern trash and some deep modern iron, but almost nothing else. They had an artificial pond dug and I suspect that the contractors spread the dirt over 95% of the backyard. I did find one spot near some older trees that escaped the fill.
Some Victorian pieces including a picture frame border and a really cool silver plated reigns guide that has a brass flap over the hole. Also four wheat pennies: 1911, 1941, 1946, 1952. There was a tiny piece of silver, a junior christian endeavor pin likely from the 1960's.
Right in this spot next to a big maple tree I get a strong 95-96 target. It's exactly under a huge root and initially I pass over it since those are a nightmare to get out and I don't want to do that much damage to the lawn. But later I circle back convinced that it's a silver quarter and decide to try digging under the root from the side which is even harder, but doesn't leave much of a mark. I'm blindly reaching under the root and digging by hand and passing each handful of dirt over the detector and finally I get the target which is a big slick copper. Not silver, but at least it's not a clad quarter so that's fine. It wasn't until I get back home and start cleaning it that I realize what I had dug. It really was a slick, worn down to the point that there was almost no relief to the design, but I was able to tease out the ID and even the date:
A 1795 Liberty Cap large cent!
Plain rim, but the ghostly date is clear so I'm more than happy to find it and with a mintage of just around 500,000 this is far from a common coin to find. Toothpicking wouldn't have done much for this coin so I used a technique that's really a last resort. I take a rectangular flat razor with the aluminum top and run it almost parallel to the surface of the coin. This takes off very thin and very flat slices of the patina like a carpenter's plane. Any details that are left will capture patina in between them and in the steps between features. After I have the coin ID I can focus on where I know features are and go even more carefully with those or clean up spots that need more work. Obviously it's not something I would send for grading, but to get an ID and some detail off what would otherwise have been a copper slug sometimes it works pretty well.
That was it for the coppers though. The only other find of note was a 1921 chauffeur's badge:
Pretty random, but I'll take it. I can only image what's lurking below the fill layer, but it's at least 8" thick so that's a lost cause. Not bad finds for the lucky survivors though and the Fugio cent, in the condition it's in, is my find of the year so I'm happy!
The first couple targets were deep bits of roofing aluminum which isn't a great sign. The third signal was a 94-95 which is usually a clad quarter. Instead I see a green disk in the plug so I'm thinking 'awesome a large cent.' Pretty thick encrustation, but I was looking over it and there wasn't a bust. I flipped it over and saw a circle in the center with lettering and there's only one copper I know that has that! My expectations were low on the condition given how moist the soil was, but I was hoping that the design would at least be obvious. Here's what I started with before cleaning:
I used zero water on it; just letting it dry a little to see how stable the patina would be. It was actually looking like very little of the usual flaky green patina was present so I let it dry the rest of the way and slowly picked it with a bamboo skewer. I tend to use those over toothpicks since they're a little harder and I can whittle the tip into different shapes depending on what I want to do. After getting most of the dirt off I carefully took encrusted copper salts off of the details. Finally I used Andre's brush tool on the flat areas, but sparingly since I find it tends to reduce the sharpness of lettering on colonial coppers. The results were much better than I anticipated:
All the main features are visible and some quite distinct. There are even clear die cracks on the obverse and reverse. Incredibly there's enough detail that I was able to nail down the die variety, Newman 7-T which is R-4, very scarce! The die cracks are apparently diagnostic of coins produced later in the run for this particular variety and the crack going through the sun and the crack through the lettering eventually meet before the die was considered unusable.
Obviously I was excited to check out the rest of the yard and only a few feet away I pulled out the most beautiful civilian flat button I've ever found:
Virtually all of the gold gilt remains and the deeply engraved flower as well as the scalloped edges are features I've never seen before. After this piece though the yard vitually went dead of targets. There were bits of modern trash and some deep modern iron, but almost nothing else. They had an artificial pond dug and I suspect that the contractors spread the dirt over 95% of the backyard. I did find one spot near some older trees that escaped the fill.
Some Victorian pieces including a picture frame border and a really cool silver plated reigns guide that has a brass flap over the hole. Also four wheat pennies: 1911, 1941, 1946, 1952. There was a tiny piece of silver, a junior christian endeavor pin likely from the 1960's.
Right in this spot next to a big maple tree I get a strong 95-96 target. It's exactly under a huge root and initially I pass over it since those are a nightmare to get out and I don't want to do that much damage to the lawn. But later I circle back convinced that it's a silver quarter and decide to try digging under the root from the side which is even harder, but doesn't leave much of a mark. I'm blindly reaching under the root and digging by hand and passing each handful of dirt over the detector and finally I get the target which is a big slick copper. Not silver, but at least it's not a clad quarter so that's fine. It wasn't until I get back home and start cleaning it that I realize what I had dug. It really was a slick, worn down to the point that there was almost no relief to the design, but I was able to tease out the ID and even the date:
A 1795 Liberty Cap large cent!
Plain rim, but the ghostly date is clear so I'm more than happy to find it and with a mintage of just around 500,000 this is far from a common coin to find. Toothpicking wouldn't have done much for this coin so I used a technique that's really a last resort. I take a rectangular flat razor with the aluminum top and run it almost parallel to the surface of the coin. This takes off very thin and very flat slices of the patina like a carpenter's plane. Any details that are left will capture patina in between them and in the steps between features. After I have the coin ID I can focus on where I know features are and go even more carefully with those or clean up spots that need more work. Obviously it's not something I would send for grading, but to get an ID and some detail off what would otherwise have been a copper slug sometimes it works pretty well.That was it for the coppers though. The only other find of note was a 1921 chauffeur's badge:
Pretty random, but I'll take it. I can only image what's lurking below the fill layer, but it's at least 8" thick so that's a lost cause. Not bad finds for the lucky survivors though and the Fugio cent, in the condition it's in, is my find of the year so I'm happy!
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