GroovingPict
Tenderfoot
Sooo... today I pulled up what looked like an almost completely black ring. The dirt came off easy, and it was nice and shiny and smooth. I figured it was a silver ring, with a rather thick layer of silver sulfide tarnish on it. I noticed it had two stamps on the inside, but I couldn't make out what they said. Then I came home and looked at it in better light. It seems the tarnish is not black, but rather a very very dark green. It looks to me like one of the stamps says 14K, and the other AN (presumably a maker's mark) (I tried taking a photo of the stamps, but that's not terribly easy without a macro lens, it would appear). So yay, gold right? It's just the tarnish throws me off a bit; does low carat gold tarnish like that when left in the ground for several years? Maybe if the filler metal is copper and silver? Seeing as it says 14K rather than 585, I think it is quite old (apparently they started marking silver with the millesimal system here in 1892 (coinciding with a new law that said that silver had to be at least 830/1000 and gold at least 585/1000). I couldn't find any specific information for when the gold stamps changed, but it's not unreasonable to assume that it was around the same time, I think). This is of course assuming that it is a Norwegian ring, which isn't certain obviously (just because it happened to have been found here). It looks like a wedding band, but fairly small (I could only get it about half way down my little finger), so Im assuming it's for a woman. If anyone's interested to know, it read 52 on my Fisher F75. Anyway, Im fairly excited about it 
(I was already quite excited when I thought it was silver, but even more so now of course when it turns out it's apparently gold ).
The second find (actually it was the very first dig of the day) is a rather curious item. It is two 5 øre coins stuck together. This design of the 5 øre coin was used from 1908-1952, and usually made of copper alloy (950 copper, 40 tin, 10 zink). However, the ones made in the period 1917-1920 were made of iron (999-999.5 iron, 0.5-1 carbon), and one of the coins is such an iron coin, while the other one is copper from 1916. It is amazing how corroded such a piece of iron can get after being in the ground less than 100 years. If it hadn't been stuck to another 5 øre, I wouldnt even be able to make a guess at what it was (and probably wouldnt have dug on it in the first place, to be honest). Anyway, I thought it was a fun/curious little item (the last image is just a reference for what the coin should look like 
).
(I was already quite excited when I thought it was silver, but even more so now of course when it turns out it's apparently gold ).The second find (actually it was the very first dig of the day) is a rather curious item. It is two 5 øre coins stuck together. This design of the 5 øre coin was used from 1908-1952, and usually made of copper alloy (950 copper, 40 tin, 10 zink). However, the ones made in the period 1917-1920 were made of iron (999-999.5 iron, 0.5-1 carbon), and one of the coins is such an iron coin, while the other one is copper from 1916. It is amazing how corroded such a piece of iron can get after being in the ground less than 100 years. If it hadn't been stuck to another 5 øre, I wouldnt even be able to make a guess at what it was (and probably wouldnt have dug on it in the first place, to be honest). Anyway, I thought it was a fun/curious little item
(the last image is just a reference for what the coin should look like ).
Upvote
0
