Pewter spoon or no?

bartshop62

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Found metal detecting in area of american civil war battle. and where American civil war relics were found. Pewter spoon or other metal? How old could it be? 20210419_214930.webp20210419_214937.webp20210419_214943.webp20210419_214949.webp
 

You're getting better with size reference. It looks like brass possibly, pewter gets a whitish patina like lead. Just scratch it and see if you get a brass color. Pewter is a lead alloy and very soft, brass, copper, and nickel are harder. You need to do some tests, nobody can tell what metal you have from these photos. Nor can they tell you how old it is from a small fragment. Most "silverware", spoons and forks were made of copper, brass, or nickel, and often silver plated. It has pretty much no value so don't be afraid to scratch it somewhere and see what the metal looks like below the patina. If it looks like copper it is copper, if it looks like brass it is brass, if silver, nickel. Pewter spoons will be much thicker than the forementioned metals as it is too soft to make thinner spoons. Are you sure it's a spoon fragment? It doesn't look symmetrical as a spoon would. Have you tried a magnet? You still have to learn basic metal tests, we cannot tell from photos. If a magnet sticks to it it is anotheR UIJ.
 

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This is a pic of a rat tail pewter spoon bowl dug last weekend. Typical condition for a pewter spoon, crusty, flakes easily and is fragile. If I was to drop it on a counter it would sound more like a thud (like lead) than a higher pitch coin sound that you get with copper/brass spoons. I have found higher quality pewter spoons that looked like yours, but still had the soft metal thud when dropped. If pewter, then potentially late 1700’s. If copper/brass looks like could be CW timeframe.
 

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