Some big silver to start the year

[mr_larry]

Unexpectedly I had a few days free up this week so I hit a spot yesterday that has been on my radar since September. Chris (Nicasian) joined me about an hour after I began hunting but the third member of our party didn't show up; he needed his beauty sleep.

Half hour after I started hunting I pulled out a beautiful shiny 1946 Washington. After Chris showed up we started hunting opposite sides of this huge field. About an hour later I pulled up my first big silver of the year, a 1952-S Franklin. A bit after that Chris and I took a short break to compare finds. I had pulled a tiny silver ring and a 5-cent play money aluminum token in addition to the half dollar. The child's ring weighs only .80 grams. We started hunting again and almost immediately I dug a man's wedding ring. It is stamped 10K gold filled and only weighs 3.59 grams, but gold is gold!

About half an hour after our break I got a perfect quarter signal on the Explorer, ringing in at 0-28. There had been a few fake-outs before so I wasn't too excited. When I pulled the plug and began removing the loose dirt I saw the rim of the coin and thought, "That looks a little thick to be a quarter." Out of the dirt came this nice 1944-S Walker! We spent another half hour hunting while I desperately hoped for a Kennedy half but we ran out of daylight.



Here they are cleaned up a bit:



On two previous hunts last week I found these two dimes and this man's silver ring:


Thanks for looking and happy hunting!

 

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[Silver Slayer]

Nice Silver! And a great clean up!

 

[tidetraveler]

Those silvers cleaned up nicely

 

[p2c]

Congratulations on the half duofecta, double, duo, whatever you want to name it. Do we have a name for that? Anyway, you have nearly 1 troy oz of silver there. Also that Walker is in beautiful shape...

 

[dougrchamberlain]

Would you mind sharing how you cleaned those items without damaging them?

 

[Nooberz]

Sweet silver. 2 halves in a hunt is pretty rare these days. Grats!

 

[ModernMiner]

Fantastic silver!!!
Way to go,
MM

 

[mr_larry]

Would you mind sharing how you cleaned those items without damaging them?

First of all, any time you clean a coin you damage it to some degree. In this case, if you looked with a magnifying glass you would see microscopic pitting where the black stuff used to be. Neither of these coins are worth more than melt value, and I prefer to look at clean coins in my collection versus dirty ones. Always check the value of your coins before you attempt to clean them with anything other than a soak in some warm water.

With that being said, I used electrolysis briefly and then rubbed them gently with a paste of baking soda. YouTube has a number of videos on how to set up "coin cleaning electrolysis." I use an old DC accessory plug that outputs 12 volts.

When cleaning coins with electrolysis most people zap their coins for much too long. All you are trying to accomplish with electrolysis is to break the bond between the clean silver and the black stuff on the coin. In the case of the Franklin half dollar I only zapped it for 90 seconds after the coin started bubbling. When I removed it from the electrolysis the coin looked the same as when I started the process. After removing it from the electrolysis I made a paste with baking soda and water and gently rubbed the coin and all of the black stuff came right off. With the Walking Liberty half dollar I hit it with electrolysis for only about 30 seconds before I hit it with the paste. Once the coin starts giving off a lot of bubbles it is breaking those bonds.

Practice with some ugly dimes and quarters. Never leave your setup unattended. If you zap it and clean it with the paste and it is not clean enough you can always hit it again.

 

[Wldbil]

Great finds...

 

[Digginbingo]

Thats a good day. I would love to dig some silver like that. All Ive been getting lately is trash and pennies...

 

[kayden]

Thats a bunch of silver...nice!

 

[jewelerguy]

outstanding finds!

 

[mr_larry]

Thank you for all the nice comments! I was thrilled to be able to save these beauties from the turf!
Happy hunting!!!