West Jersey Detecting
Gold Member
It's been a while since posting mostly because I haven't had time to do much detecting lately. But today I found treasure more meaningful than any dug treasure.
Around this time last year my mother passed away. Today was one of the first time I was able to get together with my brother and two sisters to sort through some of my late parents personal belongings. Neither my mother or father cared much for jewelry, but I knew they had some things stored away that had been passed down from their ancestors, going back more than 100 years.
I hadn't seen most of this before, but I remembered the "railroad" watch from when I was a kid. It's something that you don't easily forget. Even as a child I had the eye for treasure.
I did a little research on the watch, which is willed to my oldest son. It's a solid 14K pocket watch manufactured by Illinois Watch Co. I opened it up and took out the movement and matched up the serial number with the date of 1889. It's my understanding that it belonged to my grandfather's grandfather, Baruch Seerman, who was born in Russia in 1848. With the movement it weighs over 60 grams!
The sterling spoons are something that I remember as a kid, so I think they only go back to the 1950's or 1960's.
The ring has my grandfather's initials and appears to be a kids ring so it dates back approximately 1915-1920. It's very worn so there's no visible marks in it.
The PS175 (NYC Public School 175 in Brooklyn) 1925 pin is a 14K gold pin. The initials match my grandmother's sister. It may have been given to honor roll students?
The other pendant is a 14K Knights of Pythias pin. It's engraved with my grandfather's name and the date "1946".
The sterling tie clasp is from Mexico and still has the Sanborns department store price tag of 26.95 on the back. I think it may have been bought by my cousin in Acapulco for my grandfather while on her honeymoon in the 1960's.
One other interesting thing is the metal social security card. Based on the number, my great grandfather was one of the first recipients of a social security card /number in NYC in 1936 when the system went into affect.
There's still a lot of stuff to go through on my next trip to my sister's home in MD, including early Daguerreotype photos portraying unnamed relatives and maybe a few baby boomer era photos of your's truly!
Around this time last year my mother passed away. Today was one of the first time I was able to get together with my brother and two sisters to sort through some of my late parents personal belongings. Neither my mother or father cared much for jewelry, but I knew they had some things stored away that had been passed down from their ancestors, going back more than 100 years.
I hadn't seen most of this before, but I remembered the "railroad" watch from when I was a kid. It's something that you don't easily forget. Even as a child I had the eye for treasure.
I did a little research on the watch, which is willed to my oldest son. It's a solid 14K pocket watch manufactured by Illinois Watch Co. I opened it up and took out the movement and matched up the serial number with the date of 1889. It's my understanding that it belonged to my grandfather's grandfather, Baruch Seerman, who was born in Russia in 1848. With the movement it weighs over 60 grams!
The sterling spoons are something that I remember as a kid, so I think they only go back to the 1950's or 1960's.
The ring has my grandfather's initials and appears to be a kids ring so it dates back approximately 1915-1920. It's very worn so there's no visible marks in it.
The PS175 (NYC Public School 175 in Brooklyn) 1925 pin is a 14K gold pin. The initials match my grandmother's sister. It may have been given to honor roll students?
The other pendant is a 14K Knights of Pythias pin. It's engraved with my grandfather's name and the date "1946".
The sterling tie clasp is from Mexico and still has the Sanborns department store price tag of 26.95 on the back. I think it may have been bought by my cousin in Acapulco for my grandfather while on her honeymoon in the 1960's.
One other interesting thing is the metal social security card. Based on the number, my great grandfather was one of the first recipients of a social security card /number in NYC in 1936 when the system went into affect.
There's still a lot of stuff to go through on my next trip to my sister's home in MD, including early Daguerreotype photos portraying unnamed relatives and maybe a few baby boomer era photos of your's truly!
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Love that watch! Thanks for sharing those treasures with us!
