Found this on Friday in Southern Arizona at a mining/work camp from around the 1940's. The area had without a doubt been metal detected before but interestingly a lot of the original timber and corrugated steel from the site was still there so it hasn't been completely destroyed/trashed. Concrete slabs where the building foundations were are still present too.
Found a lot of intact screw-top glass jars in the area too but nothing that looked particularly interesting or very old.
When I dug up this item it was heavily corroded with "white rust" I guess and the photos were taken after it had soaked in Evapo-rust for about 2 days and periodically scrubbed with an S.O.S. pad.
The metal is non-ferrous, my strongest rare earth magnets will not stick to it.
Is it some kind of lid from maybe a cigarette box or something? What kind of metal does that look like to you? Maybe tin with nickle-plating (I don't know that much about metals)? Whatever it is it's silver on the top and gold/broze underneath as you can see from the photo. There's a small chip in the plating on the upper left that reveals the inner gold/bronze looking metal as well as the corroded area on the right where the plating rusted away.
Also its engraved/stamped with a scene with a mule on the left and a Mexican man with sombrero and pancho on the right. Maybe a wagon cart in the middle?
Thanks
Found a lot of intact screw-top glass jars in the area too but nothing that looked particularly interesting or very old.
When I dug up this item it was heavily corroded with "white rust" I guess and the photos were taken after it had soaked in Evapo-rust for about 2 days and periodically scrubbed with an S.O.S. pad.
The metal is non-ferrous, my strongest rare earth magnets will not stick to it.
Is it some kind of lid from maybe a cigarette box or something? What kind of metal does that look like to you? Maybe tin with nickle-plating (I don't know that much about metals)? Whatever it is it's silver on the top and gold/broze underneath as you can see from the photo. There's a small chip in the plating on the upper left that reveals the inner gold/bronze looking metal as well as the corroded area on the right where the plating rusted away.
Also its engraved/stamped with a scene with a mule on the left and a Mexican man with sombrero and pancho on the right. Maybe a wagon cart in the middle?
Thanks
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
. I had a belt buckle similar to that, but it was shorter, and that's how me and my friends figured that it worked. I had found mine at abandoned farm house in Vernon Florida, it had the previous owners fancy letter "G" in fancy script engraved into the silver face. Don't have a pic, because I returned it to the family 
I am going to look up sliding belt buckles and see what I can find...........NGE
