Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake... UPDATED

[nevrdundetecting]

Hello all, I got about 5 hours of cold hunting in today, it was only 15 degrees when I started and ended up at 29. Went to a local lake here in WV. There are several old homesites around the lake, and many are still on modern maps even though none are standing, so I took the GPS coordinates off of the maptech server for all of these homesites and plugged them into my new Etrex Legend that my wife got me for Valentines Day. I was amazed at how accurate the coordinates were, they took me right to all of the sites that I had entered in. I did a lot of exploring for new sites and only got a couple of hours of good hunting in but I did manage to pull this beautiful silver buckle out of the ground near an old filled-in well. It has 2 gold and 2 rose gold stripes and the initials JBK on the front and on the back is stamped STERLING PAT.AUG 21-17 MARSH. Also on the back of the buckle someone has etched in the letters WWX, or XMM, depending on how you look at it, you can see it in the picture above the MARSH stamp. The buckle ID'ed as a half dollar/dollar on my Prizm III with the 950 coil, and it was at 4". I had almost stopped hunting and went back to the truck about a half hour before I found it, but I looked at the time and it was only 3:30, and I didn't have to pick the kids up until 5, the walk had warmed me back up so I decided to hunt for another hour......and it paid off! I was so excited when I pulled it out of the ground, knew it had to be silver just by the looks of it.

Also found what looks to be a door or window handle off of a car, a solid brass or copper ring about 1/4" thick and 3" in diameter, some clock pieces, shotgun shell butts, electrical fuses, harmonica reed plate pieces, pulltabs, pieces of pottery, and lots of whatzits.

Here are some pics of the lake, and finds including a rusty old baby doll stroller and some wash pans found a couple miles from the truck....total walking distance for today was right at 4 miles.

It was good to get out and make some finds, and the buckle is probably my best find to date!!

Thanks for looking and HH!

 

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[Smartin]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

Great buckle, I think I'd have to save that one for the grandchildren someday.Wonder how somebody lost thier beltbuckle!!! Great pictures, how do you get them so big without going over the kb limit?

Smartin

 

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[nevrdundetecting]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

Great buckle, I think I'd have to save that one for the grandchildren someday.Wonder how somebody lost thier beltbuckle!!! Great pictures, how do you get them so big without going over the kb limit?

Smartin

It looks like they lost it because one of the small loops for the pin broke on the back. I have tried to find out the maker of the buckle for sure but haven't had much luck, I found a reference to Marsh Brothers Silver, they make silver buckles and plates for horse saddles, so I thought that it may be off of something like that or maybe just a woman's belt buckle.

The pictures....I always take them in max quality with my camera (it's 2.1 megapixels and pics are1600x1200) or about 300 dpi with the scanner which creates huge pictures, usually about 2-5MB (I leave the cover open on the scanner to make that nice, black background), but always save the main image at max quality and lowest compression. After you have a good quality large image I use the Windows XP Image resizer powertoy that can be downloaded from Microsoft here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe

when you install this image resizer, it adds a "Resize Pictures" option to your right click menu....when you right click on any image file. after choosing the "resize pictures" a menu will pop up and ask what size you would like the new image file, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or custom size (you can enter in your own image size)....the big picture of the buckle above is 1024x768, and the picure of the landscape is 800x600, and the pic of the beaver tree is 640x480. After doing this the picture is usually compressed enough to be around 80-100K or so, even in 1024x768, which is a much better file size and not too large to post.


suwanee: Thanks for the link, I have talked to the guy who made that page a few times, he really knows his local history, and works at the Wayne court house....I have got property owner info from him a couple times. I do have the maps saved and have studied them alot in the past, some good info there. What part of WV are you from? I like WVU but am more of a Marshall fan, as I have live in or near Huntington all of my life and attended MU for about 3 years.....to no avail.

Thanks for all of the great comments you all.....and HH!!

 

[Smartin]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

Matt,
Thanks so much for the link and all the info. Sounds like you do your homework! also on detecting sites.I'm still just playing hunches for now. If the buckle is off a saddle, where's the rest of it?

You must be a diehard,
Smartin

 

[nevrdundetecting]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

Matt,
Thanks so much for the link and all the info. Sounds like you do your homework! also on detecting sites.I'm still just playing hunches for now. If the buckle is off a saddle, where's the rest of it?

You must be a diehard,
Smartin

thanks for your kind words.....I'm a computer geek, I have had a PC since about 1990 or so and have worked tech support for Dell, BellSouth, and Iomega, but that is how I know my computer stuff so well.

As for detecting, I just started last June (05) when my wife bought me a Bounty Hunter Pioneer EX from Wally world for Fathers day, I used it until sept with good results when I decided to step up to my Prizm III....ever since then I have been pretty hardcore I guess, bought the 950 coil about a month ago and just got the GPS for Vday and I hope that it will help lead me to more old sites back in the woods.

thanks again

HH

 

[suwannee pirate]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

nevrdundetect; I was born in Morgantown WVa and grew up there ,till I was 16,since then I have been back and forth between Florida and WVa and spent a little over a year in Utah [The BLM guys run me outta there , just kiddin ,sort of] . You are real close to something pretty interesting and seem like a pretty good fellow so I am going to give you two hints .First become a charter member here its well worth the chump change required for all of the benefits,then read my posts in the forums for members only ,both of them .WVa has a lot of history and it is a beautiful state,some call it God's Country and once you've been there you can see why. Good luck...Bob

 

[nevrdundetecting]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

nevrdundetect; I was born in Morgantown WVa and grew up there ,till I was 16,since then I have been back and forth between Florida and WVa and spent a little over a year in Utah [The BLM guys run me outta there , just kiddin ,sort of] . You are real close to something pretty interesting and seem like a pretty good fellow so I am going to give you two hints .First become a charter member here its well worth the chump change required for all of the benefits,then read my posts in the forums for members only ,both of them .WVa has a lot of history and it is a beautiful state,some call it God's Country and once you've been there you can see why. Good luck...Bob

You are right about WV, I love it here....its beautiful. I grew up in a small town called Prichard, about 20 mi outside of Huntington, on a 127 acre farm that my grandparents owned, I loved spending my days in the creek and woods when I was a kid, and still love going into the woods today. I have been researching a Civil war skirmish site that is within 30 miles of here, it involved around 500 soldiers total and I doubt that it has ever been detected, I know exactly where it is, just need to get permission to hunt there....I do have names and numbers of 2 potential owners that I got from the guy that made that website about Wayne county that you mentioned before. We could be talking about the same place.

I think that I will become a Charter member.

HH

 

[nevrdundetecting]

Re: Woohoo, found a nice silver buckle today, old homesites at the lake...

I found the original patent info for this buckle on the US Patent office Website, pretty neat I thought.....took a lot of searching though, since I didn't have a patent number to go by...had to search by "Current US Classification" for buckles, there were over 60,000 matches on this search but I knew the date and the range of patent numbers for the Aug 21, 1917, which made it much easier...still took a while