I have an 1856 Flying Eagle Cent that's in very poor condition that i found metal detecting on my grandfathers property. The coin is in such bad shape that i can barely read the year and i can only see the outline of the eagle on it however the back of the coin seems to be better preserved although worn i can see the reef fairly good and i can read the one cent just fine. I know the 1856 flying eagle cent is rare so can someone please tell me if its worth much.
Regardless of the readability of the date, the 1856 has certain die characteristics different from the common 1857 and 1858 varieties. I don't remember what they are, but someone here surely knows.
It looks to me like an 1858. The O in "OF" has a different shape. On the 1856, it looks more like a square than an oval on the inside. Its really tough to tell from the picture provided.
Yea its a cool find that one is the second one i found on my grandfathers property but the other one is so badly worn you can't really make out anything on it other than the feint outline of the eagle.
That suggests the coin(s) were lost in the 20 years before World War I. Go to the library and try to find out if your grandfather's farm was the location of camp meetings, or revival services, or even community picnics. Any of those three, or others, and I'd say there's plenty more coins to be found. If it's woods in its second or third growth, you're probably not searching deep enough. I bought my first (White's) metal detector in 1970, but way too much arthritis to use one now. If I got down to dig a coin, that's the way they'd find me, a year later, frozen in place.
Well the town where my grandfathers farm is located was founded in 1799 and the 40 acres that he owned before he died had been where some of the earliest settlers passed through and some stayed for a bit cause the oldest coin he found was a 1795 half cent and when i lived with him when i was a kid i found all sorts of old coins mostly dating from 1900 to the 1970s and that was just digging dirt up throughout his garden area
Have you found any silver coins, or just copper? Sounds like a gold mine. Let me add one point of technique, and maybe you already know this. As you move the coil back and forth, L and R, some users have a tendency to jerk the coil up a few inches when they change direction. When you do, you're missing 25% of your search area. Keep the coil LOW and absolutely parallel to the ground on the return stroke. Useful for marking where you've searched, a squeeze bottle full of flour - a few puffs show up easily, don't pollute, and keep you from backtracking. Re-search an area a second time immediately after a heavy rain. If you find more coins, there's a problem with your settings. If you are using a 6-inch coil, you may want to switch to a 4-inch coil. T-H dealers will sometimes rent coils.
There's been a whole bunch of coins and other artifacts found on the property. Shoot I've found Morgan dollars, Buffalo nickels, Barber dimes, Walking Liberty half dollars, V nickels. And that's just some of the coins i found when my grandfather was alive he found all sorts of coins through luck without a metal detector and other things to like arrow heads and other interesting stuff.
