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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lordmarcovan, post: 2583205, member: 10461&quot;]For <b>DD-002</b>, the second coin found, I was with my detecting mentor Jim Dalton.&nbsp; There is a juvenile detention center between Swannanoa and Black Mountain, NC.&nbsp; At the time, it was called the Juvenile Evaluation Center.&nbsp; I believe it was and/or still is a minimum-security facility for juvenile offenders, as the name suggests.&nbsp; Doesn&#039;t sound like a particularly promising or welcoming metal detecting site, does it?&nbsp; But Jim had worked at the place, and had pretty much exclusive permission to detect there.&nbsp; The site had been a Veteran&#039;s Administration hospital around the WW2 era and thereafter, before its modern use as a juvenile detention facility.&nbsp; It had large grounds and acres upon acres of lawns where we could hunt, well away from the buildings, so we wouldn&#039;t interfere with the juveniles or their overseers.</p><p><br /></p><p>Jim showed me boxes of goodies he had found.&nbsp; Lots of great silver coins, and a surprising amount of really nice gold rings and other jewelry.&nbsp; Naturally, being a coin-hungry novice detectorist, I began to salivate.&nbsp; I really wanted to find a Mercury dime, for starters.&nbsp; A Mercury dime I found in my grandmother&#039;s silverware drawer in 1976 was what had launched me into collecting coins.&nbsp; Jim practically <i>guaranteed</i> I would find a Mercury dime if I kept at it on this site.&nbsp; (Spoiler- I never did, though I did find a piece of silver, and did eventually dig my first Merc within a year.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Off we went on one lovely fall day, around Thanksgiving of 1992.&nbsp; Jim was popping Wheat cents right and left.&nbsp; Maybe he found a silver ring, too.&nbsp; I don&#039;t remember.&nbsp; What I do remember was finding <b>DD-002</b>, my next &quot;keeper&quot; coin, and it was a beauty! </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k173/lordmarcovan/Diggers%20Diary/DD-002-findspot.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Hi-ho, <b>SILVER!!!</b>&nbsp; This became my first dug silver coin in the record (though I had dug two with my childhood machines, back before I kept records).</p><p><br /></p><p>It was a very nice high-grade piece, too.&nbsp; Photographing it just a little while ago, I noticed it had bands of &quot;cartwheel&quot; luster.&nbsp; So it was fairly new when lost.&nbsp; And in that soil up there, the buried silver can come out very nice. </p><p><br /></p><p>It was not a Mercury dime.&nbsp; But probably worth as much or more than a Mercury dime would have been.&nbsp; A nice piece of silver.&nbsp; Rather &quot;modern&quot; for a silver coin, and struck late in the silver coinage era (which ended in 1964, as most of you know), but that&#039;s OK... I was happy.&nbsp; Thrilled, even.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, for our next part of the practice round, using the hints I just posted here:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>What type and denomination of US silver coin was DD-002? (10 points)</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>What was the date on this coin? (10 points)</b></p><p><br /></p><p>It was a Philadelphia-mint coin, so there was no mintmark to guess as well.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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