Hey Everyone, It's been a while since I've been on but I've been reading many great posts! Anyway, after the rain today I took my Bounty Hunter Sharpshooter out for a little walk in my backyard, not expecting to find anything. Usually all I pick up are useless pieces of scrap metal or old toys. So my home is around 200 years old and i know that I am bound to find some old coinage in the yard somewhere. I Took the detector out for about 15 minutes, right outside the back door to see if there were any high-pitched hits. About 5 Minutes in, I got a 1cent/10Cent Signal, starting Digging, and I came out with an.. 1884 INDIAN HEAD CENT, right outside my back door! I Could not Believe it! Although somewhat green and dirty, the date is perfectly in tact and it looks great! To add to that I also found a 1956 Wheat Cent in about 5 feet of the Indian Head Cent! Two Coins under my feet where I walk by every day! I attached a few pictures of the coin and the surrounding area (as well as a picture of my dog)!> http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2812/046ehz.jpg http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/9444/047z.jpg Dog http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2168/037mhk.jpg (unfortunately the green color didn't last, as my dad dipped it in tarnX- Bad idea....)
Good finds I too went detecting today didn't find anything but $1.17 in clad. I don't know that your dad did any more damage to the indian than being in the ground did. Ice
I have been interested in metal detecting on land as well as on water. I still haven't gotten my own metal detector because of the $$ involved but found the following forum very useful. Very similar to ours http://metaldetectingforum.com/
Nice finds! I hope you find many more treasures in your backyard! Now that is a big photo of a big dog which I would view on my wall screen if I had one! He or she appears to be just as curious as you about what is buried in your yard. Frank
Not bad for a back yard trearure hunt. Not to bad for any hunt. My best find yeserday was a quarter in a plastic Egg about 3 inches underground.
Neat find congrats! For the detector the best all around is one with a good discriminator with ground rejection for heavily mineralized soil will also reject the conductive salts in the sand. I have a white's 5000 that does good all around. You just have to learn the machine well and learn what settings to put it on.
Thanks for all the comments. Commidaddy, I hear many people are happy with the Garrett Ace 250 Metal Detector. It is fairly cheap and it gets the job done. The TarnX my dad put the coin in pretty much took the green away from the coin, but other than that not much. A coin from the ground is a coin from the ground! Oh, and the dog is a 120 lb. Rhodesian Ridgeback. They're great dogs!
So my home is around 200 years old and i know that I am bound to find some old coinage in the yard somewhere. Any chance you might know where the outhouse was years ago? Check the path from any back doors to it. Another good place is around the crawl space door. Also look around large trees or places trees once were that kids might have played in. I do well along fence rows for some reason. Good luck and let us know what else you find.
Great locations! Especially check around any large tree that can be seen from the (or what was) the Master Bedroom from the time the home was built and for the next 150 years. This is sometimes where the homeowners would bury money and precious items and their' bed would be positioned in a manner, so that they could lay in bed and see the tree. (Most folks thought that if they could keep an eye on the tree where their' treasures were hid, then they were safe.) The problem in their thoughts was that they usually passed away before telling anyone in the family where the treasure was buried! Frank
Greglax... Great find and a wonderful looking dog you have as well... Show us the cleaned pics of the cent!! RickieB
I went out today in my yard for an hour or two and found: 1929 Wheat Cent 1949 Wheat Cent 1930 Wheat Cent Junk! I know there is still more out there in my yard! Hopefully I hit Silver next! Oh and unfortunately I do not have a good enough camera to take even a fairly decent picture of a coin.... I will try though!] Greg
I used to love going detecting. Living in Heidelberg,Germany you can go up into the hills find lots of old coins (most in bad shape) But the best thing I have found was with a friend of mine He used to work on a German base and was watching some workman one day digging a trench he noticed piles of stuff they were pulling up .He went out there on his lunch time and then called me we went out to the tench and damn if there was not 1 or 2 but many German Helmets/ old bayonets/buttons...etc So we kept digging and found military insignia( uniform badges) lots of plates and cups some together some broken but underneth all the plates was a swastika with the date 1942.. To make a long story short we talked to someone who knew the story behind the area when the allies came they gave the base of peacefully and were ordered to throw old surplus helmets/bayonets uniforms and anything else into the garbage pit and then everything was lit on fire ( alot of the stuff we found was burned and melted) . But alot of the stuff was in great shape. And by the way the german workman did not even care they bascially didn't want anything to do with it. I added a couple of pics
oasis, Nice finds! I understand how the German workman felt as my ex-wife is from Germany and has much of the same feelings. Most Germans are decent and honorable and a very proud people (volk) and while the stigma of what happened before and during WW-II hangs over them, they hate anything that reminds them of it or has anything to do with it! I was stationed in Germany when they found a whole bunch of brand new Messerschmitts still in their crates and packing grease in an underground hanger at Mannheim. They assembled a couple of these and even flew one off of the field in Mannheim. I don't know what happened to all of planes that were found but I do know that one was donated to one of the main German Museums. Too often, most folks don't even think of or steer away from looking in old trash dumps or pits! When I was working in Key West in the late 70's to mid 80's, I used to go digging with a friend in old trash pits. Although I never found any bottles that were collectible and had any significant value, my friend always seemed to find at least one or two Rum bottles from the 1700's. He has a very large collection of bottles that ranged from the black Rum bottles (from Holland I think) with the seal in the shoulder of the bottle to the large blue/green Rum smuggling bottles. Most of the bottle in his' collection were worth from $300 to $2,000 each and some were worth much more than that! Frank
