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Message:: [QUOTE="lordmarcovan, post: 2779960, member: 10461"]Digger's Diary, Coin #DD-002. For DD-002, the second coin found, I was with my detecting mentor Jim Dalton. There is a juvenile detention center between Swannanoa and Black Mountain, NC. At the time, it was called the Juvenile Evaluation Center. I believe it was and/or still is a minimum-security facility for juvenile offenders, as the name suggests. Doesn't sound like a particularly promising or welcoming metal detecting site, does it? But Jim had worked at the place, and had pretty much exclusive permission to detect there. The site had been a hospital around during the Second World War and thereafter, before its modern use as a juvenile detention facility. It had large grounds and acres upon acres of lawns where we could hunt, well away from the buildings, so we wouldn't interfere with the juveniles or their overseers. Jim showed me boxes of goodies he had found. Lots of great silver coins, and a surprising amount of really nice gold rings and other jewelry. Naturally, being a coin-hungry novice detectorist, I began to salivate. I really wanted to find a Mercury dime, for starters. A Mercury dime I <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/media/1936-mercury-dime-first-in-my-childhood-collection-from-1976.6152/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/media/1936-mercury-dime-first-in-my-childhood-collection-from-1976.6152/">found</a> in my grandmother's silverware drawer in 1976 was what had launched me into collecting coins. Jim practically guaranteed I would find a Mercury dime if I kept at it on this site. (Spoiler- I never did, though I did find a piece of silver, and did eventually dig my first Merc within a year.) The site had been the old Moore General Hospital prior to its use as a juvenile facility. That explains the large number of 1940s-'60s silver coins Jim found there. He also found earlier coins like V-nickels and Barber dimes, but those would've been in circulation in the '40s. Some web-searching revealed this old WW2-era linen postcard from the place. <img src="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=nc_post&CISOPTR=9208&action=2&DMSCALE=20&DMWIDTH=512&DMHEIGHT=438&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /><a href="http://ncpedia.org/moore-general-hospital" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://ncpedia.org/moore-general-hospital" rel="nofollow">Source link</a> Off we went on one lovely fall day, around Thanksgiving of 1992. Jim was popping Wheat cents right and left. Maybe he found a silver ring, too. I don't remember. What I do remember was finding DD-002, my next "keeper" coin, and it was a beauty! <img src="http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k173/lordmarcovan/Diggers%20Diary/DD-002-findspot.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> Hi-ho, SILVER!!! This became my first dug silver coin in the record (though I had found two using my childhood machines, back before I kept records). It was a very nice high-grade piece, too. Photographing it just a little while ago, I noticed it had bands of "cartwheel" luster. So it was fairly new when lost. And in that soil up there, the buried silver can come out very nice. It was not a Mercury dime. But probably worth as much or more than a Mercury dime would have been. A nice piece of silver. Rather "modern" for a silver coin, and struck late in the silver coinage era (which ended in 1964, as most of you know), but that's OK... I was happy. Thrilled, even. DD-002: 1956 WASHINGTON QUARTERA high grade example with cartwheel luster.Date Found: Fall, 1992Site: Juvenile Evaluation Center (old VA hospital site), Swannanoa, NC.Approx. depth: 2-3".Detector: Garrett GTA-500.<ul> <li>First Silver Coin Found!</li> <li>First Silver Washington!</li> </ul><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi88.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fk173%2Flordmarcovan%2FDiggers%2520Diary%2FDD-002-coin.png&hash=d30216340e592503d6640b9eda9dd013" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]

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