Beautiful Saturday morning to be out detecting. Didn’t come up with anything too spectacular but did manage to pop out a Civil War General Service Eagle in pretty good shape.
I had just finished building an 1850-1860’s map for my area as there are none and wanted to test it out. I picked a section and decided to hunt all over it until I found a site that was potentially the early 1850s site.
I did find a site on the property that had evidence of newer occupation into the 1930s but it did also have the Civil War button as well as the lead pistol ball, so I’m counting that as a win as far as finding the old site. Lol

-No visible backmark on the Eagle button
-1889 on one Indian Head Cent
-Who knows on the second Indian
-1919 on the Wheat
-Somewhat local trade token
-Cool Des Moines overall style button
-1871 Patent date on the nearly decorated suspender clip
-The “Good Luck symboled” compact lid or whatever is the second I have found, both coming on sites that also had civil war activity. Not sure if there is a correlation or not there but interesting regardless.

Definitely more there to detect, the older stuff just being covered up some.
Thanks for looking!

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Pretty nice haul!

Any time you can dig an Eagle is a great day indeed. Wish I was there to busy harvesting mountain oysters; they are in season

Research pays off, good finds.

That's a lot of really cool items.
Very nice work finding that location.

What's the swastika thing ?

What machine were you running ?

Curious what was the average depth ?

Odanscoils said:

That's a lot of really cool items.
Very nice work finding that location.

What's the swastika thing ?

What machine were you running ?

Curious what was the average depth ?

Click to expand...

The swastika looking piece is probably late 1800s into the turn of the century; however the two I have found have both been alongside civil war buttons, probably just coincidence.

Regardless, that symbol was widely known as a symbol of good luck dating back even into ancient times. It has been around for nearly ever. The Nazis just high jacked it lol

I suspect they are just a compact or a match tin, something of that nature.


I just run a good old dependable AT Max, not real up to date with the times but it works great for me and I find enough to keep me interested in the hobby. In my opinion it’s more about research/site location and technique rather than machine, to an extent. I will upgrade at some point I’m sure but the AT Max is durable and works for me.

All of these signals were taken from an agricultural field so depth is different than say working a yard or park. The Eagle button was about three inches down, shallow enough I pinpointed it before I dug. The pistol ball was about 7 inches deep. Most stuff is just around that 4-6 inch range. But the ranges vary too much in the ag fields to pay it much mind in my opinion.