mapper65
Member
Thought I would give everyone an update on the 1840 home site that my brother (hotrod53) had mentioned the other day. The three of us loaded up the truck and drove about an hour and a half to the site. It was a hot one yesterday but sometimes the thrill of hunting an old site seems to lessen the weather conditions.
The site was old farm property in rural Pennsylvania that hotrod53 had been eyeballing for many years. There was a log home on the site that was eventually torn down. A few weeks ago he saw a gentleman on the property and stopped and asked permission to hunt it. That guy was very nice and said "sure you can hunt it, but I'd like to know what you find". It seems as though this guy bought the property which appears to be 75 acres or so and basically keeps the area where the log home was mowed and has about 5 other acres planted with some type of crop. You can kind of see where the old home was to the left of hotrod53 in the attached photo.
Within the first few minutes hotrod53 pulled up a a lincoln. A little while later I pulled up a lincoln and a minute or so after that I pulled up a penny that felt pretty smooth like a wheat but was really cruddy. Our mother who is still detecting at the age of 70 something was right there with us pulling up a wheat. All 3 of us are using X-Terra 705's.
I'm sure some of you guys have experienced sites where you just find coins left & right. This was not one of them. We took some water and sandwich breaks throughout the day and talked about how were really surprised that a site this old was just not producing. During one of the breaks we tried cleaning up the smooth penny that I found and my brother thought that it might be an indian. He could see through some of the crust and faintly see what looked like the markings of the back of an indian but it was hard to tell for sure.
After one of our breaks I switched from the HF 10.5" DD to the MF 10.5" DD. For those of you that have read some of my previous posts, the MF 10.5" DD is one of my least favorite coils in our Pennsylvania soil but I wasn't seeing great results with the HF like I typically do so I thought what could it hurt. Within two minutes after switching coils I found a quarter. This quarter was very dark in color like most coins are when the cladding has worn off. I looked at the quarter closely and much to my surprise it was a 1941. This was the first time I have seen sliver come out of the ground not looking pretty close to it was the day it was lost. Finding the 41 quarter gave us some new found hope that maybe we would find more silver. Unfortunately that was the only silver for the day and my next to the last coin found at this site.
When I got home I was able to use the brass brush on the unknown penny and got it just clean enough to tell that it was an 1886 Indian. This is one of the worst looking pennies that I have ever seen. See the attached pictures. There must be something in that soil that really attacked the coin and the silver on the 1941 Quarter. Surprisingly, everything else that we found was not in too bad of shape.
After 5 hours or so at the site covering about 3 acres with (3) 705's our coin count was:
hotrod53 - (4) Lincolns, (1) Quarter & (1) Wheat
mapper65 - (1) Indian, (1) SIlver Quarter, (1) Wheat, (2) Lincolns, (1) Clad Dime
mom - (1) Wheat, (1) Lincoln
Just as we were about ready to leave the owner stopped by and asked how we did. He made it sound like we could stop back whenever we wanted and also mentioned that if we didn't check other parts of the property that we were welcome to.
The site was old farm property in rural Pennsylvania that hotrod53 had been eyeballing for many years. There was a log home on the site that was eventually torn down. A few weeks ago he saw a gentleman on the property and stopped and asked permission to hunt it. That guy was very nice and said "sure you can hunt it, but I'd like to know what you find". It seems as though this guy bought the property which appears to be 75 acres or so and basically keeps the area where the log home was mowed and has about 5 other acres planted with some type of crop. You can kind of see where the old home was to the left of hotrod53 in the attached photo.
Within the first few minutes hotrod53 pulled up a a lincoln. A little while later I pulled up a lincoln and a minute or so after that I pulled up a penny that felt pretty smooth like a wheat but was really cruddy. Our mother who is still detecting at the age of 70 something was right there with us pulling up a wheat. All 3 of us are using X-Terra 705's.
I'm sure some of you guys have experienced sites where you just find coins left & right. This was not one of them. We took some water and sandwich breaks throughout the day and talked about how were really surprised that a site this old was just not producing. During one of the breaks we tried cleaning up the smooth penny that I found and my brother thought that it might be an indian. He could see through some of the crust and faintly see what looked like the markings of the back of an indian but it was hard to tell for sure.
After one of our breaks I switched from the HF 10.5" DD to the MF 10.5" DD. For those of you that have read some of my previous posts, the MF 10.5" DD is one of my least favorite coils in our Pennsylvania soil but I wasn't seeing great results with the HF like I typically do so I thought what could it hurt. Within two minutes after switching coils I found a quarter. This quarter was very dark in color like most coins are when the cladding has worn off. I looked at the quarter closely and much to my surprise it was a 1941. This was the first time I have seen sliver come out of the ground not looking pretty close to it was the day it was lost. Finding the 41 quarter gave us some new found hope that maybe we would find more silver. Unfortunately that was the only silver for the day and my next to the last coin found at this site.
When I got home I was able to use the brass brush on the unknown penny and got it just clean enough to tell that it was an 1886 Indian. This is one of the worst looking pennies that I have ever seen. See the attached pictures. There must be something in that soil that really attacked the coin and the silver on the 1941 Quarter. Surprisingly, everything else that we found was not in too bad of shape.
After 5 hours or so at the site covering about 3 acres with (3) 705's our coin count was:
hotrod53 - (4) Lincolns, (1) Quarter & (1) Wheat
mapper65 - (1) Indian, (1) SIlver Quarter, (1) Wheat, (2) Lincolns, (1) Clad Dime
mom - (1) Wheat, (1) Lincoln
Just as we were about ready to leave the owner stopped by and asked how we did. He made it sound like we could stop back whenever we wanted and also mentioned that if we didn't check other parts of the property that we were welcome to.