Find's Treasure Forums

Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!

You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.

Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.

Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.

Click here to register!



Need Support Help?

Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you

A Couple Outings

UtahRich

Well-known member
I managed a couple outings this week.

The First was Memorial Day morning. I tried to get out a little early while everyone was taking the opportunity to sleep in.

I first stopped by a large park that I have been frequenting. I wanted to try a new area and thought it would be the perfect time since there were only a handful of visitors there this early. A couple of deeper targets were very difficult to recover, the soil was already hardening after the last rain. This area would need to wait for a good rainstorm to soften it up.

I packed back up and drove out to another area I had been hunting off and on. I wandered around for a couple hours only picking up clad coins and decided to move over to the far side of the property and see if I may have some better luck.

Finally I stumbled across a deep target between a couple very old trees that was in the 8" range and reading with a high tone. it was coming up with a 10-18/40-42 reading. I messed around with my settings to see if I could clean up the signal a bit. The target turned out to be a 40's wheatie. At least it was something. About 50' away I came across what I was sure was a silver coin but it was with a large null and was being impossible to pinpoint. I finally gave it a best shot pinpoint in motion mode and cut a deep plug. Nothing. And Nothing with the pinpointer. I brought the big coil back around and it seemed like the coin was more on the right side of the hole. I took a bunch of dirt out and tried the pinpointer again. Ah, a target. but way off center. I found a silver Rosey at 7" on edge.

I rescanned the hole with my pistol probe. Nothing. I cleaned up my mess and putt everything back and swung one last time over everything and Bing, another silver sound but this time over to the left. i went through the same trouble as with the other Rosey, about a foot away to the left of the first and also sitting straight up and down.

That was a headache. but I did get to silver Rosey's out of it. My first Rosey's with the E-trac. All the other coins have been Merc's and a Barber.

I moved around the corner of the building and began sweeping the barren dirt underneath an old pine. It was adjacent to a sidewalk. I picked up a shallow zinc'er reading and about walked away but popped it out and was surprised to find an old Utah Sales Tax Token only 2" deep. I search around the tree a little more carefully and found a low conductive target reading around 9/25. It was also very shallow. Out popped a 194x-S silver Jefferson Nickel. I need to clean off some sap with some turpentine when I get a few minutes to get the rest of the date. This is the first silver nickel I've found with my E-trac. I've been trying to 'focus' on low conductors and see if I can start turning up more old ones to match all the silver dimes and old pennies. So far, so good.

I hunted up and around the corner back to where I had started when first arrived and hunting a steep little embankment the went down to a sidewalk. I've hunting this area dozens of times. But somehow I missed a Silver Rosey, my third of the morning. I picked up some more clad and a couple more Sale Tax tokens. Finding the small tokens is always a good sign since they are small like a dime and usually indicate there are other goodies in the area.

The take for the day was 3 silver dimes, 1 silver nickel, 1 wheat, a few sales tax tokens and a handful of clad quarters and dimes.



This evening I swung over to an old neighborhood and decided to see if I couild get permission to hunt some private yards. I've had my eye on a house with a grassed lot next door for a few years but have never caught anybody home. I stopped and rang the bell and ...... nobody came to the door ... again. So, I worked my way up the street hoping to find somebody home. Nada. :sadwalk:

I spotted an old house across the street that had my name all over it. And they weren't home either. But the neighbor was. And she was as nice as could be. The house was built in 1904 on a sandstone foundation. The original family lived in it until 1927 when it was sold. The new family moved in on May 21st, 1927, the day Charles Lindburgh landed the Spirit of St. Louis in France. :usaflag:

She had very little huntable front yard because of her gardening and flower beds but said I was more than welcome to hunt the large parking strip area between the old stone sidewalk and the gutter. :bouncy: The EMI was AWFUL. I tried to noise cancel 3 times and had no luck. I turned down the sensitivity to 15 and set in on chan 2 and finally received some reprieve and began hunting.

The ground was very clean. I was sure that it had been hunted before. I picked up a couple shallow rotting zinc'ers; depth 3". I slowly made my way along and finally got a good signal on the lower half of my depth meter, reading like a deep wheatie. I shouldn't have been surprised when up popped a 1927 wheatie. Thank you Mr Lindburgh. I picked up a couple pieces of trash and then came across a real if'er. Big null with a high coin reading for one direction. I pinpointed as best I could and took a 5" plug. Target still in the hole. I pinpointed with the pistol probe and found the target off center. I popped up the large token in the picture, Good For 12 1/2
 
Thanks for the story and the pictures Rich! Man you guys are always finding the tokens there in Utah. I'm starting to wonder if that was a mainstay there? Did they expire out and people threw them away or just lose them like any other coin? I've only found one, so far. Congratulations on the finds!

NebTrac
 
Nice finds, especially that token. I'm not sure there is a book on Montana tokens but my guess is that you found a nice token since it has a pictorial (lion's head) as well as a swastika (a good luck symbol at that time). My guess is that it was a saloon and that Davis & Montgomery were the owners. Libraries and historical societies have city directories where you might be able to find more info, including the era it was used. Regarding NebTrac's questions - people lost tokens like they would lose coins. Tokens were a lot more prevalent, especially in the late 1800s to 1920s. My guess is that some were tossed out when they were no longer used at the place that issued them or the place may have closed making them worthless (except to collectors!). I know tokens are routinely found in early dump sites. Thanks for sharing your finds and HH!
 
Fantastic,Thanks for sharing,I love old tokens.
LabradorBob
 
NebTrac said:
Man you guys are always finding the tokens there in Utah. I'm starting to wonder if that was a mainstay there? Did they expire out and people threw them away or just lose them like any other coin?

NebTrac

Many tokens fall into the low and middle of the Target ID world with nickels, pull tabs and square tabs and consequently get detected and dismissed as garbage.

Tokens aren't unique to Utah or the West. During prohibition in the 20's and 30's, there were A LOT of gambling parlors (speak easy's) all over the country that had slot machines that typically accepted nickels. Many enterprising individuals would slug the slot machines to get $$. The same with vending machines when they were introduced and becoming popular. It was an ongoing battle between the operators and the sluggers. Gambling parlors and vending machine operators would remove the slugs from their cash boxes and try to get rid of them so they couldn't be used again. Some threw them into local lakes, oceans or rivers, some were thrown into outhouses or simply kept in a big container in the basement. If you came across one of these discarded token hoards you may find thousands of nickel sized tokens and slugs.

Some businesses used trade tokens as part of their business. If you came in and made a purchase, a portion of your change may included a trade token Good For 12 -1/2 Cents In Trade or 25 Cents or 5 Cents. If you accepted the token, this guaranteed your future business. If these businesses went belly up, the tokens were suddenly worthless and would be thrown out in the yard, or given to the kids for play money, or used as target practice, or as a washer or a slug for a vending machine.

I hunted the yard of an old house with a buddy of mine in the middle of nowhere Utah and we found about 15 tokens from the same business in North Dakota. Each time I dug one up, I thought I was finding a really deep nickel. Each time another token.

Tokens are one of the more fun things to find because there is a story behind each and the business they represent.

Good luck finding some out there,


Rich
 
Thanks Rich! Appreciate the "token" of wisdom!!

NebTrac
 
Top