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a half kind of day...1/2 dime & 1/2 reale that is...

S

silversweeper

New member
Greetings digger buddies! Finally got back out to my favorite honey hole this week. Been waiting for this field to be plowed ever since last summer/fall! The landowner gave me a jingle on the teleophone on Thursday to let me know that it had been plowed and disced! I couldn't get out the door fast enough! LOL. Anywho, just a short hunt that evening as it was already close to dark time. The little bit of swinging I managed to do netted me 3 more Colonial era buttons, none very special and all with plain backs. Had a wedding to go to this afternoon so I was up at the crack of dawn and hit the field again for about 3 hours. My first decent signal was the 1/2 dime! Turned out to be my first complete seated 1/2 dime (dug two here last summer that were toasted by a fire and broken in half). The coin was covered by dirt but I could tell that under the dirt the coin was a little damaged. Not sure how but it got scratched/gouged pretty deep on one edge at some time in the past, mighty small to have been hit by the disc.....but it definitely wasn't me that did it. The scratch has age on it. Oh well, still very happy to have it and took everything that I had to wait until I got home to clean it off and see what the date was. After that I dug 16 Colonial buttons and a small buckle, then on the way back to the van (how many times have you heard that one?!!) I dug another good signal and it was a 1/2 reale. Only my second ever and first Spanish from this site. Not in the best condition, very worn and a hole through the last number of the date but.....that is a mighty old coin for my area and my 3rd oldest dug coin ever! 1790-something. This site has produced growing on close to 100 buttons but almost every one has had a plain front. Today I dug 3 that were an exception! One very large Colonial with silver gilt still in the pattern in the front, one tiny dress button with a sculpted rose on the center front, and one with a checkerboard pattern (matches a 4 hole button that I dug there last year). What a great couple of hours! Can't wait to get back there again, lots of field left to go. Been a dismal year up until now for my relic hunting, not much to brag about. But one good day can turn that frown upside down...lol
Happy Hunting to all!!
 
Awesome Hunt!!! You've got a nice little honey hole there!!!
 
Very nice finds! Congratulations on some great stufff there! Thanks for the pictures.

NebTrac
 
congratulations on your outstanding trip! i hope you find a lot more old silver and cool things at that field. please post more pics of your future hunts.

just a question for you, and anyone else, what is the correlation between these old silvers and these old buttons? i have one similar site that has given up similar age coins, very few coins, but nice, old ones, but theres a lot of these buttons everywhere and one had a little bit of silver gilt left on the front, most were plain but a lot of them have writing on the back such as London's Best Gilted, or something to that effect. Also a lot of other assorted bits and pieces, a crotal bell, etc. So whats with all the buttons? They just lost them? Or were they discarded on purpose. do they have any value, or is there any special ones to look out for?

it just seems odd to me that anyone could lose so many buttons.:laugh:

so would that be an old home site? the one site i know of like this has absolutely nothing to indicate anything special except for what my metal detector sees. i just stumbled onto this site.
 
Great finds!! You have several items from these hunts that are still on my bucket list.
 
moonshine said:
just a question for you, and anyone else, what is the correlation between these old silvers and these old buttons? i have one similar site that has given up similar age coins, very few coins, but nice, old ones, but theres a lot of these buttons everywhere and one had a little bit of silver gilt left on the front, most were plain but a lot of them have writing on the back such as London's Best Gilted, or something to that effect. Also a lot of other assorted bits and pieces, a crotal bell, etc. So whats with all the buttons? They just lost them? Or were they discarded on purpose. do they have any value, or is there any special ones to look out for?
Click to expand...

I'd love to know the answer to that question myself. I've formulated a couple of theories but can't prove any of them. Have you found any thimbles or parts of thimbles at your site? I've found parts of two. Could be that there was a lot of women sitting around this spot over the years and mending clothes as they clucked and gossiped. Buttons may have been tossed or lost in the process. I do know that my site was an area where early Americans in my area came to be directed to open land for settlement by the person who owned the plantation there. The site was subsequently used when those same settlers (neighbors then I guess) and family/friends camped when they came to visit. Am assuming that there were probably religious services at some type there on Sundays, perhaps other social functions as well. Initially we were looking at the spot as the location for former slave houses but that doesn't explain the relics. My ideas as to why so many buttons include a lot of unprovable thoughts. First we have to take into consideration the quality of thread used back then...not as strong as now. The type of clothes washing that was in practice, which was by hand, was probably pretty rough at times. Might be the buttons were lost on clothes lines? Could also be that the buttons we are finding were ones that were replaced over time and tossed aside. A lot of the buttons were gilt, which would have worn off with use. Many of mine are also missing shanks but that could have been due to ground conditions. We have to remember that clothing at that time had a lot of buttons on it. Could very well be that all of these buttons were lost during activities that took place at these sites over the years. Back then social events outside were pretty common and important, no tv's or golf courses then (or metal detecting....lol) so when something was going on, everyone came from miles around. I personally like the idea of a bunch of ladies sitting around replacing buttons and mending clothes but who knows. I'm not finding many coins here, 6 total so far and the dates span from 1828 to 1891. The buttons I've found are from the same time period.
As for value, no great monetary value in plain, damaged flat buttons. The historical value is great and if I were you, and others, I would research your site(s) as much as possible to find out what was going on there, or who lived there if possible. Once we pick an area clean of relics then there's really not much there to mark the spot for the interest of future generations. That's one reason I purchased a CTX recently. I want to record the rest of my finds with GPS coordinates so that I can get the site mapped out. Otherwise my relic collection has no significant historic, or archeological, value. I encourage everyone to document their older sites as much as possible and also, if possible, somehow mark the relics found there to give them significance. I have a couple of Colonial era sites that I have hunted. I mark all of my relics on the side that I don't display and then record my finds in a small book that I keep with my collection. That way, once I'm gone, it's not just a pile of dirty old damaged buttons and whatnots that someone will just toss or throw into a box.
 
Killer finds - congrats ! :clapping:
 
silversweeper, I have not found any thimbles, but I have found a lot of bits and pieces of buckles and other interesting items. if I had the time I would dig everything, im sure theres a lot more history in the ground there! unfortunately it was partly used as a dumping grounds like so many other places, but its always interesting to see what comes up there!
 
Awesome, Awesome finds!
 
Wow, you made some great finds! Love all the flat buttons and really love the Spanish Silver and the Half Dime! That's an Awesome site your on, Keep it up.
 
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