A 'Spectacular' hunt nails a coin that predates European settlement by sixty years!:ausflag:

[Mick in Dubbo]

I went down to Sydney to watch both my sons perform at the School Spectacular last week end. I packed the SE and although I only had 1 chance for a single hunt in the early morning of Saturday morning, it was well worth it. I had to go with plan B as the place I was going to hunt was in use. The hunt was fun with a few goldies ($1 and $2 coins) coming at regular intervals while mixing the tones up between standard and smooth tones. About an hour into it, I got a sweet tone and decided to dig it (without looking at the meter). It was only 2 or 3 inches deep with a small square hole in the middle. It's my first Chinese coin find.
I talked with a Chinese lady that I work with and she was able to tell me the name of the Emperor Yong Zheng. She said that she thinks the coins is most similar to a 10 cent piece. She also surprised me father by pulling out a brass looking coin that had the inscription of Yong Zheng's son on it! It seems that the Chinese like using them as lucky charms. Yong Zheng ruled from 1722 to 1735 which means that this coin is around 280 years old.The first fleet arrived in Botany Bay in 1788.
Sorry about the picture quality.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 181497 dubbofloodDec20100183.jpg]

 

[MNCoinhunter]

A very good day...congrats !!

 

[widebody]

[size=large]just a stab in the dark saying that's probly your oldest coin and find? if so, how ya gunna top that in the future? finding anything is fun and surprizing, but finding something that pre-dates the finding of the country. that's amazing.
the chinese probly beat feet back to china when they found out all the critters you folks have down there want ta kill ya. went back to the safty of the panda.
congratulations on your find.

HH [/size]

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Yep! Actually, my oldest coin to date was 1917, so I smashed it. Finally got past the 1900's.
The Chinese came out here in the 1850's during the gold rush years. They were treated quite poorly for a long time. I think that folks were jealous of them because they were efficient at recovering gold from worked out areas. I suspect that this coin was dropped more recently by someone doing Tia Chee in the park. there were several groups doing that while I detected.
Most of those nasty critters will leave you alone if you don't stir them up. I had a funny situation happen back in the late 80's when a German chap camped with us in our tent. While he slept, the poor guy had a dirty great Huntsman spider walk across his face. He nearly died of heart failer. it happened about 5 in the morning. Like any good host, I slept though the whole lot and only heard about it from a couple of other folks that were with us. I didn't tell him about the scorpion that i found in the tent a couple of days later. i don't think he would have coped. The scorpions here are that venomous. no more than a bee sting. Folks that travel over here that have heard how poisonous our snakes and spiders are, tend to be pre occupied and nervous of them. While I hate snakes myself, provided you act sensibly in the bush, you should be OK. 90% of times, when a snake bites you, it doesn't inject venom into you. It's just saying, leave me alone. (you are not on there menu.) All the same, if you do get bitten, you treat the bite the same as if it did inject venom, just to be safe.
Mick Evans.

 

[TokenDigger]

Very neat find and congratulations on smashing your oldest coin record. We periodically find Chinese coins in NE Ohio but we believe they were used as decorations in the late 1800s to early 1900s, especially on ladies sewing baskets. I've heard some were found in the western US at old railroad and mining camps where Chinese labor was used.
Thanks for the critter report you have there. Makes me thankful that all we have to contend with are mosquitoes, chiggers, and other bugs - nothing like you have (especially snake wise). Then again, there is the "white hell" (snow). Currently have about 20 cm in the yard and blowing like crazy.
Happy Hunting & Happy Holidays!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Those chinese "cash" coins circulated for up to 200 yrs. it seems. For starters, they represent "dynastys", (50 to 70 yrs. each?) not individual years. And even then, they were minted by the millions, and must've sat around in jars or chests, then brought out by immigrants getting ready to travel. In short, the age has practically nothing to do with time-of-loss/circulation (unlike most other coins, where you would assume a date is relatively close to circulation time).

Those coins can be found in CA, that predate the site they're found at by 50, 100, or 150 yrs., for example.

Humorously, one of these coins was found by an archaeologist in the pacific northwest, during some digs at an indian midden (pre-contact) site. They dated the coin to something like the mid 1600s, which is WWWaaaYY before recorded European incursions into that area. So the archaeologists were all abuzz about the possibility that the Chinese must have beat the Russians and other europeans to the Oregon/Washington area. Afterall, you can't argue with the date on a coin can you? haha. Just goes to show that sometimes md'rs know more than the credentialed archies.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

sorry, double post n/t

 

[kschae4]

Congratulations, Mick. Great find. This site is well documented to help id Chinese coins. http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/china/china8.htm#ching

Though I live in New Jersey, my oldest coin dates from The Ching Dynasty/Emperor HSUAN TSUNG
AD 1821-1850 /S-1512, "BOO CIOWAN".. I orginally thought it was rusty washer, when recovered.. Good Luck

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Thanks for the link. I downloaded it into my favorites for future reference. It's very handy.
I agree with you Tom. The Archies can make you chuckle sometimes. They are also a great source of info, so long as they don't get too far in front of themselves like you described! Kinda like like some art critics.
Mick Evans.

 

[kschae4]

Most welcome

 

[widebody]

[size=large]i been watching you tube vids on prospecting in the south west territories? well i start to wonder about snake bites out there. your country has the three most posionous snakes in the world. and out there it would be the eastern tiepan. the number one in the world. i think i wouldn't cope. out of 160 types of snake in your country 132 are deadly. then there's the little white spider that bites and you don't feel it. then your body parts start falling away and you can't stop it. i don't think i could cope. these would have to be rare in occurance or the population would be darn near zero. i still couldn't cope. love to watch the gold prospectors using the minelabs though.them guys are digging three foot holes chasing after less than a gram of gold.

HH[/size]

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Actually, we have 9 out of the top 10 most venomous snakes in the world. Only 2 of those are aggressive. If memory serves me correctly, the Tiepan is not aggressive. I saw a doco a few months back that looked at the Tiepans that lived in the grass, right in on of the biggest parks around the city area of Perth (Western Australia). and despite there being reasonable numbers of snakes and a lot of situations of people passing only meters away, there has never been a recorded snake bite from this area. They are shy. Our Brown snakes are right up there and I had a very close brush with one of those a couple of years ago, when I was riding my push bike home from work 2 years ago. I live in a county town 250 miles north west of Sydney and work in an abattoir (meat works) 5 miles from home. As I approached a railway crossing, only a foot off the road, was this brown snake, just lying, sunning himself. I just about produced my own gold nugget as I passed him! I barely had time to pull my feet up to the cross bar, almost putting them onto the handle bars, as I was right on top of him before I saw him! fortunately, it was just as surprised to see me, and headed back into the grass. You wouldn't credit it, but the next day, only a mile further on, I came across a Red belly black snake, just as close to the road and it also just about gave me heart failure. Fortunately I saw that he'd been killed by a car. I wouldn't want to do that much more often than that.
One of the up sides of these really venomous snakes, is that they have relatively small fangs, so if you are wearing gatters or some other similar lower leg protection that is designed for that sort of protection, then even if they had a crack at you, then it should reduce the risk of the snake getting it's fangs into you.
Yeah; I heard stories about the White tale Spider. Nasty little critters. there bite is similar to a lot of lizards and has to do with the bacteria in their bite. The infected area can keep coming up reinfected on and off for the rest of your life depending on how bad the bite was, although it doesn't always happen like that.
Watching those doco's can be bad idea, as they make you more aware than you need to be. I saw one a few years back about the most dangerous insects in the world and the jumping ants in Tasmania (around suburban Hobart) came up. (I believe that they are really wingless wasps.) these critters are actually predatory and if for whatever reason, if they target you, will if you are within a certain distance of them, come after you. they kill around 35 people every year. And guess where I'll be in just over a week. Yep, Tassie. I think I'll just pretend that I never heard about them, and only worry about them if they such cause a problem, otherwise your imagination prevents you enjoying a beautiful place.
Anyway, I'm waffling. Catch ya soon.
Mick Evans.

 

[Aaron]

Thats cool mate! WTG!
Congrats, Aaron

 

[dmitchstevens]

well worth the trouble