In a town in Europe, the temperature on December 29, 1990 was 26 degrees and it was so cold that there was a layer of ice on top of the coil of my White's 6000 Di Pro which I had bought four years earlier back in the States. I had been metal-detecting since 1976 and had heard stories about silver dollars being found all across the United States. Although I had wanted to find one so badly that I could almost taste it, so to speak, I had never found a silver dollar in all the years I had been detecting! But, Dec. 29, 1990 would be the day that I found something even better! There was a huge downtown park, where Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show had performed in 1906, that I, and a couple of my buddies, had hunted extensively and, on the above date, I wondered where in the park I should hunt next. After chaining my 18-speed Peugeot mountain bike to a lamp-post, I spotted a tree in the park which seemed to be standing there all by itself in an area we had not yet hunted. As I made a bee-line for the tree, I found a coin dated 1925, about four feet from the sidewalk. Further out in the park, I found a beat-up World War II machine gun shell. When I got to the tree, I began searching around the base and found nothing, until I got back to the side of the tree where I had started. I picked up a solid signal and on the detector's numerical scale, which ran from 0 to 100, the target registered 52. But, the needle was also lying across the O on the word "gold"! At first, I thought I had found another Italian 200 Lire coin which is gold in color (while overseas, I found coins from 25 different countries). When I dug down about three inches, out popped a golden-colored coin, covered in sand. With a toothbrush I always carried, I gently brushed the sand away and realized that it wasn't an Italian 200 Lire coin. There was an Indian head on the front of the coin with the date, 1909, below it. I thought, "That's strange! It's not a 200 Lire piece!" But, I didn't know what I had found, until I brushed off the back side. I saw an American eagle with the words "Five dollars" underneath it, along with an O mintmark. To say I was shocked would be an understatement! Here was a 1909 O Indian Head Five Dollar Gold Piece, an American coin, several thousand miles away from the mint where it was produced! However, someone had tacked a solid gold loop on the top edge, so it could be worn as a necklace piece. Boy, was I glad that they had lost it! Unfortunately, I can't show you a photo of it at this point in time, as it is locked away in a VERY safe place, along with my other European finds, which includes a 2,000 year old Roman coin with Caesar Augustus' face on it. If you've never heard of him, you can find him mentioned in the Bible, book of Luke, chapter 2, verse 1, where it tells the story of Joseph's and Mary's trip to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. Now, that I'm living back in the States, I'm hoping to find gold coins, in the near future, which haven't traveled quite as far as my first gold coin find. When I find one, I'll let you know!