Most of you who've seen my posts recognize the fact that I don't normally post finds....
I have absolutely nothing against those who do, and in fact I encourage it...I'm just private by nature.
Today, I'll bend a personal rule, and post a few pics of a find....maybe it will encourage someone to get out and detect...but first the story of this hunt;
Yesterday, I took the CTX out hunting in the morning (to beat the monsoon rains) with a fine fellow detectorist who goes by CZconnoisseur on the XP Deus forum here.
He's an accomplished hunter, knows his machine well, and is a consistent finder of old copper and silver in heavily pounded 'worked-out'
parks.
(Which as we all know these days, takes considerable skill and effort.)
I showed up a little groggy, having gotten about 4 hours sleep, and we started working a particularly trashy area together.
CZconnoisseur almost immediately got a deep hit with his Deus, that I confirmed looked good to the CTX...hovering around 12:40-ish....and he proceeded to pop out two Indian Head cents stuck together.
A few minutes later, he gets a similar sounding deep signal, and I once again confirmed the similarity to his first target, and up pops another Indian Head!
I had been chasing gold/foil signals...apparently hoping to add to my aluminum collection...but decided I needed to seriously find some high tones in the mess.
Found a good signal at 7ish inches and popped out a 1920 wheat.
Then, hunting in pinpoint trace mode among the trash, I saw the beautiful 12:45 appear and disappear on the CTX display a few times, and the trace paint a nice clean blob, so I dug.
Right around 8 inches popped up a pretty little encrusted silver disk.
Note that in our ground, any coin can get a crusty mineralization deposit and/or corrosion, and this was no exception. It was hard to tell what it was at first.
Being careful to dab with water, I could just make out that it was a Merc.
Being cautious not to scratch the coin, I water cleaned enough of the date to see that is was 192x something.
CZconnoisseur half jokingly said something about it perhaps being a 1921, so (since he can focus up close better than I can), he took a look for me.
"It is...I'm not kidding...it's a key date 1921," he said. Since I couldn't make it out, I kept my reserve in case I used my loupe at home to find it wasn't.
The sun came out for a while and heated everything up, and aside from a few more wheats and clad, we didn't find much more before it clouded back over and the thunder, lightning and torrential rains began.
Back home, I dried out, and gently ran enough water over the coin to see the 'D' mint mark on the back. Whee.
There's still some ground 'crust' easily seen on the coin...(it's not pitting), but because of it's potential value, I don't dare clean it any more myself...I'll probably have it professionally cleaned and graded.
So here's what this 1921 D Mercury dime currently looks like after being in the ground for just shy of 100 years:
mike
I have absolutely nothing against those who do, and in fact I encourage it...I'm just private by nature.
Today, I'll bend a personal rule, and post a few pics of a find....maybe it will encourage someone to get out and detect...but first the story of this hunt;
Yesterday, I took the CTX out hunting in the morning (to beat the monsoon rains) with a fine fellow detectorist who goes by CZconnoisseur on the XP Deus forum here.
He's an accomplished hunter, knows his machine well, and is a consistent finder of old copper and silver in heavily pounded 'worked-out'
parks.(Which as we all know these days, takes considerable skill and effort.)
I showed up a little groggy, having gotten about 4 hours sleep, and we started working a particularly trashy area together.
CZconnoisseur almost immediately got a deep hit with his Deus, that I confirmed looked good to the CTX...hovering around 12:40-ish....and he proceeded to pop out two Indian Head cents stuck together.
A few minutes later, he gets a similar sounding deep signal, and I once again confirmed the similarity to his first target, and up pops another Indian Head!
I had been chasing gold/foil signals...apparently hoping to add to my aluminum collection...but decided I needed to seriously find some high tones in the mess.
Found a good signal at 7ish inches and popped out a 1920 wheat.
Then, hunting in pinpoint trace mode among the trash, I saw the beautiful 12:45 appear and disappear on the CTX display a few times, and the trace paint a nice clean blob, so I dug.
Right around 8 inches popped up a pretty little encrusted silver disk.
Note that in our ground, any coin can get a crusty mineralization deposit and/or corrosion, and this was no exception. It was hard to tell what it was at first.
Being careful to dab with water, I could just make out that it was a Merc.
Being cautious not to scratch the coin, I water cleaned enough of the date to see that is was 192x something.
CZconnoisseur half jokingly said something about it perhaps being a 1921, so (since he can focus up close better than I can), he took a look for me.
"It is...I'm not kidding...it's a key date 1921," he said. Since I couldn't make it out, I kept my reserve in case I used my loupe at home to find it wasn't.
The sun came out for a while and heated everything up, and aside from a few more wheats and clad, we didn't find much more before it clouded back over and the thunder, lightning and torrential rains began.
Back home, I dried out, and gently ran enough water over the coin to see the 'D' mint mark on the back. Whee.
There's still some ground 'crust' easily seen on the coin...(it's not pitting), but because of it's potential value, I don't dare clean it any more myself...I'll probably have it professionally cleaned and graded.
So here's what this 1921 D Mercury dime currently looks like after being in the ground for just shy of 100 years:
mike
sube