Some CW bullets and relics

[silversweeper]

Here are my combined finds from several different hunts. Some days I hunt all day and am lucky to find one bullet, other days I hunt an hour and find three...go figure. Got a couple of pieces of a broken spur (no luck on finding the other piece, could be in someone else's collection already), one very heavily chewed three ringer, couple of decent general service staff buttons, couple of melted bullets (one 58 cal 3 ringer and the other a 44 cal pistol bullet), one large turned brass piece with a hole all the way through (upper left in the larger group of relics) any ideas on that? Also are a pair of button like pieces (right side of the larger group picture). Anyone know what those are? Are they from the sides of a kepi maybe? In the bottom of that picture is a fired 36 cal St. Louis arsenal bullet, a very cool find I think. HH to all!!

 

[Cajuncoinhunter]

Very nice assortment of CW finds....

 

[Larry (IL)]

You get one of these ......

 

[DigginDeepSouthLA]

Very nice finds.

 

[Dirt slinger]

Wow, what a nice collection of stuff. That "chewed" bullet, is that an actual pain bullet? It sure looks like teeth marks. If it could only talk.
Good finds.
Ken.

 

[silversweeper]

Not sure if the bullet was chewed because of pain or out of habit. I have found several chewed bullets in different sites, and all by human teeth (have yet to find one that was gnawed by animal teeth although I have seen pictures of some that others have found), this one is the most heavily chewed. It is quite nearly chewed flat. Most of the others I've found still at least have a mostly bullet shape. Only part on this one resembling its original bullet form is the nose. I've heard/read that some soldiers actually developed a habit of chewing bullets, possibly from boredom and possibly from past experience with biting the bullet while in pain. Can only imagine what chewing lead that much would do to a person's health over time. Of course if it was chewed while the soldier was in pain, I imagine many of those guys weren't going to make it anyway and a little lead poisoning wouldn't have shortened their life span much. On a different note, when I first figured out that those two pieces in the first picture were parts of a spur I thought I had dug another piece of one but couldn't recall what I had done with it (figured I'd tossed it in the trash because I was sure it was part of something else and more modern). I found that piece in my pile of "whats-it's" this afternoon. Guess it will go into the box of relics now. Wish I could find a whole one, or the other part to the broken one!