Silver Is Where You Find It?

[GB_Amateur]

I got off to a pretty good start (for me) this year in terms of hours (over 60 thru March 23) and old coins (19 Wheaties and 9 'other old coins', 6 of those being silver).  Then, like most of you, the pandemic put a damper on things, but of course there are worse results from that than simply not going detecting.  Slowly over the past 10 days I've started to get back out, but with very limited time so far (3 hunts for 4.5 hours total).

One of my New Year's resolutions was to try sites I haven't been to previously.  That has really been the reason I've found 9 old coins the first 3 months.  While honoring the stay-at-home recommendations other than daily walks and once/wk shopping trips I studied one of my parks and had an idea to try a couple spots that I hadn't searched previously.  I start with a bit of background on what I know about this particular park, based upon internet research.

1) This park was established in 1969.  (More on the significance of that shortly.)  I believe the entire park was part of a farm/ranch which was all pasture.  Nearby (unfortunately not on the park grounds but in a modern subdivision) was a 19th Century house and a couple outbuildings which were part of this homestead.  On park grounds was a 1/4 mile long lane from which the house was accessible.  The house disappeared from maps & photos around 1950.  A couple years ago (4th of July 2018) I found the only previous keeper in this park, near the lane just mentioned -- a Civil War era cartridge box plate.  From what I've researched there was not in the last 110 years a single building anywhere on what is now the park land.

2) The park is dominated by baseball and softball fields which are fenced in and kept locked unless there is a scheduled game in progress.  There are walking trails and tennis courts and a large paved parking lot.  Until last year there was a fairly large fenced and netted area with baseball & softball batting cages w/pitching machines.  There are some wooded areas and a maintenance building plus some recently erected solar panels (fenced and locked) but no picnic areas, tot lots, swimming areas, etc. that you often find in parks.

When on one of my walks I noticed that for the two baseball ('hardball') fields, a couple bullpens (warmup areas for substitute pitchers) were outside the locked fence.  I figured these might be decent, possibly even for jewelry that might have come flying off accidentally during warmups.  I searched one of those last week (only finding 31 cents in modern coins) for an hour and on Sunday tried the other one (2 hour hunt).  [Eqx 800 w/11 inch coil, Park 1, 5 custom tones, gain = 22, recovery speed = 5, iron bias F2 = 5, ground balanced and noise cancelled.]  I was getting similar results -- a few modern coins mixed in with the occasional aluminum can slaw / pulltab.  When it was quitting time I sloppily swung my way back to my vehicle and right at the edge of the recent excavation (removal of the aforementioned batting cages) I got a strong 26-27.  I usually check the strength meter ("depth meter") but this time I didn't.  The signal was pretty strong and quite clear, and the TID was tight -- all of this indicating the target wasn't deep.  For clad dimes and copper alloy pennies, when deeper than 5-6 inches in my soil it's common to see high 20's mixed in with low 20's and everything in between.  But when those are shallow they seem to stick to TID's in the 24-26 range.  As usual I optimistically made a mental wish ("be silver!") but that usually doesn't help.    Popped out a ~3 inch thick plug of moist clay and put the pinpointer in the hole, getting a strong response -- I was very close.  Carefully scooping around the pinpointed signal I pulled out a clod of dirt which showed the white reeded edge of a silver dime!  Immediately I thought "wow, that's lucky and it's gotta be a Roosie" but carefully picking off some mud I could see it was a Merc.

OK, not that big of a deal for seasoned coin hunters.  However, here is where the mystery (and thus the title of this thread) enters.  1969 (year park was established) was 4-5 years after the USA had minted the last of the 90% silver coins for circulation.  It didn't take long (meaning starting late 1965 - early 1966) for people to realize that the reason the gov'mnt had switched to clad coinage is because silver was going up in value to where there was more silver bullion content in coins than the face value.  There are a lot of ways to distinguish (date being the surest, but most people don't want to go to that much trouble).  Viewing the edge of the new (at that time) clad coins revealed an orange stripe -- the pure copper core.  That was the easiest way to know silver, because that orange color was absent.  A careful eye (again, not what most depended upon) also would detect the brighter color of silver over the 25% Ni, 75% Cu alloy cladding.  But -- and this is where the real mystery lies -- it didn't take a rocket scientist to recognize a Mercury dime.  Those (plus Standing Liberty quarters and all halves except Kennedys) got swept out of circulation most easily.  I always use 1970 as the cutoff (although obviously there is no true hard date) for when the public removal of silver coins from circulation reached completion.  (Some others use even earlier years, btw.)  Could this Merc that I just found have been dropped after the park was established?  Unlikely but obviously not impossible.  My standard 'solution' for this kind of mystery is to hypothesize that backfill was brought in from an older site -- something quite common then as now.  BTW, the Merc was found about 1/2 mile from the previously mentioned home and lane, so as best I can tell, way out in the pasture.  I guess a rancher/farmhand could have dropped it while out on his horse....

If you haven't already departed, bored with the length of this thread, I point out the other objects in the picture.  I'm still unsure exactly what happened here but I explain.  I was getting a 21-22 TID on a target, but only from one direction.  As I rotated around, I heard only the iron grunt.  The 21-22 (when detector properly positioned) was sufficiently consistent that I suspected I was picking up the head of a screw, bolt, or (most likely) a roofing nail.  I dug about a 2" deep plug and the Carrot said nothing was in the hole, nor in the plug.  Hmmm.  I swung the detector over the hole -- nothing.  I swung the coil over the plug and heard only an iron grunt no matter the coil orientation.  Then I saw (based upon the TID and bright finish) what I was pretty sure was silver.  In the photo you see two pieces but it was intact until after getting it home I tried to clean it with a toothbrush and the 'spike' part broke free.  An air test only added to the mystery.  The ring shaped shiny part didn't register at all.  The spike is magnetic.  Presumably the clasp part is aluminum (by itself it TID's ~12 on the Eqx).  Spike alone grunts out "iron".  Weighing the ring part, measuring its size and doing a Q&D ratio said its specific gravity is ~1.1+, so clearly plastic, probably aluminum coated.    Interesting that when the clasp is on the spike it either (air test) TID's in the high single digits to low double digits (aluminum foil range) swinging perpendicular to the spike or is completely silent swinging along the spike's axis.  Note:  I always run with no discrimination -- iron wide open.  This is apparently an example of silent masking that Tom Dankowski talks about.  Still don't know how I got TID 21-22 in the ground but I think I'll go back, as maybe there is an aluminum screwcap or similar nearby that I missed finding.  (Would it be too greedy to hope for an Indian Head penny??  😁)

[kac]

Iron in the clasp can change the range it comes in. That is good as some detectors when discrim iron out you could completely lose the target as it filters out too much. One the things I like about the analog machines is they don't have that sort of filtering. I small piece of iron can make a small silver louder depending on machine bias.

For the old coin in a new park, there is a good chance the dirt for the park came from somewhere else or had been pushed around from the old land as in the case of the 3 large cent's I found in a building that is fairly new that was put in what was once a farm. I even found an 1877 seated dime in a baseball diamond 2" in the sand just between 2nd and 3rd base! I assume the sand was trucked in from somewhere else as the diamond was put in around the 70's

Very good possibility there are more older coins in the area. Maybe inside the locked fences? Wonder if you can get permission to check them?

Pretty cool when you find something that old in new areas.

[normmcq]

 What features are on the back of the Merc?

[GB_Amateur]

7 hours ago, normmcq said:

What features are on the back of the Merc?

It's the standard reverse with no mintmark = Philadelphia.  Now I'm wondering why you asked -- hoping for a Roosie reverse?  🤪

[normmcq]

 Actually, when I  posted about a naked lady on the back of a Merc I didn't tell the whole story. This happened to me when I was about seven or eight years old. { 70 or more years ago}  There were probably many more Mercs in circulation than Rosies. The guy that started me looking for the naked lady conned me out of that dime.He said give me that dime and I will treat you to a show, He showed me the bridge with the bear walking across with the tree leaning over it.Then he showed me the San Francisco mint mark, he said that S is a snake. Then he said do you see the naked lady under the bridge? I said no! He said what do you expect for a dime?  He put the dime in his pocket and that was the show. I always look to see if she is on everyone I find,

                                                      Norm

[GB_Amateur]

Well, he would have gotten my dime, too.  So you're saying there is no naked lady?  (You might get my dime yet, Norm.)