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Western Frontier Relic Road Trip With Tomca


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I got my b*tt kicked on this trek.   I was using my Explorer, and accidentally broke off the rabbit ears off my 11" pro coil .  Had to hike back to civilization, get my spare machine (Deus).  Lo & behold my wireless headphones were not charged 😡  Fortunately I had wired cell-phone type earbuds.  So I could use that (instead of external speaker).   But it is awkward d/t I have to be careful with each dig not to put my knee into the breaking that.

 

But even after an hour's delay in my start-time, I have to say that Brian was still "on-fire".   And to his credit, he had chosen a hunt zone by research prior to this trek:  Studying satellite images and realizing that there was some naked terra firma, hidden further back in the trees/brush.  That wasn't far from prior producing zones.   So he knew *right* where he wanted to go.  And it paid off.  I was impressed !  It's a new chapter in our evolving collection/story from this site.

 

Here's my humble 4 buttons.  And motley age indicators .  The buttons, left to right are : a) ball bird-cage style cufflink button, b) flower design flat button, c) underwear button (so-called), and d) plain flat button.

 

Also a pix of the junk.  Not much.  Not too punishing. 

 

 

1.jpg

2.jpg

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As far as Brian's Large #28 phoenix button, this turned out to be a real fun one.   On his chart link:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rX9XFCFw-SKRiUFZfdtzFg7GIjUwzoJJ/view

 

His is the Type 1, Style 2, #28 large.   Which , as you can see, is among the rarest.   There is subtle differences in the phoenix bird's body and the crown.  But the easier tell-tale is the flames beneath the bird.   Note in red, the difference of the flames :

brian 1.png

brian 2.png

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2 hours ago, Tom Slick said:

Great finds Brian! I also think your find is part of a Chinese lock. 

PS. Tom sent me a map of your hunt sites so I should be seeing you out there shortly. Thanks again Tom. 

Tom

That's okay, it's a BIG area ha ha  Besides Tom only gets 20% of the proceeds for the GPS locations, and the rest goes to my kids college fund 😁

Yeah also I think that dodad is part of a Chinese lock, I recall seeing something along it's lines on a California Gold Rush site, they find a lot of Chinese artifacts at those sites. 

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3 hours ago, Tom_in_CA said:

I got my b*tt kicked on this trek. 

Can you repeat that? 😉 

I went with a hunch and for once it paid off.  More often then not it doesn't though haha  I have no doubts that on our return trip we can continue to find additional little voids/clearings and make additional finds.  After that you'd have to start bush whacking 🤔

Your bird cage ball button and that decorative flower flat button are old, I'd say 1700's to very early 1800's all day long!  It was a good hunt, no doubt you'd found more if you wouldn't have had a wardrobe malfunction. 

Next time, I think we're on to something!

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2 hours ago, Tom_in_CA said:

Re. the type shank on Brian's silver button (which is same as on my flat plain button).  According to this chart, they would be the type A shank.  Which , as you can see, is 1700s.  Nice !

5.jpg

Thanks for posting that, I'm saving this for future reference!

When I saw the shank on the back of the silver button I knew it was 1700's at the newest, I absolutely love it!  I found a plain flat button years ago with a similar loop design and had dated it to the 1600-1700's, so when I saw that it was that design and silver, I was ecstatic!

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6 hours ago, Cal_Cobra said:

These came from arid sandy soils that were never modern farm lands subjected to corrosive fertilizers or even worse yet, cattle grazing.  At another area we have two good sites that are mere miles apart, one is similar to the one these finds were recovered from and the finds generally come out in beautiful condition.  At the second site just a few miles away there's been a hundred+ years of cattle and a lot of the finds (especially silver coins 😡 come out with some serious environmental damage.   I love these remote sites with neutral sandy soils, they tend to be very kind to the finds, but as you will see shortly, not all of them 🙂

We are lucky to have a few early sites out west, but I do envy the Colonial cellar hole hunters back east, not going to dig any GW buttons out here ha ha  On a more serious not though, I started of mostly detecting parks and demo sites in the beginning.  Once I got into relic sites where you were digging U.S. Seated Liberties and Bust coins and Spanish reales, it really hard to get excited about killing yourself at a park to dig a mercury dime 🙂  Tom still relishes the challenge of detecting a trashy park angling for cherry picking deep oldies, but I am less enthusiastic about it then I was 15 years ago 😉

Your comment about the effect cattle ranging has on artifacts reminded me that the old time gun makers use to use cow urine to Brown Rust their barrels & iron gun furniture.

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