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First Ghost Town Hunt With The Deus II


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19 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

I feel a little more like I'm one of you.

No, you are one of us, and have been since well before this hunt.

Have fun identifying all those relics!  Looks like possibly a clock winder (T-shaped small tool in your next-to-last photo) but could have a different purpose.  Sounds like you're communicating well with the Deus 2 after not many hours with it.

Those Western ghost towns seem to hold a lot of metal of every size, shape, and composition, including a few coins, too.  You mentioned that your club has hunted here multiple times in the past.  I wonder how many coins have been found.  Presumably they got the easy ones.  Nice to have a tool like the Deus 2 capable of finding the needles in that haystack.

Now that you've found early 20th Century copper and nickel, time to add some silver!

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You joined the forum just about when I got my first detector. 😀 I'm really impressed with this last hunt, and your trash is as interesting as your finds. You also put up nice photos and a story. 👍

I'm about to hit a "dry spell", so someone needs to keep up with @strick. 🤣 All my fields are tilled now, I'm gonna have to go back to local houses and the back hill and steamboat landing. We aren't camping as much this year as last thanks to the economy and the IRS. 🤬

I'd say you were "one of us" before I felt like I was. 😀

I'm eyeing a place that used to be where a small circus was for a long time, but it's going to take a personal visit to the county supervisor. I used to work for him, he works for me now 😁

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1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

No, you are one of us, and have been since well before this hunt.

Have fun identifying all those relics!  Looks like possibly a clock winder (T-shaped small tool in your next-to-last photo) but could have a different purpose.  Sounds like you're communicating well with the Deus 2 after not many hours with it.

Those Western ghost towns seem to hold a lot of metal of every size, shape, and composition, including a few coins, too.  You mentioned that your club has hunted here multiple times in the past.  I wonder how many coins have been found.  Presumably they got the easy ones.  Nice to have a tool like the Deus 2 capable of finding the needles in that haystack.

Thanks everyone! For a little background on the location, it was a coal mining town from 1902-1915 and at it's peak, the town had almost 4000 people. The town and all the houses were company owned and the miners were paid in script and tokens which were only good at the huge one block long company store, so it is a little surprizing that there were any coins at all there. There have been quite a few old coins, tokens, tags, and relics recovered there over the years.

I am very happy with the way the D2 performs in iron. That was my main reason for getting it and I was not disappointed. I didn't have to dig all the iron, but I was pretty much digging everthing to get familiar with the machine. I also wanted a bunch of square nails for my test garden, if I can ever get my wife to quit planting flowers in it. 🤣

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Very nice hunt! Congratulations on the old wheat and v-nickel. It’s a great feeling finding something you’ve never found before. You’re doing what you need to do to learn a machine and that’s dig a lot of targets to see what it’s saying. Good job! 

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Do keep telling yourself "The V nickel is a Barber" Say it at least 3 times. 😀 Had to do that until I found a Barber Quarter, almost 2 years. 😵 

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3 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Do keep telling yourself "The V nickel is a Barber" Say it at least 3 times. 😀 Had to do that until I found a Barber Quarter, almost 2 years. 😵 

I know you're kidding around.  Although Charles E. Barber did design these, you're the first person I've ever seen refer to them as 'Barbers'.  The accepted name is "Liberty Head Nickel" although 'V-nickel' is common as it's the only USA coin (AFAIK) with a 'V' -- Roman numeral five, containing any metallic composition.  BTW, the 1883 intially didn't have the word 'CENTS' under the V, leading to unscrupulous (if not outright illegal) gold coating to pass them off as $5 gold pieces.  That was fairly quickly corrected during the initial year but many millions of both types were minted in 1883.

Naming of coins, both official and popular is an interesting study unto itself.   (Well, 'interesting' is probably overstating things.  :laugh:)  The nickel that followed the Liberty head is referred to as both 'Buffalo' and 'Indian Head'.  Ironically 'buffalo' is itself a misnomer since the animal depicted is a bison, but that's another inaccurate title that is common outside of numismatics.  (Should 'Indian' be 'native American'?  OK, I know better than to go there in today's contentious climate....)

Since I'm pretty sure Barber only designed one USA 5-cent piece (nor did he design any other coin containing nickel), calling the Liberty Head a 'Barber' is in the least unambiguous.  Annoying is when people completely misrepresent coin names -- e.g. calling modern USA 5 cent Jefferson 'nickels' (or Lincoln cents, for that matter) as 'clad'.  But, yes, I tend to be a stickler, but IMO for good reason -- communication becomes muddled/confused when people arbitrarily assign their own names for things, whether out of hubris or simply convenience.

Now, your superstition about not finding Barber quarters (or dimes or half dollars?) until you call Liberty Nickels 'Barbers' -- that's a topic for another lecture (err, discussion 😁).

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2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I know you're kidding around. 

Haha, busted by the authority! Just glad you didn't start your post with "Surely you can't be serious".

Never imagined I'd be called out for calling a "V" nickel a Barber, just as we don't call Indian head cents "Longacres", while it does have an old-timey ring . 🤣 Thanks for validating my ignorant lack of ambiguity. 😀

I was merely offering the good Cap'n some humorous solace, apparently he has not come across some of the older coins. It's kinda a tangential reference to "there's no place like home"...

My first old coin ever was an 1809 Classic Bust half cent, not counting the modern coins and cut pistareens I dug near and around my house.20220523_174550.thumb.jpg.bc30e6a4764f81eac9a4ca15f7fed1ad.jpg

As usual it was in crap shape. 😵

I've dug a bunch of IHPs and lots of wheats, all coins floating around the time of the Barbers. My first V nickel came from the river about a year ago, when I looked it up I saw that Charles Barber designed it, so while everybody was posting Barber dimes and quarters I was able to convince myself I found a Barber too. 🙄 I haven't yet dug a V nickel in all that great shape, and was impressed by the Cap'n finding one that was nearly clean.

If you Google "Barber nickel", the site acts like it's what the Liberty Head Nickel is called. 😁 I don't know my posterior from my elbow about coins for the most part, but I'm very interested in knowing, I got the red book on your recommendation, and it is a good read as well as a reference. Haven't made it to 1883 yet... 🤣

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