schoolofhardNox

3 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Finally looked at all of the 211 coins I dug at this campground.

58 quarters, oldest was 1979

50 dimes, oldest 1967

21 nickels, oldest 1964

82 pennies, oldest 1960. 20 1982 or older.

Throwing out 17 of the pennies because they are too crusty or mangled.

$21.20 in two and a quarter days! Actual time spent was about 14 hours.

Sad there was no silver, but glad to have learned how to dig coins fast and deal with EMI, and got some tiny relics and jewelry, one possible gold item.

Must be that they were dropped after the silver was pulled from circulation. So I'm thinking the late 80's early 90's was the start of them dropping coins there. Hey don't throw them mangled pennies out.... torture then by melting them and casting something with them. Zincolns deserve a cruel death 😄

Nice draped bust large cent!! Just missed the Liberty capped ones.  Flat buttons and early large cents.... your in a good spot.

Someone lost there lucky coin 😄 In great shape too. Recent drop for sure.  Great find!

Nice copper. I usually tooth pick around the date gently and rub with my fingers to see what the date is. I rarely find that series half cents for some reason. Great find.

Awesome hunt. Rough waters must be brutal on the body after a while. Day off the next day I'm assuming? 😄

Let's see the back of that oval buckle. That one looks like a knee buckle. Is it pewter or brass? Great find!

Great hunt. Keep pounding that place to get some of the older stuff that's hiding deeper. The buckle in question looks to me to be a suspender buckle rather than a colonial buckle. The back side would ID it better. If it looks like it was stamped when made, as opposed to being solid, then it's a suspender buckle. Plus the little curled piece with the tongue part is like a suspender buckle. Ages range from the mid 1850's on up.

Nice, fancy gold piece. It seems that for rings, people turn to cheaper stainless steel, tungsten, etc. But for religious items, I'm seeing more gold crosses and pendants being lost than before. At least they are losing gold 😁

19 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Ironically I appreciate the fact that the DFX, by today’s standards, is very stable, compared to the sparky machines we get now. Sometimes a well behaved detector is a nice change, and the DFX is nothing if not well behaved. There are times I do not need to hear every staple or flake of aluminum in the ground. Long story short I went back to DFX from V3i for the third time, because it actually is a little more toned down, and plays better with my Bigfoot coil.

Funny, I remember when I got the DFX that I thought it was too sparky compared to the Eagle Spectrum which was smooth as silk. Now I look back at the DFX and go .... That's not sparky! 😄

8 hours ago, Joe D. said:

   I think both disciplines have their place! But there is a fine line between everything being hidden away in a museum for only academics to view! Or hidden away in someone's display case, or closet, for their own enjoyment! Especially when it comes to objects that are no longer in context (situ) in farm fields, beaches etc..! On private, and public lands!

   I think the Eurpeans have it set up with as good of a balance to both sides as you could get! Both sides benefit! And few issues with artifact thieves!

   And before anyone gets their shorts in a bunch, this is a personal observation, not a political one! I value both disciplines!😁👍👍

agreed.

18 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

🤣 Got one more possibility for you. Lots of birds drop oysters/mussels everywhere here. I find 'em in my back yard. Oysters are rife in the rivers, uncovered at low tide. That must be a lot of work for them, but these birds are BIG.

Stumbled across info on that project, it was interesting. They at least give a nod to detectorists. There are some projects here like that, when I am confident in my ability I may get involved. Glad you get a chance to help out! 

I'm sticking to the UFO theory 😆 Yep random shell drops are probably common by the shore. Here inland, there are small but packed shell middens that are the result of repeated layering of discarded shell. Their trash pits. The good thing is that there are usually other items discarded as well. When they are metallic, that is when they are located by detectors. The projects are great when they come about. Pequot War, King Philip War, various battles at waterways, and swamps, war of 1812, etc... haven't done a Rev war site yet. If you have a chance to get involved, try it out. It just takes some discussion on how to keep you digging technique in line with the requirements they need in order to log the artifacts in accurately. Once they understand that you understand how to do it, they usually turn you loose. Most don't realize how many artifacts you can locate in a single day. They are not used to volume. In the first project, they would just love to recover one brass kettle point that they know should exist, along with some round ball. That was done the first day along with probably 30 or more war related items. Total for that part of the project probably ran well into the hundreds. Following the rest of the trail probably led to 500 other war related items and many kettle points. That is what will make metal detecting a necessity for battle field archaeology.

7 hours ago, Joe D. said:

   Great story! And thanks for teaching, and helping to save history! Archaeologists should be more respectful towards, and work better with, detectorists! We shouldn't ALL be punished for a few bad apples!

   I sharpened the signet ring best I could with limited software! Almost looks like two birds looking at one another!! A bird of prey and a dove? Or firebird and mate? Maybe representing war and peace, or male and female, or life and death?? There appears to be a clear center line, inferring some type of separation between the two! Except one "wing" of the "dove", which appears to be over the chest of the other "bird" on the left! And the two curved outer lines closing them in; not unlike a modern heart symbol, or open ended "earth to sky" oval,  suggesting some type of relationship, and/or ascension upward! Maybe a warrior being led by an ancestor!?

   JMO!! I'm no professor or archeologist! But I am a fan of iconology, and ancient history! And of course, more "modern" history, since that is the majority of what we have in the States!! And i did stay at a Holiday Inn Express!😁👍👍

 

Thanks. I'm lucky to work with this group of people for over 10 years now. I don't see archaeologists in general working toward a joint effort in preserving history together unfortunately. Probably what will happen is the new generation of archaeologists will learn to detect just enough to find stuff. Then they will not need us, thinking they got it all. There will always be some cooperation between the ones that understand that we have vast experience over someone new coming into the hobby, no matter how many degrees they have 😄 But to some extent, I can see their point. Just in the past year I have seen posts of people finding multiple Kettle points from some "private" sites. They don't realize they are removing artifacts that could lead to an unknown village, trading post or a summertime hunting camp. In a perfect world, that information would go to archaeologists who could then test pit the area locating shell middens, pottery, bone and wampum. History is lost that way, so I get their point. You should see how excited they get over shells in the dirt😲. It usually means occupation, aka a hut or wigwam. So, again looking over the image on the ring, I'm now thinking it depicts a scene of plowed land and then a background of hills and maybe some sort of occupation (house, barn etc...) Probably a typical 17th century English homestead. Or it's UFO's 😆

2 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Wish ya had a slightly clearer photo, I'd lens it for ya. Nice ring tho! Mystic is a cool town. Been there many times.👍

Thanks. That was in the field, so maybe there will be better pictures later. Maybe an x ray would show it all. They do that on some coins, but the only draw back is that you see both the obverse and reverse in one image 😄 It is a nice area down there by the coast.

Love those dimes. They look so old, better looking than if they are cleaned up. Great saves.

So it was my yearly visit to talk and basically train some new field school students about metal detecting. I do this pretty much every year and it's just some basic training and some hands on digging and pinpointing. Just very basic stuff. This year's students numbered about 20 from all parts of the country, and I must say they were a pretty enthusiastic bunch. Nice to see the youngins showing some effort. 😄 This is one of my favorite spots to detect, as it is a Native village site that dates to the 1630's and happens to be one that the English attacked on their withdrawal from Mistick Fort on May 26, 1637. This place just keeps giving up artifacts and by the time we are done there, it should give an extremely detailed account of how they lived and worked.  Of course everything is documented by archaeologists and added to the collection and we keep nothing (except 22 bullets 😡). Hey free lead 😁 I didn't get pictures of all the scrap brass I found that day but did get this picture someone took of a signet ring I found. Almost looks like some kind of bird (or Thunderbird?) of some sorts. Any ideas anyone? It's not a beach, but still fun to detect.

3 hours ago, kac said:

Partial quote:

Bottom line in the real world if there was a descent target near or under that flat bit of iron it would be missed by the user because it is masking without any audio response. If I hunted in all metal the sound is offset from the target much like magnetite does.

 

Oh..... you should try that. I would be curious if it actually did mask the good target if there was one. If it hears the good target, maybe that glitch is what we have been praying for, in not responding to iron but hearing something good under or near it. 😄 You never know.

I rotated that copper to maybe show a head. Also the small circled area almost looks like an number or letter.

5 hours ago, PPP said:

Hope you are wrong man!! I watched a live stream kellyco video recently on facebook.They tested the machine not on the beach but on the pasture i think,then i got some hope this machine may find the way out to the market.Nothing more than that since then and i'm not so sure right now as well about releasing and as you said they may scrap the whole thin.Hope some people which has some info come now and give us some update!

I tried mine on an open lot. We were looking for musket balls and large iron case shot. It did fairly well on the deeper iron. No issues with the soil but we were on the coast, so it is a mix of dirt and sand. I would think that the machine is set to salt and it may not like other types of soil. I'm not sure how it would handle basalt or fertilized farm fields??

4 hours ago, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

Carolina and I got our 2,........😲

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sell them for 10K a piece! 😄

Nice looking Large cent. Perfect combination of patina and remaining dirt to give it some nice contrast and an aged look. I wish all old coins were in that nice, readable shape.

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

So does that count as your 200th silver coin of the season?

Yep....... Actually, I shouldn't even count any of the war nickels since the contain so little silver. 😄 But it did come from that beach. I'm finishing up the clad and putting it away with the rest of the previous years clad. I bet a lot of people leave war nickels with their clad. Sometimes it's hard to tell you have one because they are green like regular nickels, other times they are clean as can be.

So I started to tumble the clad that I found for the season mostly to clean up the Buffalo nickels and this turned up? 284 nickels tumbled and one of them ended up being a 1943 War nickel. ❤️

10 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

 

So , you got skunked ....Is that all there was ? 

Yer skembarasskn' me ! skuh kuh kuh kuh kuh

C'mon depositors !    Gettin' close,, I can already smell the targets ..

 

Yep. I got skunked. I'm hoping I get skunked again next year too 😍 😄

1 hour ago, Jim in ma said:

OUTSTANDING   99.9% of all detectorists will only be able to dream of silver like that!!!!  

Thanks Jim. I had to fire the guy that was seeding my silver for me 😄 Unreliable he was. Seriously, somehow there was enough sand removed to reveal a lot more coins than I imagined were there. I'm hoping it continues because it's a long beach and if other areas open up like that, then high coin counts can be expected. Hopefully some gold as well.  If you want to get out and hunt some beaches off season together, I can hunt the dry while you hunt the water. That way if the sharks get you I can pull you out! 😉

12 hours ago, Mikeguard01 said:

I can't get anyone to come back here either. Good test bed for extreme depth.

I wish the GPX was waterproof. I would love to see how it handled at a target free beach like that. Minus the sharks of course😬

So here are the silver totals for the year and for 3 seasons from this one beach. Clad pictured is only from this season. For people new to the hobby, try and never think something is hunted out. Eventually it may end up that way, but don't limit yourself to that thinking. I would have never guessed there is this much left at a beach. It's true that the shallow stuff gets hunted out rather quickly by regular hunters, but there are areas and depths that are still original. The color of the coins tell me these are not recent drops and that they have been there from about the 40's thru the 80's. Who knows, once I clean all that  clad in the tumbler, I may pick up a stray War nickel in the bunch. 😁