Old Line Paul

I’m sure this isn’t related, but I’ve started getting Kennedys in my change for the first time in decades. Four in the past few months. 

My ritual is to put every find straight into my pouch without examination. Only when I get home do I clean everything off and see what I found. That way, for a few hours at least, I can fantasize about treasure.

It’s like they say about lottery tickets: “You haven’t really lost until you check your numbers.”

That dog-like figurine looks amazingly like one I made out of clay in grade school! I had long forgotten about it, but when cleaning out my late father’s stuff, I found he had saved it for over half a century.

Thanks!

As the saying goes, “When you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras.”

I dug this near an elementary school bike rack. It’s copper, with slight traces of silver-colored plating. The name “LEAH” is bracketed with shooting stars. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the outside is a clear, convex acrylic band.

At first, I assumed it was a child’s ring. But the interior diameter is only 11/16” and the acrylic band is somewhat rubbery. If it’s a personalized ring, good thing the wearer’s name is only 4 letters. JACQUELINE would have been a tight fit! It seems both too cheap and too over-engineered to be jewelry. So I’m wondering if it might be a part of something. I tried searching internet for companies named LEAH with a shooting star logo but no luck. 
 

On 5/9/2022 at 11:11 PM, Zincoln said:

…spent one entire day working tot lots in schools I'd ignored since the start of the pandemic.   Found several nice gold items, one of which I have hopes of returning.  Also found a small mountain of bling and clad.

Wow! The tots in the Left Coast are a lot richer than they are around here!

A few weeks ago, I found a 1926 Lincoln cent. Given the age difference between the UK and the US, I think my find is older. Just saying 😁

As long as you don’t find any gold teeth…

…over something copper?

Now that Spring has arrived, the park fields I hunt are coming alive. My last few excursions, I’ve noticed that when I get a signal under a particularly luxurious weed or tuft of grass, there’s usually a penny or old clad coin tangled up in the roots. I see they sell copper fertilizers. So it makes sense.

Now if there was only a weed that needed trace amounts of silver or gold to thrive, I’d be on to something!

Is/was the beach known as a hangout for bodybuilders? In the 70’s, there was a stretch of Virginia Beach where the bodybuilders would go to work out and show off.

On 4/12/2022 at 12:50 PM, Denny said:

Sometimes a totlot will surprise you with a piece of jewelry not for a kid.

My sister’s friend lost a valuable antique ring in a tot lot many years ago. She figured she lost it pulling her glove on and off while fishing tissues, snacks, etc. for the kids out of her bag. Never found it.

On 4/11/2022 at 10:29 AM, Dirtshark said:

Finding an old style ring pull felt good after a while.

The places I detect are all relatively young. A beaver-tale pop top counts as a relic around here!

Gotta wonder how someone could lose something so big without noticing!!!

Could kids have been playing pirate in your yard during the 70’s?

$1.32? Rich tots in your neck of the woods! I’m lucky to find a couple of coins and a Hot Wheels.

The only productive tot-lot I’ve found so far is a rather secluded one near a high school. I could tell by the trash that older kids hung out there, eating lunch and vaping. 

Still, I like detecting tot-lots in the summer. Digging wood chips is much more pleasant than chipping through rock-hard dirt in the August heat. And maybe I’ll find a Mommy’s lost ring some day.

Went coin-shooting at a local park today and dug 30 items: 1 Chuck E Cheese token, 1 Canadian cent, and $1.34 in US. Very successful hunt for me!

The Canadian penny was crusty but showed hints of copper under the dirt. So, out of boredom, I started cleaning it up with my new set of André pencils. When I could read the date, I saw it was some sort of commemorative, so I looked it up online. The first image that caught my eye was someone selling a coin in similar condition to mine on Etsy for…

…wait for it…

$47,100!!!

After a few seconds of shock/greed/horror (I should have cleaned it more gently) common sense prevailed and I read the rest of the search results. A circulated 1867-1967 cent is worth between $0.25 and $0.45. The guy on Etsy must be, as we used to say in high school, “trippin.”

Still, a cool find.

(These photos don’t do my find justice. I needed to exaggerate color/contrast/shadow trying to make the inscriptions legible.)

On 3/4/2022 at 11:58 AM, Tom_in_CA said:

It was only THEN that I realized that I was still wearing a yellow vest.  And this had led him to assume we were workers.  

Yes, I suspect that if you wear a yellow vest and carry a clipboard, you can go just about anywhere and do just about anything!

This post brought back memories of my father showing us the mercury from a broken thermometer. He let us roll it around in our palms! Eventually, I remember him “soaking it up” with a silver dime. Yikes!

But then we road around in the back of the station wagon without seatbelts, and never even imagined bicycle helmets. 

2 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

What is the heart shaped or clover looking thing in the bag?

As far as I can tell, it’s a heart shaped or clover looking thing 🙄

It’s pierced as if a pendant or earring. But it’s very thin and without any decoration.  It broke when I dug it out, so I trapped the pieces in tape.

I only see these at the Post Office. Never expected to dig one up.

Found it behind the backstop of a softball field. I guess I need to add it to my bucket list so I can cross it off.

Ironically, I’ve been looking for an intact beaver-tail pop top for a long time. I want to show young people how we decorated our dorm rooms with pop top chains back in the Dark Ages.

On 2/6/2022 at 5:44 PM, JNimons said:

She had no interest in detecting, but she absolutely loved me coming home...asking how I did, and me handing her my finds box.

Sorry to hear about your loss. RIP.

My mother has dementia. She loves seeing the junk I find. When I don’t have any finds of my own, I show her some of the pictures of trash you guys post on this website. She pours over each picture with fascination. “What’s that, a key? Is that part of an earring? A nail?”

She’s more interested in the trash than the gold rings!

On 2/9/2022 at 11:46 PM, CPT_GhostLight said:

The aluminum horseshoe is facinating. I've never seen one of those and had no idea there was such a thing.

Maybe the equine version of mag wheels? I don’t know much about horses (other than I rarely win when I go to the track) but in the program they indicate how much weight the horse is carrying, down to the pound. A few ounces per hoof could mean better acceleration?

I just got back from the track a few hours ago. Down $7.80. Not bad for 4 hours of hanging out with friends.

Maybe your penny spill was actually some kid’s buried treasure.

When they were little, my mother used to give her grandchildren one Sacajawea dollar coin for each year on their birthdays. Two of my nephews didn’t understand they were real money. They played pirate with them, burying them in the backyard.

Thanks for the great story! Sounds like your father and mine were polar opposites!

When I was young, my parents had dinner with some friends. The next morning, my father mentioned their host had shown him “a milk bottle full of gold rings” he had found metal detecting.

So, I remember thinking, when are WE getting one?

But he didn’t seem impressed with the treasure, and I figured if he had seen all that gold with his own two eyes and still didn’t want a metal detector, no amount of whining on my part would help. 

My father was an artist and good with his hands, but raised a city boy with no interest in outdoorsy stuff. He had a huge studio/workshop and I have many fond memories of making and repairing things with him. But I never got that image of a milk bottle full of gold out of my mind. (In my mind, it was a half-gallon jug full to the top with treasures.)

So when I retired last year I figured it was never too late to have a happy childhood and bought a very basic machine. I’ve had a blast ever since.

On 1/25/2022 at 8:59 AM, schoolofhardNox said:

I'm surprised how many people chose to get gold class rings back in the day.

When I bought my class ring in 1979, I couldn’t afford gold so I bought one in stainless steel.

The salesman pushed really hard to get me to “invest” in gold. He pointed out that if I ever was in financial trouble, I could pawn it.

”Wow!” I said. “If I’m going to be that broke, maybe I shouldn’t be buying a ring at all.”

That shut him up.