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Hit a new site with my buddy Chris and it was a blast. I tagged these with Deus and Equinox...https://youtu.be/gdCJ9jPw4vU

Most of you do not know the history of metal detecting and my family. We go back to the early 1970's, my dad, uncle, 1 cousin and I all were pretty avid TH'ers back then. In the 80's and 90's we took it to a new level and started concentrating more on older sites and doing research. Our old coin finds were better with a few Barbers and Seated Liberty silvers. The gold coin had still eluded us for all those yrs. We knew it was just a matter of time. Anyway about 20 yrs ago, my little brother started getting serious with detectors and making some nice finds. It was about 20 years ago when the McMullen clan broke the gold coin barrier (it was me) with an 1852 $2.50 piece found in OR. Then about 10 years ago on 4th of July I was greedy and hit another (my 2nd) GC of the clan. My relatives and family started getting a little jealous and well deserving. Especially my little brother who happened to be on that trip with me when I hit #2, It was a 1902 $5 found here in Idaho. Well last week I was with my brother in OR and his Equinox put a smile on his face in more ways than 1. Not only did he find a gold coin, but also a Barber and Seated Liberty Half. Me, I managed to find a clad dime, which is the 1st modern coin that I know of to come from this site. He does not do much with forums, but did say I could mention them and share the pics. I wanted to let him have his glory and then after a few days I'd share. Here is his 1839 $5, 1907 Barber Half and 1877 Seated Half. And you know what? I honestly was a little jealous for about a minute and then I realize his tears were real. I then became the proud big brother of another gold coin find for the McMullen clan. I'm so proud of this guy for continuing to go and just keeps on swinging. Now that I think back, it was meant to be and I was able to be there and share the precious moment with him.

Another trade token and what I think is a love token. It's the same size as a dime and the reeds match up. Here's a pic of the hotel.

Finally got out to the beach, lot of wash but wanted to give my seahunter a run and try out the m2 headphones instead of the stock waterproof ones. M2's make a world of difference in the audio on that machine, can hear the target much better especially tiny targets with the discrim kicked up. Dug much less iron as I can tell better what I am hearing. Anyways not much there as the storms ripped the dunes down and the banks are 9-12' up where they used to be only a few feet. Besides the wash I got all excited and thought I found another trime but instead it was a 1951 netherlands 10 cent. Amazing how it held up next to the other coins I found in the area.

I just got back from a short 2 hour hunt on a 1830's property and found the usual clad, pull tabs, brass and a wheel weight. BUT I found an odd dime sized silver coin. It looks like its dated 1885 all inscriptions are unreadable except the date. It has a roman numeral three with a wreath around it and a woman with some kind of armor head plate. This is a coin I've never found before, Any clue???

Today I finally had a chance to get out of the house for some much needed detecting. I decided to go to an old church just down the road that has been around since 1859. Seems that nobody has been there before as I found almost $3.78 in new coins. I had dug almost a pound of trash before finding anything before 1975. I then tried closer to the foundation where there was a ton of roofing nails and then I had a solid 34 tone that was down deep. I'm not talking 6 inches but it was almost 11 inches down when I found it. There at the bottom of the hole was a beautiful silver quarter, not just any quarter but a 1926 and it looks just fine to me even with the wear on it. After going a little further down the wall and another hundred nails, I found a very nice Indian Head penny in great condition. This IH is in better shape than the 1889 that I had found in my back yard several months ago and is the older brother of it as it is a 1877. For the 2 and a half hours I was out there I think that I had done enough for the day as I was getting to cold because of the wind. I hope you enjoy the picture of my new coins for my collection.

Got these Fri. yard hunting.

Saying I had an epic weekend would be an understatement! I loaded the latest Equinox firmware update to try the new FE2/0 iron program, and it did not disappoint! I've posted about trip reports from this site several times over the years. It's always been a fun site IMO, you just never know what you'll dig, and it dates back to the early 1800's with history into the 20th century. It saw it's share of the Spanish, Mexicans, Emigrants, and Americans. It's getting difficult, lots of flat iron still left, but good finds have been thinning out, easy finds have been gone for years. TomCA won't even hunt there any more. This trip turned out to be absolutely EPIC! Unbelievable really, because there have been trips where neither Tom nor I have dug a single coin at this site, so to dig five period coins in one trip was astounding. Now if these were just five common 1800's coins, I would've left there an extremely happy camper, but two out of the five turned out to be astounding finds! An 1865-S Seated Liberty Dime AND a 1856-S INDIAN PRINCESS $1 GOLD PIECE!!! I am absolutely over the moon from this hunt! I got all the coins on video, if you have a chance, take a look: Without further ado: Right after she was dug and I just ran some bottled water over her in the field: Thanks for looking!! GL&HH, Cal <<<<<<<< THE ORIGINAL CAL

The coin is badly burnt by NE acid soil, and the coin has gone may rounds in the ring with the ploughfound in southern CT with flat and dandy buttonsI can just make out what I think is “N N• R”. maybe the first N is something else, or the R is an E or an A, and the • dot is an acid blisterno other detail showingIts roughy the size of a george II hapenny, but letter are much smaller than on a HapennyVery heavy and thick 2mmbut egg shaped 26mm x 30mm

Back from my MX Trip and wanting to get caught up with some readings and now posts. Approx 20 yrs ago I was detecting an old mining camp for coins/relics & found my 1st gold coin ever (only took 25 yrs of detecting). 1852 quarter eagle = $2.50 piece. Fast forward to last weekend, my customer Steve M is less than a mile from where my coin was found & he does this. What's even more thrilling, is he found it with a GPX-5000 while looking for gold nuggets. And...his is much better condition too. 1st two pics are his and the others of the worn out one, of course is mine. It is the exact same date and size of coin I found 20 yrs ago. I guess it is sometimes ok to find the wrong kind of gold. Anyone else have such unexpected digs when prospecting?

It had been a year since I had a chance to hunt with my friend Strick. We finally were able to get together for 4 days of relic/coin/ring detecting. On day 1 we went to an old standby location (ghost town) we had visited many times in the past. Strick found 2 silver coins, an 1876 and 1877 Seated Liberty dimes in the space of 1 hour. I found a few buttons. Day 2 we took his boat up the Delta to a party beach where I hunted in the water for the first time ever. I had a blast using my CTX 3030 just wading up to my waist. I found 2 silver rings which beat the costume jewelry Strick got so I was the king that day. On day 3 of my visit with him, we were off to a private property in the low Sierra foothills of California to meet up with Strick's friend, the ranch owner, and detect an early gold camp. We have been hunting this area for a few years when our schedules will allow. The last time I was here with Strick he had found a Quarter Eagle and some seated coins while I had only found buttons. On this day things were not looking so great for me as I had only found one nice button and the usual assortment of period trash while Strick had scored a nice cast buckle wreath. We had just taken a break and had compared finds with the ranch owner, discussing the "whatizits" we had found. It was getting later in the day so we went back to detecting. I had earlier got into an area with quite a bit of scattered iron which developed into a nail bed which was obviously the remains of an old structure. So I returned to the heaviest area of nails which was about 250' away from the location of Strick's gold coin, and was carefully searching through the machine gun iron signals when I hear a definite signal but scratchy signal on my Deus. It was jumping around depending on which direction I swung but was repeatable. Just another bullet or cartridge I think as I pop the plug. Then I see about a quarter of a gold coin sticking out of the plug as it crumbles. I didn't stop to savor the moment or reflect on my find like you hear so many times. I started screaming like a 14 year old Valley Girl, " I found a gold coin" and waving my arms at my friends who were a short distance away. The coin was an 1849 Half Eagle. It has been my fondest detecting desire to find a gold coin and now I had realized it. On the journey back to Stricks I looked up the value of the coin as people always ask. I didn't much care as I did not plan to sell it but that is usually the first question from family and friends. I had not cleaned it well or looked at it too closely but I knew it had some wear so I figured a ball park figure of $500? It wasn't until we returned to Strick's place that he was looking at it through a low power microscope and he says" Her headband doesn't say liberty it says Moffat". I had never in a million years ever dreamed I may find a Territorial coin but I knew in an instant that I had just scored the find of my life. On Day 4 we went to a location of an old military base. Strick has taken buckets of military paraphernalia from there and he scored again. I found 2 pieces but they were severely corroded. I would say this has been the best detecting trip I have ever been on due to finding the Territorial Half Eagle. All the thanks go to my buddy, Strick and the ranch owner for getting me on that location. I will ask Strick to post his pics of his finds.

Found this today...

I had an amazing hunt yesterday with two friends, at a farm field (most recently planted in corn) near an old house site. Normally, when I get a signal in the 38-39 range it ends up being a large trash object, so often that I sometimes pass them by without digging. In fact I have never in my two years of EQX800 ownership dug any "keepers" in that range, But this one had a nice tight pinpoint so I went ahead and dug, and at about 9 inches out came an 1884 Morgan silver dollar! I was absolutely stunned, truly a dream find for me. Not five minutes later, and just five feet away, the Equinox registered a nice 35 and this turned out to be a lovely 1902-O Barber half. Of course, I started gridding the immediate area closely but couldn't find a single additional coin. My buddy did the same with his CTX and also found nothing. So it apparently wasn't a buried cache, just a freak drop of two coins that somehow managed to survive plowing without significant damage. Of course, having gotten used to bypassing many of those high 38-40 signals, now I'll have to pay closer attention in the future! Having a solid non-jumpy VDI and tight pinpoint are key. (I was hunting in Park 1, modified 5 tones, recovery 3, Iron Bias F2=4)

I went back to my swimming home and got 3 unexpected surprises. I didn't think this place was old enough for what came out, but, I'm not complaining 😉 No jewelry today, but the coins more than made up for it. Running the 800 in: Park 1 Recovery 5 M Manual GB 3 Iron bias F2 0 Modified 5 tones Digging signals from 0-9 and 18-40 Sens 22 Quarter hit at 32 Half at 34 Dime 26

Here's a nice little self-contained set of finds, these came out of a 1x1m area on a small pushed up pile of dirt and rubble in a local forest reserve. I've wandered over this area plenty of times before, but only now did I snag a good target. I had a hunch there had to be something of interest here but I just couldn't make it work... There was a smattering of aluminium pull tabs dumped on top of the pile to cause distraction as well. Can't work up any more targets even with the nox set at F2-0, tempted to get the pick out there and turn it all over a bit. 1873 and 1877 pennies, an 1842 groat and a silver cufflink made in 1911.

After last weekend's miserable trip and very few finds today I was off from work and simply had to try out a couple places. The first place was a new permission. All I found was a clad dime, 1 wheat penny, and a copper lincoln. Lotsa junk targets though at that place. Frustrated I left there and hit another place on the way back home I've been to numerous times. It's the same place other silver has been found. The T2 and ORX both had ran over this place and not found anything else worth digging. What a perfect place to test the new Equinox 800 at, huh! First couple targets were assorted junk items like thin wires and can slaw. I then decided to cherry pick and only dig high tones. Horseshoe mode engaged could hear all kinds of iron garbage in the ground. Turned that off and went to disc. Got a sweet high tone and it was repeatable. Dug it and down 9 inches popped out a 1934 Mercury Dime. Also found a crusty wheat penny but unable to determine date yet due to crud on it.Although the face is scratched up (I did not do that) the sides still have very pronounced ridges. The back edge is worn down a bit. Very happy to see this coin with the Equinox. The other detectors never seen this dime and I ran over that same spot multiple hunts with both the T2 and the ORX. This one place has been good to me but really think there is no more silver left now. Today was another one of those days where working hard was necessary to pull finds. One thing I am learning is that the Equinox 800 will punch deep down into the dirt to get the goodies.

Hey Guys! Remember this thing that I found on Florida’s Treasure Coast a couple weeks ago and posted about? I was so disappointed there were no visible markings to link it to the1715 Spanish Fleet that sunk during a hurricane. Well, I decided to carefully try to separate the silver sandwich with a paring knife, and was successful with minimal damage. The inside surfaces were dark and thick with corrosion but I kept working on them(rubbing on wet aluminum foil did the best...very time consuming. I don’t have an electrolysis setup yet). So glad I did it! I’ve definitely found my 1st Pieces of Eight finally (1/2 Reales likely)! Minted in Mexico between 1700-1715 during Philip V’s reign in Spain, if my research is correct. They may be little, but I’m tickled pink with them! 🙂

I went to this school yesterday but that detector went south as in not working correctly. So here I am again but with the ORX. I don’t think the kids that go to this school has ever seen a coin large than a penny. That ORX was hot on their trail . It did detect a dime of a total of three but not one quarter. So remember I’m not RR anymore but just call me Penny Digger . Chuck

Last year I moved down to Costa Rica and brought with me 2 Tesoros, the Compadre and the Mojave, and an Equinox 800. I've been dying to get to the beaches but we live inland from the north west coast beaches and we've recently opened a little restaurant in our town so there's not much time for me to get to the beach. I decided if I can't get to the beach I'm going to detect the soccer field in the center and try to get permissions from the people with old houses in town. The other night after I closed up shop I tossed some stuff in the car and pulled out the detector and walked across the street and started going at it. I found a bunch of coins,a button and some nice sounding aluminum and then I got a signal that hit right where all the coins hit, about 19/20. I thought it was another button because it had what looked like a shank on one side but I was seeing a wreath and thought it could be something good. Then when I cleaned some more dirt off and saw the 900 I knew I had something great! I think it was used as some sort of jewelry, maybe hanging off a bracelet because there's a dot of solder right in the middle on the reverse and what I thought was a shank turned out to be silver wire. It's smaller than a dime, maybe the size of a half dime but I've never seen one. It's 1 gram of 90% silver. In the year I've been here it's the best find I've made

Been hitting the dried up river and haven’t found anymore gold other than the one I found in November. So I decided to go for the silver. Dug up 2 silver coins in a littered gravel area. Not bad for a New Year’s Day hunt. The MDT is good for park hunting also. Dug a deep 1888 V nickel close to 10 inches. My CTX couldn’t do that. Settings: At the dry river. Sens 9 max, threshold 0, mixed mode, blacksand on, 9khz or 18khz. park: sens 8, threshold -1, mixed mode, blacksand on, 18khz.

We take pride in our finds and many of us display them in a man caves, on our work desks or even give some away as gifts. But we also enjoy sharing the fruits of our labor and the photos bring back so many memories. Now that the 2019 detecting season is over, I'd like to share my 3 favorite finds from the year. But what is even more cool is seeing your hard work and efforts show up for everyone to see. Yes I realize a few folks think it has all been found, but we can show them recent finds from the 2019 year. 1st favorite find of 2019 is a really rare Barber Quarter. In fact IT IS THE RAREST of Barber Quarters minted. I have not had it professionally clean and right now it looks like crap, but of all the coins I have dug up in 40+ years of metal detecting, this is by far the rarest (40,000 minted). It is a 1913-S. it was found with a Minelab EQ-800. 2nd is a gold nugget Specimen that weights over 7 ounces and has 3.55ozt of gold in it. Found with Equinox 800. 3rd favorite find has to do with skill and it was given back to the owner. After 2 different people tried to find a small diamond stud earring with no success, I was called in as a last result. Actually I had been out of town. Anyway, this small 1/4 carat diamond stud was lost in her backyard and she had the spot narrowed down to a 5' area. The EQ-800 with small 6" coil in the Prospecting Mode recovered it. Lets see 3 of your favorite finds of 2019. May 2020 be golden in so many ways with many golden grins & glory.

You may have noticed the lack of my finds postings lately. It's been a pretty lean second half of the year. I'll go into the perceived reasons in my year end wrapup in a couple weeks. In the meantime, here is a surprise find which I'm hoping is authentic. I was in my favorite local park which has grudgingly produced a few old coins (including Indian Head Pennies and Mercury dimes) and relics. When I hunt and pull out a coin I try to do a gross identification so as to know if I'm in an area producing old coins or not. If I get a bronze Lincoln penny I would like to distinguish Wheat (1909-1958) vs. Memorial (1959-1982). I don't carry a magnifier so even if my aging eyes would allow me to see a date, it is often obscurred by corrosion/scaling. As most of you know I am adverse to rubbing a coin in the wild. When I recovered the coin in the photo, I quickly noticed the Lincoln Memorial reverse and that was all I needed for the moment -- into the finds pocket and back to detecting. After I get home I soak my coins in water to get the dirt off. (Stinkin' Zincolns -- 1982 to date Lincolns are the exception. Even for the ones which haven't deteriorate beyond recognition I don't care about the dates and mintmarks. As far as I'm concerned Zincolns are equivalent to can slaw in value.) After getting the dirt soaked off I checked the date, and immediately noticed the imprint above the date -- part of the word LIBERTY spelled backward. My first question when I get an unusual find (coin, ring, relic, or even gold nugget) is "is this authentic or is it a reproduction/fake?" Certainly that was a thought that quickly went through my mind. I'm still not sure but (as you'll see below) there is at least one good sign that it's for real. Until I can get it looked at by a specialist in numismatic errors I'm going conservative(?) with 80-20 that it's the real deal. Error coin collecting is a special, uncommon branch of numismatics. I have some books on the subject and there are multiple websites. I did some digging and came to some conclusions, as always which may not be valid. One of my conclusions is that if this specimen is authentic then it is quite rare. Unfortunately 'rare' doesn't always translate to 'valuable' and that is the case with most error coins. If real, it's an oddity, a curiosity, and a collectible but the demand is small so the value (crossing point of supply and demand if you remember your high school ecconomics) is low. Time to look carefully at the photos. A friend took these pics with his Smartphone and they are better than I could have done, but I still plan on getting better pictures from another friend who has high end photography equipment. When I do that I'll post them here. In the meantime look at the obverse (Lincoln's head side). BTW, I've looked at these by hand with a magnifier and I can get better resolution, so I'll emphasize what I see that way and compare/contrast what you can see in the attached images. Note that not the entire word LIBERTY is shown backward. The 'L' missed the coin, being off the edge when struck. The 'B' is vertically doubled. In fact I think the rest of word is doubled, too, but not as clearly distinguished. Another feature occurs at 8 O'clock where the letters 'RUST' are apparent, but also backward. Now here's a clue worth noting: the location of the 'RUST' (from the word 'TRUST' in the motto 'IN GOD WE TRUST' is not consistent with the location of the backward 'LIBERTY'. Another feature which is only barely visible in the photo is a ghost rim between 9 O'clock and 11 O'clock. Finally there is a hollow 'shadow' in front of Lincoln's face (not apparent in the photo) which is consistent with the backward impression of Lincoln's head on the planchet, and consistently located with the 'IBERTY'. So how was this coin made? This is where the 'unusual' comes in -- however that is typical for error rarities. Multiple unexpected happenings conspire, and that's what makes them rare. (Further, they must get past mint inspection, although that isn't neccessarily difficult since hundreds of coins are struck per minute and there's no way the mint can afford to look at each one carefully. Rather a scan of the many coins in a bin picks up only the extreme, obvious irregularities, and not always even those.) I introduce the word 'brockage' which has been created by error specialists to describe the following: a coin is struck but when being cleared into the collection bin, either sticks in one of the two dies or jumps from one press to a neighbor press, landing on the lower die (which might or might not already contain a 'planchet' = blank, ready for the next cycle). The typical brockage strike has the *same* image on both sides, but one reversed. The coin I have doesn't fit this description but is instead even more unusual. A second rare occurrence (always present with brockage but sometimes without brockage) is a multiple strike. 'Multiple' could mean double, triple, quadruple,... and there are examples of error coins which were struck even more than that! One result of multiple (strike) brockage -- which I contend is seen here, is that each subsequent strike shows less resolution. Dies are hardened steel, made to last thousands or even 10's of thousands of strikes. A brockage coin is effectively a die, but rather than hardened steel it is a softer metal meant to be imprinted only once. So here is the scenario I came up with, which isn't the only explanation but it is a possibilty. Coin A is struck normally but its ejection causes it to land on a neighbor press where a planchet has already been placed for striking (we'll call this 2nd planchet 'coin B). In the process of ejection, coin A (already normally struck) flips over(!). The second machine's dies come together with the two coins in between, leading to the first brockage strike. The only(?) remnant of this first brockage strike is the backward lettering 'RUST' at 8 O'Clock. After the dies separate, the lower coin B fails to be ejected, nor does coin A, but there is a relative rotation between the two. (It's not clear which coin, if either, maintained its orientation in the die. However, the fact that the reverse shows no doubling makes me think that coin B did not shift in the lower die.) A second brockage strike occurs, now producing the 'IBERTY' shown at 3 O'clock. Lincoln's head, among other things is imprinted backward in the coin. Now the upper coin (coin A) is ejected but the lower coin B remains in the lower die and a third, this time 'normal' strike occurs with just one planchet/coin between the dies. This third strike obliterates most of the details from strike #2 (just as strike #2 obliterated most of strike #1 details). Finally coin B is ejected. I don't know what happened to coin A, but my contention is that the coin in the photo is coin B. The reason I contend that the first strike resulted in the backward 'RUST' and the second the backward 'IBERTY' is the clarity of the lettering. (Recall above where I mention that each subsequent brockage strike loses clarity due to the soft material of the 'false die' = coin causing the brockage strike.) In particular the 'U' in 'RUST' is quite clean and pronounced. All of the 'IBERTY' letters are smeered and in some cases what appears to be doubled. So, why do I think this isn't a fake? How would someone produce a fake? I can think of a simple example: put two coins together (facing each other) and wack them with a hammer! But if that were the case here, the final strike's forward 'LIBERTY' would show an overprint of the first 'T' in the backward '(T)RUST' and that is not present. Further, there should be other remants of the fake overstrike elsewhere on the high parts of the obverse which I can't find. The backward images that actually remain on my coin are on the low parts of the coin's field, not the high parts. So, what's it worth? A look at my (now) 45 year old copy of Modern Mint Mistakes (authors Phillip Steiner and Michael Zimpfer) which provided most of the above knowledge and details of speculation, indicates (standard) brockage pennies (recall -- both sides with same image, but one backward) were in 1974 worth in the 10's to low 3 figures of dollars, and that multiply struck coins can be in the similar range. My coin, if authentic, has both but I coudn't find this particular oddity in the book, on Ebay, nor in a quick online search of error websites. As detectorists are all too aware, though, coins with a high copper content don't tend to fare well after decades in acidic or basic soils. These flaws (damage) can drastically reduce a coin's value. And as always, it's only worth what someone is willing to pay. As of now I'll just rest on and be happy with my 80-20 hunch that I've found a true error rarity. I'll keep you informed after I get some better photos and subseqent expert opinions.

At first sight, this large silver dollar size and heavy to boot coin had me extremely excited. The eagle looked to be a gold color. But it turned out to be a token, worth maybe $10. But wow what a rush. Park 2, ID 34.

A couple friends in Louisville invited me down to search a spring on one of their properties. Louisville (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisville,_Kentucky), being on the Ohio River, was one of the earlist settlements in the USA west of the Applalachian Mountains, founded in 1778 by Revolutionary War hero William Rogers Clark, better known as the older brother of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which explored the Louisiana Purchase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase) at the commission of Thomas Jefferson. It's likely the spring was in existence well before Europeans arrived but how long it has been visited by humans isn't known. Of course I was hopeful of finding some very old coins and relics. There is currently a catch pool a few square meters in size. I didn't know its depth until I carefully stepped into its murky waters. Fortunately my hip waders were just high enough to keep me dry. The bottom of the pool had a hard (rock?) floor but a layer of mud and decaying organic matter was next and 30+ cm deep. I was swinging (more like probing) the Minelab Equinox 800 with both 6" and 11" coils. Once finding a target I (blindly) felt around with the Garrett Carrot. Searching the pool was difficult and besides a couple electric lights (unknown to the current owner) I surprisingly got no hits. I didn't search the entire pool as it was quite difficult to traverse the mud. I decided to move downstream to a manufactured series of steps (mini-waterfalls). In the very first one I got a 30 TID and was able to recover the metal disk shown in the photo. My first thought (make that 'hope') was that I had found a US half cent (first minted in 1793 and last in 1857). It appeared to be about the correct diameter. Those were made of pure copper which was consistent with the TID. I quickly noted how thin it was, but rationalized that was due to wear. I recall a story my uncle told me from when he was in the Army stationed in Puerto Rico in the early 1950's. He said that the silver coins circulating there at that time were Barber dimes, quarters, and half dollars and had been worn down to literally half their original thickness. I imagined half cents getting that much usage.... I could see no detail, but again, heavy wear can do that. Always skeptical, I wasn't ready to claim victory. The excitement began to fade when my friend pointed out that the edge was reeded. I was pretty sure that USA half cents and cents have never been reeded. As I later found out, reeding was implemented to discourage the unscrupulous from nipping off the edges of coins made with precious metals. Copper didn't qualify as precious. When I got home I measured the diameter (~23.9 mm) and thickness (varying between 1.2 and 1.3 mm). The diameter was just a bit large for half cents (which were minted with three different diameters over their years of production, from 22.0 mm to 23.5 mm). Weight was 3.38 grams. The lightbulb eventually turned on in my head. Equinox TID of 30, appearance of copper, ~1.25 mm thick, and especially telling: reeded edge, Can you now see the light? Here are the nominal size and weight of the pure copper core of a US clad quarter: 24.3 mm diameter, 1.17 mm thickness, 3.78 grams in weight. What still surprises me is the question: what happened to the cupro-nickel top and bottom layers? Unlike Zincolns (copper coated zinc pennies) and the 1943 zinc coated steel pennies, the cladding on modern US coins is rather thick and makes up 1/3 of the coin's weight and thickness. Then I recalled another discovery I had made this fall while hunting one of my local parks: I chose the oldest looking tree I could find (and it was definitely an old hardwood) and started hunting around its trunk. I recovered three coins in different locations but all within inches of the trunk, one a US 5 cent piece ('nickel') which was quite discolored (red) and corroded. I've always thought this was a sign of time in the ground and was hopeful it was an oldie. Imagine my disappointment when I got home and found it was from the late 1990's. How did it get so deteriorated? My hypothesis is that it's the decaying leaves which are more likely to survive (away from lawn mowers) next to the tree's trunk. Apparently the clad layers of this modern quarter had been attacked by the acid from the decaying leaves in the springs catch pool! Even moderately dilute acid can eat away metal if you give it a lot of time to soak, and that coin had spent most of its lifetime bathed in acidic water In one point-of-view, a disappointing find, but another learning experience to compensate. Postcript: I did search the land around the spring a bit and found the following advertising pocket knife with readable wording. I also show a pristine one whose photo I found on the internet. I really don't know the age but the company was in business from the late 1800's at least through the mid-1960's. My WAG is that it is from the 1940's or 50's.

Shook the dust off my ATP and spent a few hours stomping through the snow in the woods. Found a nice bronze skeleton key, IH in pretty good shape and this 3 cent trime which I never heard of before nor seen one. Wasn't too deep stuff tends to stay high in with the pine trees. First thought it was from a broken button or something.