1 Hr 45 Min Hunt Produces A Few Oldies At A 150 Yr Old Pillaged Park

[Raphis]

Hello Friends,

Last Thursday, I had a couple hrs of free time to go on a hunt.  I decided to try my luck at one of the older parks in my locale.  This park has been hunted so many times by the locals over the years, not to mention I have hunted this park over 100 times in the past 13 years (but only about 10 times with my Nox).  This park has a plethora of non-ferrous trash, iron, and a good bit of EMI, which obviously can mask an older, deeper find.  I love the challenge this park poses to the old coin TH’er.  It’s not a very large park, either, but the old coins/tokens/jewelry (7-9+”) were numerous here.  I have over 300 silver from this park, over 1500 wheat pennies, and close to 100 indian pennies.  However, a decent half day hunt from this park today would be 5-6 wheats, and maybe an injun if you’re lucky.   Finding silver from this park today is a real challenge.  So, for a couple hrs last week, I took my Nox to this park, with the hopes of digging a few oldies.  I noise cancelled and ground balance my machine in the area I was gonna hunt.  My  machine was still jumpy from EMI, but that’s the norm at this park.  I wasn’t willing to drop my sensitivity below 23 because the deeper targets are quite faint/obscure with respect to audio.  If you swing your coil too fast or too slow you’ll go home empty handed.  I saw some older plugs just a few feet from where I was hunting from a couple months back (I remember finding a few silver/wheats on that short hunt back then).  My first target I located sounded like a deep injun, but it turned out to be the enameled copper/brass Star Of David pin.  My next target was so obscure and deep, that I had to swing/wiggle my coil from every direction possible for over a minute just to tell myself that I should dig this target.  The ID numbers were bouncing all over the place (from deeper iron and nearby shallow trash), but I narrowed my coil wiggles over the spot that was repeating mid 20’s ID’s.  At 6”, my pinpointer was still silent at the bottom of the hole.  It was hard to say if I had to dig deeper or widen my hole.  There’s a mod I made to my Propointer that increases the depth by almost 2” (you can find the mod on a number of YT vids, so with the mod engaged on my propointer, I started to hear the target off to one side at the bottom of my plug.  After a couple more inches of hard-packed dirt removed from my plug, I saw a flash of silver.  It was dime sized and well worn.  After reading the date, I couldn’t initially tell if it was 1892 or 1902....What do you guys think the date is??? It’s a Philly mint.  I was so pumped after finding that coin!! I rechecked the bottom of the plug with my pinpointer and there was another target next to the dime, but it was only a small, rusty nail.  I only dug some deeper pieces of aluminum and a couple bullets in the immediate area to the barber dime over the next 30 min, so I decided to finish my short hunt at an adjacent section to my parked car.  That’s where I found the Rosie and all the wheats, along with the Bally’s Aladdins Castle token.     It was a very successful, short hunt for me that produced some elusive oldies. With deep, elusive, partially masked targets in the ground, one can never give up hunting a site with that criteria.  Let it “rest” for a while if you get skunked on a hunt at a site like this, but never say “I’m never going back there again because there’s nothing left to find!”....the most elusive keeper finds are also the most rewarding to find!

 

HH,

Raphis - Dan

[ROCKINGCM]

Good hunt And a nice story Dan.  

[Tom_in_CA]

Great play-by-play.   You have an excellent ear for turf-cherry-picking !

 

[Raphis]

1 hour ago, ROCKINGCM said:

Good hunt And a nice story Dan.  

 

49 minutes ago, Tom_in_CA said:

Great play-by-play.   You have an excellent ear for turf-cherry-picking !

Thanks for the replies, guys! 👍🏼

[GB_Amateur]

Here are a couple photos for your perusal:

https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1902-10c/4827

https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1892-10c/4796

It's difficult for us (well, for me) to discern from the photo you show.  But note the triangular top of the 8 in 1892 compared to a more rounded top of the 9 in 1902.  Also, look at the 9 in 1892 vs. the 0 in 1902 -- quite a difference.  I think there is enough detail remaining on your coin to determine at about 90% confidence which you have.

Is that the oldest park in LA?  Nice finds for such a short hunt.

 

[Old Line Paul]

5 hours ago, Raphis said:

I  decided to try my luck at one of the older parks in my locale.  

What do you consider “older”?

 

[Old Line Paul]

5 minutes ago, Old Line Paul said:

What do you consider “older”?

Never mind! My bad! I didn’t read your headline first.

[Raphis]

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Here are a couple photos for your perusal:

https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1902-10c/4827

https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1892-10c/4796

It's difficult for us (well, for me) to discern from the photo you show.  But note the triangular top of the 8 in 1892 compared to a more rounded top of the 9 in 1902.  Also, look at the 9 in 1892 vs. the 0 in 1902 -- quite a difference.  I think there is enough detail remaining on your coin to determine at about 90% confidence which you have.

Is that the oldest park in LA?  Nice finds for such a short hunt.

 

GB,

The park I hunted is one of the oldest in LA.  Not sure it’s “The oldest”, but it has produced more barbers/injuns than any other park in LA for me.  

 Thanks for the help on the barber date!  I’m still not real sure of the date after looking at the coin countless times..🤔

[Valens Legacy]

Great finds and nice story on how you found them.

Good luck on your next outing.

[GB_Amateur]

8 hours ago, Raphis said:

I’m still not real sure of the date after looking at the coin countless times..🤔

It's tough.  I think it's a 1902.  The main reason I say that is the thin 'slit' of the opening on the 3rd digit -- looks consistent with a zero.  Besides this narrowness, If it were a 9, the opening width should max out and then show signs of narrowing.  I don't see that. 

To add to the identification difficulty, the second digit does look a bit like an 8.  However, I think the pitting (prominent on Liberty's chin and neck) is eating into the RH side of the 9, making it look like an 8.

I'm going to say ~70% that it's a 1902.  I can't completely rule out the 4th digit being a 3, although I don't think it is.

If you have a scale that reads to 2 decimal places in grams, I'd be interested in knowing its weight.  How much loss in weight has the wear caused?  (Fresh of the press it would have been 2.50 g.)