A Short Park Hunt Reveals A Couple Of Surprises

[CPT_GhostLight]

A few days ago I went to a park in a different part of town to test the ground since parks closer to home are still pretty frozen. It was a really nice day, sunny and almost warm, and I had high hopes since this park has huge sports flields and playgrounds. The fields were still largely frozen but I could see there were small holes everywhere from the parks department aerators. I figured that could be a good sign and maybe that would make the ground thaw quicker.

I had been there but about an hour when the park started filling up with people, a lot of people. I wasn't finding much anyway and really just wanted to see how the ground was, so I started working my way back to the car when a got a signal that had a typical ring pull number but it sounded just a little too good so decided to check it out. When I peeled open the small hole I made I saw a greyish curved edge and thought, "Yep, it's a ring pull", but I was wrong. I could see a weird looking part where the tab would be and it had a stone on it. "Holy cow, it's a ring!"' I thought, "but is it real?" Turns out it was .925 silver with a stone of some kind. It looks like the aerator tagged it on the back part, but it's still intact and still silver. Well I figured that made my day and it was time to beat a hasty retreat while more people were piling in.

As I worked my way out of the field, I moved into a scrub area near a dirt trail leading off to a creek from the parking lot. I poked around the scrub a little while finding some nails and bits of iron when I hit what I thought was a dime signal. I dug down about 4-5 inches and found a square hunk of metal covered in dirt and mud laying on a rock layer. Well it wasn't a dime so I through it in the junk pouch and called it a day. When I got home and verified the ring was silver, I started going through the trash and got to the square thing. It had some weight to it and as I started to brush it off, an oblong hole appeared. I could start to make out some lettering and figured it is probably a dog license since there was a dog park not too far from where I was hunting. When I finally got it cleaned off I could see it had Santa Fe Hotel , the number 11, and 529 E.PP on it. It was a hotel key fob, and it looked older too. There hasn't been a Santa Fe Hotel in town for as far back as I can remember. I started doing some research and located the probable location of the hotel which has a bank building on the site now, but on 1800s maps of the city it was a large lot with a large building on it on the eastern edge of town and was directly across from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad depot. That building is gone in maps of the early 1900s and with the help of some of my detecting club members, we have narrowed the date of the key fob down to 1880-1890s. So there you have it. You just never know what you will find in the most unlikely places. And always check your trash, it could be something good, and strangely enough this has happened to me a few times lately.

 

[F350Platinum]

Very cool short one Cap'n! 👍

Really like the ring, that's one that would disappear into my wife's jewelry box the second she saw it. 😀

Trying to figure out what the stone is. 🤔

Very little trash and some Victorian pull tabs. I wonder what nefarious scenario surrounds the hotel tab... They always have a story. 😀 If only they could talk.

[Valens Legacy]

Nice hunt with a nice ring, what type of stone is it.

Good luck on your next hunt and stay safe out there.

[Compass]

Congrats on the silver and nice bit of research on the the cool key fob!

[GB_Amateur]

Damn aerators.  😠  Did you check the VDI on the ring after you recovered it?  I think it should have been in the high conductor region, not the pulltab zone.  If there were a complete disconnect somewhere then, yes, lower conductance.

I like that hotel tag.  I assume you confirmed the address is consistent with the location of the building you found on the old maps.  Sometimes old phone books will have addresses of businesses but those have to be from a period where they actually had phone books.  Ancestry.com has scans of old phone books.

[CPT_GhostLight]

On 3/4/2023 at 5:20 PM, F350Platinum said:

Very cool short one Cap'n! 👍

Really like the ring, that's one that would disappear into my wife's jewelry box the second she saw it. 😀

Trying to figure out what the stone is. 🤔

Very little trash and some Victorian pull tabs. I wonder what nefarious scenario surrounds the hotel tab... They always have a story. 😀 If only they could talk.

 

On 3/4/2023 at 10:56 PM, Valens Legacy said:

Nice hunt with a nice ring, what type of stone is it.

Good luck on your next hunt and stay safe out there.

Thanks F350 and VL, I've been trying to figure out the stone. It's kind of a bluish-grey stone and reacts to strong light like a star sapphire or tiger eye. I'll have to wait until we get a sunny day to find out for sure. Natural star sapphires only make the star in natural sunlight.

[CPT_GhostLight]

14 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Damn aerators.  😠  Did you check the VDI on the ring after you recovered it?  I think it should have been in the high conductor region, not the pulltab zone.  If there were a complete disconnect somewhere then, yes, lower conductance.

I like that hotel tag.  I assume you confirmed the address is consistent with the location of the building you found on the old maps.  Sometimes old phone books will have addresses of businesses but those have to be from a period where they actually had phone books.  Ancestry.com has scans of old phone books.

Thanks, GB, yes I also confirmed that the address of that block remained the same over time so that is the likely location where the hotel stood. I have a friend in my detecting club who has a vintage bookstore and he has old business registries going back to the early days of the town and he's going to try to find more details on the Santa Fe Hotel for me.

It's funny that you asked about the VDI because I've been recording those recently to compare with trash targets and am getting some interesting results. Here are the Deus 2 VDIs I got on the ring and similar trash targets on that day:

I don't know if the ding on the back affected the VDI or not. The ring is not separated, but it is light, 1.47 grams.

[Valens Legacy]

7 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

I've been trying to figure out the stone.

Is the stone open on the back, if so it should be real and not a fake.

Thanks for the update and i hope that it turns out to be a good stone for you.

[CPT_GhostLight]

3 minutes ago, Valens Legacy said:

Is the stone open on the back, if so it should be real and not a fake.

Thanks for the update and i hope that it turns out to be a good stone for you.

Yes the stone is open backed. I'm going to clean the ring up a bit more and get the dirt out of the back so I can test the stone.

[Valens Legacy]

Try to shine a light from the backside to see what it does also. You may have a man made stone they call a sunburst that shows something like a cats eye when you move the ring side to side. They are usually blue to purple in color.