How I Ruined My First "historical" Find

[F350Platinum]

13 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

That's an amazing number of 150+ year old copper coins!  I see a lot of USA Large Cents but other stuff I don't recognize.  Did you post this just to make the West Coast detectorists envious?? 

Looks like Badgers' coins come up a bit less toasted than mine, well mostly. Definitely found a lot more of them too. 😀

If you find coins closer to a farmhouse they will usually be in better shape than the coins plucked from the farm, one of the first chemicals they use is lime. While not an extremely corrosive material, 300 years of farming using it must have some effect.

Case in point was a large cent and half cent found near a house on land presumably not farmed, both had readable dates, where coins found in the farmed areas were almost obliterated. Chemicals and soil motion from farming most certainly contribute to that.

I have now taken to spraying all my copper and brass finds with water rather than brushing them off. It definitely will save detail. There is no detail on the button below but often this type of Tombac might have had light engraving.

[SwiftSword]

On the subject of copper cleaning, I'd like to offer my method: 

 

This one came from a farmyard in eastern Massachusetts and was completely crusted over. It had good details though. They are preserved entirely in verdigris (the green corrosion that forms on bronze and copper). I scraped the encrustation only from the high areas and left the dirt in the fields. To do this, I used a stereo microscope and tiny scrapers (think dental tools) that I use for prepping fossils. Lastly I polished the high areas a little with a fiberglass brush, and applied a little penetrating oil-based finish.

Total time spent so far is about four hours, and I haven't done the reverse yet 

[blackjack]

On 3/31/2023 at 10:41 PM, Badger-NH said:

Musket balls are so common in New England that there would be no way of knowing if it was from a battle.  Hunters used muskets for over two centuries.

Saying that the things we find are historical can be bad for the hobby as it adds to our bad reputation among archeologists and the general public.

Interesting point, I guess the point is all finds are historical. It would depend on the significance, historically and that would depend on your point of view. It seems in Great Britain this issue has already been debated and from what I can gather somewhat resolved. But I will leave that to our pommie mates to comment on, what the situation is in the U.S. I have no idea, but would like to know. As far as I'm aware in Australia, finds belong to the government, this I'm sure applies to shipwrecks at least. A strange thing happened when the the government announced that all finds from ship wrecks belonged to them, people suddenly stopped finding shipwrecks.  From what I can gather in Great Britain, detectorists report their finds, the "experts" decide its significance and depending on that verdict you can keep it, or they claim it and compensate you. Seems fair to me, it encourages people to report their finds, unlike the system we have here. Yes I would like to start a discussion on this vexed issue. To be honest from my point of view if I found a tin of gold sovereigns, I wouldn't be making any phone calls to my state museum.