Capped Bust Dime

[Lodge Scent]

I've been playing with TN Sharpshooter's Bird Dog settings (0 Disc, Notch 2-7) and think he might be on to something. I was at one of my old pounded colonial homesteads this morning. I hadn't found a coin at this homestead site in several years. I had dug a couple of small broken pewter buttons and a couple of .22 leads and was about to call it quits when I got a choppy mid conductor tone with a VDI bouncing in the 60s. I am thinking it's a button masked by a nail as that is really all I find at that site these days. Any easy targets are long gone. I pinpointed and dug the expected nail. Swept the coil over the hole again and got the expected nonferrous signal, but it sounded higher in tone this time. Was very happy to see this sweet bit of silver in the hole ! 
 

Sharpshooter's settings performed as he said they would. I was able to get the midtone audio signal from this target from every angle. When I tried several conventional programs, I only got the midtone from a small angle. I was using Sensitive FT with a Reactivity of 0.5.

Lodge

 

[Doc Bach]

Fantastic coin congrats!

[DIG5050]

Wow that coin is in fabulous condition.  The detail is great.  What a cool find. It’s beautiful.  Now Imhave to go out and try the Bird Dog settings at a permission.  Congrats!

[F350Platinum]

Excellent find LC, looks like Sensitive FT has its merit. 👍 Congratulations on a rare and incredible coin. 🙂

[ColonelDan]

Congratulations.  That coin looks to be in XF -AU condition 

[F350Platinum]

I hope @GB_Amateur will stop in on this one,  but I'll invoke his appearance. 😀 This coin has special attributes, and is fairly rare. 👍

[NCtoad]

What an awesome coin!   Congrats!

[GB_Amateur]

Finding a nearly 200 year old USA coin in that condition..., extremely rare for that to happen!  Typically the environment (i.e. being in the ground) will have scratched, dinged, or discolored the coin (not to mention over-zealous post recovery cleaning...).

Yours appears to be the 'Small 10 C.' version.  (See the inset at right on the page I linked.)  This is the most common of the varieties for this date in high condition although only the 'Curl Base 2' is well set apart in value.  (If yours was that it would make headlines in Coin World and bring you in the range of six figures.  😀)

Colonel Dan has conservatively stated the condition.  I wouldn't go further than his since a true grading expert is needed to fine tune his conclusion.  However, something that is typically undervalued is the 'strike' -- how much fine detail resulted when the coin was minted.  For example, look at the stars on the obverse (side with the date).  Those are sharp indicating this was a strong strike, probably from early in the die's lifetime.

Ebay prices realized put this in the $200-$300 range if you were to sell it there.  My guess is you want to keep it for the good memories.

 

[CPT_GhostLight]

Holy cow, Lodge Scent, that's an incredible find and in immaculate condition! Congrats and extremely well done!

I actually have the Bird Dog loaded up and haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but I definitely will on the next outing!

 

[abenson]

Wow! That dime is in great shape. Congratulations