Unlocking The Jewelry Box

[Chase Goldman]

So Bob (@F350Platinum) documented our wild ride this week at our newish permission, a field with an unexpected house site on it.  It was amazing.  When we first surveyed it a couple weeks we knew it was going to be tough going with aluminum trash as expected nearer the main road and a ton of iron at the actual home site.  I lucked out that first brief hunt at the end of a long day with a minie ball,  a flat button,  a silver spoon bowl, a wheatie, and, amazingly, the only silver coin ('64 Rosie) we've pulled out so far, all in quick succession. 

When I met up with Bob this time, he was semi-gridding the property adjacent to the access road/driveway were I had found the previous items and I was picking my way through the aluminum to get my "ears on".  My first keeper was a '58 Jefferson.  I then hit a few pieces of miscellaneous brass including some of those keyboard instrument brass "reeds" or whatever.   I then hit a honker non-ferrous signal and hesitated whether to dig what I thought was going to be a smashed beer can or or worse.  I decided to go for it, and to my surprise, I dug a late 1800's vintage Champion 6-Lever lock.  This is a fairly common antique lock that was built to last and an built to be secure.  It was in amazing condition.  I joked to Bob that we should find the safe this thing was attached to...little did I know that statement sort of foreshadowed how the rest of the day would go.  I dug a handful of early 1900's wheats, a 1940 nickel, and also a toasted Buffalo nickel.  I then dug an amazing brass padlock key for a much older lock than the one I found and a pieces of a Colonial era English lock key latch cover marked with a Crown - perhaps belonging to the lock matching the key I found earlier.  I dug a couple of other interesting brass things including a brooch or pin with a rippled shell-like texture and an ornate little brass ornamental with a square loop.

After digging a number of those keyboard reed thingy's and little else of note, I decided to do a walkaround of the small plot, as I was making my way towards the back I dug a couple of matching costume jewelry type pieces of gold gilt over hollow brass that looked like pieces of a bracelet of some sort.  Didn't think much of it.  I then dug a brass makeup case that still had makeup in it.  Anyway, as I moved out of the debris field of the house, things went quiet and I did not dig anything but a couple of random pieces of aluminum. 

I made my way back to where Bob was detecting.  I saw him sitting on the ground for awhile and playing with his phone as I was swinging my way back, which typically means he found something good.  I was right, he gave me the thumbs up signal, and showed me the incredible silver ring and stone.  after chatting about that, I got a target not 5 feet away and it was a gold plated cufflink, with an art deco style design.  After that it was off to the jewelry races with us recovering a number of jewelry related items, buttons, and pieces of silverware and miscellaneous silver bits.  The coolest piece for me was a silver brooch with a translucent blue stone and a silver cufflink.

Anyway, it was one of those rare "dig a minute" type days, and even though few of the items were as old as what we usually dig in that area, it was a great day by any measure and the weather was perfect.  We are just wondering where the heck are all the silver coins. 

BTW - I was mostly using my custom setup of the Deus 2 Relic Program (IAR at 5, Reactivity set as needed, PCM audio) with the 9" Round Coil and occasionally searching and interrogating with the General Program using Full Tones and High Square audio.

Thanks, Bob for another great detecting day and for not spanking me too badly.  You were really making some nice ring saves and I didn't have much to show for lots of digging up to that point until we unlocked that "jewelry box".  Good times.

 

[F350Platinum]

Great run Chase, it's nice to still have seasonable weather to go to these places. Above average is even better.

This was an especially odd assortment of stuff, and it turns out now the buildings were marked on the old maps, Guess I didn't recall it. 🤪 No matter, once we got digging it was hard to stop. I probably spent a half hour in a 5 foot circle.

Historic Aerials is apparently updating their site all the time with declassified aerial photos, they just added them from 1960 and 1961 and they are frighteningly crisp. What a guide to where the good stuff is! The 1960s version looks more like infrared.

Looking forward to a return to this spot, but we will have to bring buckets to haul away some of the iron 🤔

Fun day! Great post and photos. I believe the jewelry we found had glass stones, but still that Art Deco stuff is a real diversion from the "same old colonial" stuff 🤣

[Chase Goldman]

It was a fun but strange day.  How many times did we ask each other "what the heck is this?" as we pulled another unusual doo dad out of the ground.  That Convention Badge was amazing and cool you found the flag shield backing. Odd about the lack of silver coins considering all the other high tone targets and other silver we hit.  You've been on a ring run of late (in addition to all that Spanish silver), while I've dug more cufflinks this season than ever.  You're the ring master and you can call me captain cufflink. 

[ColonelDan]

What a day for you two!  Nothing like unlocking an old “jewelry box”. 👍🏻😊

Your efforts were well rewarded.  

[strick]

I'm sure there is a piece of gold in there....Clean it out till there are no signals left 😄

strick

[Geologyhound]

What a day! Looks like you almost recovered the full concertina…