Curiosity - What Is The Oldest Item You Have Ever Found?

[Steve Herschbach]

4 hours ago, Rattlehead said:

Well, I was getting ready to brag about my worn out Spanish half reale, but then I saw Steve's post with a 3500 y/o find. Makes mine seem brand new by comparison. 🤣

Amazing find Steve!

Well, the question was what was the oldest thing YOU have ever found, not the oldest that any of us ever found.

 

4 hours ago, RickUK said:

Steve,amazing find that BA Palstave,some of them come out the ground after say 3000+ years and still as sharp as the day they got buried,some also come out the ground with amazing Patination but one thing that needs watching is Bronze disease which can start corroding the actual bronze away and destroying the Bronze item,so it has to be specially treated by a skilled person.

I was told the same thing at the time. Did nothing though and five years later looks no different than when I found it, except cleaner. Maybe the danger is overrated, or I just got lucky with the dry desert air here. Took this picture ten minutes ago....

Here are some in better shape

[F350Platinum]

It's not going to be too impressive to you folks across the pond, but the first explorer to visit and later settle my part of the USA was Captain John Smith of the UK in 1606. He navigated the Chesapeake Bay and up the Potomac River.

In 1607 he settled Jamestown in a peninsula of Virginia just below mine.

I was in a farm very near the Potomac River last year and dug this half of a 1607 King James I hammered silver sixpence:

Man I was shocked.

I also dug these other items around it, it must have been from a subsequent exploration up the river. 3 buttons, some pewter shards, and a buckle.

I reunited the halves of the buckle this year.

It's possible to find older coins in the USA that were from shipwrecks or dropped by earlier Spanish explorers, but this is probably directly attributable to the first explorers of this area.

I often wonder what happened then. 🤔

[Erik Oostra]

The oldest thing I've found so far is older than white settlement in this region.. It's a Chinese coin dating back to the Ch'ien-lung Emperor who reigned from 1735 to 1796.. White settlement in the Townsville region and Magnetic Island didn't kick off until the late 1860s.. The Chinese sailor who lost his coin on the island might well have beaten Captain Cook (1770) to this part of the Coral Sea.. I wonder what the island's Aboriginal people made of all these weird visitors..   

The coin itself is not valuable, too many were made during this Emperor's reign.. But for me it's the pleasure of imagining this little coin's journey before my Foxy Noxy hit on it.. Or I should say: 'until it ended up in a box with other scrap junk'.. Before anyone panics, I gave it a spit and polish and sold it to a coin collector who bought it as part of a 'job lot' with some silver Victorian era coins.. 

When I first found this coin I thought it was a pendant or token of some sort.. But its remote location in the bush well away from tourist beaches made me think again.. Also some folk on this forum identified it as the real deal.. The coin collector likewise said it wasn't a token.. Anyhow, the little Chinese coin has finally found a home with someone who treasures it.. Disney eat your heart out..  

Thinking about what I just wrote and seeing the picture again make me kick myself for selling it..  

[Valens Legacy]

The oldest coin I found was a 1799 one farthing , and the other oldest thing I found was George Kinsey age unknown, but they suspect early prehistoric period.

[Sérgio Campos]

Judea Capta - Roman coin 71AD

 

[schoolofhardNox]

In the US, you can only go back so far, but sometimes you can get lucky. I'm going to only post the things that were lost here close to their time period. I'm not counting what I think is a small roman coin I found that was probably brought back here by a soldier and lost in the late 1940's or so. So here is the oldest period coin I found. It has a date range from 1516-1520 and was probably lost around the mid to late 1600's.

The Native American conical Kettle point was most likely lost on May 26th, 1637 during a one day battle. It is from a tribe that was not living in the area that it was found in, but was fighting there that day. We even estimated the time lost to be around noon time, given the descriptions that were written about the battle and their movements.

[Dcraun]

My oldest object with a date on it found in the United States is a 1689 cob minted in Lima Peru

[TC-AZ]

I might of just walk away from this scene. I'm like a kid who has his face up to the window looking in a toy store or candy shop. You guy's have way to old and cool finds! Great and thanks for sharing! 

[Doc Bach]

On 4/5/2024 at 7:11 PM, schoolofhardNox said:

In the US, you can only go back so far, but sometimes you can get lucky. I'm going to only post the things that were lost here close to their time period. I'm not counting what I think is a small roman coin I found that was probably brought back here by a soldier and lost in the late 1940's or so. So here is the oldest period coin I found. It has a date range from 1516-1520 and was probably lost around the mid to late 1600's.

The Native American conical Kettle point was most likely lost on May 26th, 1637 during a one day battle. It is from a tribe that was not living in the area that it was found in, but was fighting there that day. We even estimated the time lost to be around noon time, given the descriptions that were written about the battle and their movements.

That point is amazing!

[Lodge Scent]

Found this copper culture point some years back. Estimated to be around 4,000 to 6,000 years old. Not native to Massachusetts. Likely traded in from Great Lakes. I remember pulling it out of the hole along with a handful of dirt and thinking it was just a stone point, I set it aside. I kept rescanning the hole looking for that screamer of a signal that had mysteriously disappeared. 😁