2012 Finds Total

As the year of 2012 comes to a close, with all its ups and downs, I decided to take my treasure finds and total them up for the year. Here is a compilation of all clad, gold, and silver finds along with their approximate value.

Clad:
Coin           Quantity         Value 
Dollar             1                $1.00
Quarter       125              $31.25
Dime           108             $10.80
Nickel           83               $4.15
Penny          395               $3.95

Clad Total:                    $51.15

Precious Metals:
Gold: 1 Ring at 10K puirty: Amount: 8.175g - Spot price on 12/31/2012 was $1663.57/toz

Silver: 1 Lizard pendant at 92.5% purity (sterling): Amount: 7.260g - Spot price on 12/31/2012 was $30.14/toz

Precious Metal Total: $188.84

Grand Total value of 2012 Finds: $239.99

Not bad for my rookie year! Can't wait to get back out there. In fact, if the temperature just a little over freezing, I WILL be back out there. Until then, have a great new year!

A cache or a spill?

Well, I had the opportunity to take in some time at the oldest park in town. So far my hunts in this park were feast or famine - and when good finds come up in this park, they stand out for some reason. My son was in tow and was a real trooper. He even helped Dad with "digging for pennies." In fact, that was all I was getting out of the ground was either pull tabs or pennies. It getting close to lunchtime when I decided to explore a rough edge patch in the park. I remembered back to what fellow "treasure hunter" Dan Hughes, author and podcaster, said regarding old parks. If you come across some bushes, be an adventurous soul and swing that detector not only around but also IN the bush, as that bush may not have been there 50-100yrs ago. Well, bushes during winter that are not evergreens are easier to approach so I swung around one not too far from where I had found that nice 10K gold ring back in May.

A nice quarter signal showed up around 2/3 of the way around the bush so I retrieved my coin and checked the hold with the pinpointer again. Nice signal again. The next thing I noticed was that several signals were coming not only from the bottom of the hole, but also the side of the hole and the top of the hole. Apparently I had come upon a coin spill of some sort or maybe even a cache?!? It took quite a while to sift through all the signals in the hole - sometimes I thought the signals would never end.  In the end though, I ended up with just over 10 dollars in quarters along with a few Canadian quarter pals as well. 

After I returned home, I checked the dates and ended up coming so close but ultimately had a no go on the silver - the earliest dated quarter I had was 1965. I guess the silver coinage will have to wait until my second season. 

My next post will include totals of all my clad along with current value of all gold and silver acquired. 

Old Fairgrounds

So just before the first major snowstorm was planning to hit the state in about 48hours time, I had an opportunity to hunt the local fairgrounds for a few hours. During the hunt, I gathered quite a bit of pull tabs and some random metal couplings used for electrical work. My most interesting find was one I did not know I had until I got home. When I first pulled this out of the ground, I thought it was a regular washer. Upon further inspection at home, I noticed not only was the "washer" really lightweight, it had markings on it as well. On one side read "OK VENS TOKEN." I had to do a bit of research on this to find its possible origins. It could be an amusement token used for "nongambling" purposes - date of the token is unknown but these token were commonly distributed from 1890-1930. 

Now all I need to do is get an actual coin in this date range!

Half a friendship pendant

OK VENS COUPON TOKEN