The best 30 minute hunt ever!

Had a chance to quickly jump out of the house for a very brief hunt. Ended up going to two locations. The first was the 1917 house, and the second was a nearby gathering place that has been around part of the city for ages. About 10 minutes into the hunt, I pulled this out of the ground about 3-4 inches down in a spot where the land owner had been parking his truck. At first I thought it was just a copper/brass emblem with no real good identifying marks. When I got it home and washed off the other side, I got a wealth of information. The inscription read "Douglas the Tailor  Originator of the Concave Shoulder and the Unbreakable Front  85 S. Howard St.  Akron, Ohio"

Front

Back

  After doing some research I discovered that Doug the Tailor did exist in Akron, Ohio - the only reference I found with an actual date attached to this business was in a 1917 publication of the Elyria Evening Telegram - not sure if this was when the emblem was made or exactly when the business was first around. I will have to do some more research. Perhaps the historical society in Akron can assist me.

Elyria Evening Telegram 1917


Relocated the last part of my hunt since I initially thought I was on my way home to provide my better half with reinforcement on the crazy kids, but was called off. The very first good signal I got was a nice consistent  28-30. About 5-6 inches down I unveiled my very first old foreign coin, a 1920 Large Canadian Cent in pretty good condition.

After this find, I was on cloud nine and then had to head back to the casa. Could not have asked for a better short hunt then this - wonder if another one will someday top how productive this one was in such a brief amount of time. Guess I will be returning this lovely spot again in the future.

Sophomore season yields first silver!

So as a follow up to my set of hunts I made that resulted in the discovery of the old button. That same park that gave me my first gold along with other interesting finds ended up giving me my first "deep" signal. I can understand now what the veterans speak of when they refer to "deep" signal. Some people refer to deep targets as giving a "narrow" signal - I guess this is one way to describe it. The signal is narrow in that it barely exceeds the threshold limit set by your machine and its detection area is rather "narrow" or "smaller" than compared to a target that is shallower. (Not sure if any of this made sense, as I have been frustrated myself with trying to understand what others have used to describe how deep targets are picked up). If anything, the only way someone can understand how a deep target is picked up by their machine is purely a matter of experience with detector and knowing what it is trying to tell you.

Anyway, back to the point here - my XTerra gave a consistent 38-40 signal and I immediately thought "here's another dime." After I extracted it from about 6-7inches down, I was surprised on how clean it looked fresh out of the ground. Well, to my surprise I read a "1947" on my very first silver coin. It certainly highlighted the hunt and just like finding my first gold, it made me want to find more of these awesome coins.

Glad to have another first checked off my list of finds - not a bad start to my sophomore season of detecting. Hopefully a sign of things to come.

The mystery button...

One of the interesting items that I came across in my hunt at the 1912 house in my last post was what looked like a rather large button. My initial impression was that the button had some sort of baseball pattern with a letter "E" in the middle.

Mystery button

I posted on a few metal detecting forums to get some feedback on what this relic might be. Although I did not get any solid info - one member did observe that the image on the button was not an "E" but rather part of an image of a belt. Using this to base my research on, I scoured the internet, looking for anything that looked close to what was on the button. Many, many, many images poured through later,



I discovered the very same design on a smaller button for sale on an auction website, offered through someone who had business that dealt with all sorts of button, along with other trinkets. I emailed the owner and was surprised to get a rather quick reply. She indicated that she will consult with her other "button friends" and let me know what she found out. A few days later, I got the following response

** I believe it is made of brass. Nice size too. It represents a belt buckle, and I would think probably dates between 1910-1930. Unless it has a backmark you would not be able to tell who made it **

Very cool! This is perhaps the oldest relic I have found to date. Will continue with this site - even sweeping through with slightly different sensitivity/threshold settings.

A few small hunts and a new baby

So I have already gotten a start about a month and a half ago on hunting local parks whenever the weather got above 40F. I have gotten some nice little additions to my collection - just a few months into the new year and I scored my second overall gold ring. It was small one (0.75g) and only 10K but I am not going to complain (gold is gold!).

Also found a old car wash token - or what I thought was an old car wash token. The markings indicate according to my research to be a modern token (at least past 1980) that is still used today.

My last hunt was at one of my favorite parks in town with lots o' history behind it and what do I discover that nice spring afternoon - another detectorist! I was floored. I have been at this hobby for just over a year now and this is the first other person with a detector that I have seen in town. It was great to talk detecting with him. He even uses the same machine as I do - yeah! Go Minelab Xterra! It would be great to have another person to detect with that has an appreciation for the hobby as well.

This was the last hunt I took in before the birth of my second son (less than 12hours after that). Ended up with some interesting relics this time around. I unearthed some old railroad parts, including a very large square nut. I also discovered parts to an old Hubley Texan Jr. Cap gun (circa 1950s) - there was just one of the sides behind the cylinder but enough for me to ID what the item was. I will have to go back to the spot and see if there are other pieces left over.

Also came across an old lipstick case from COTY (New York) when lipstick cases were made out of metal. Hard to decipher what era it is from based on the decorative pattern.

Some people might be bothered by detecting with another person or even get territorial over someone detecting in "my park" or think "they are going to get all the good stuff" -- not me. If you are in this hobby with those thoughts, you are probably in the hobby for the wrong reasons. There is always be something great to find, there is plenty of ground to hunt, and there are lots of great people out there who y can learn from and share in your hunts with.

The last item - I have saved the best for last - was a cap to a old tube of listerine toothpaste - circa 1930s!!  Very cool find, some of the front part of the tube was still attached that gave Lambert Pharmacal Company along the edge (the LPCo symbol embossed on the cap). LP Co was the original company to develop Listerine.

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