Heavy Metal

Damon and I went for a walk on the beach during lunch the other day and came across these two enormous pieces of iron in the sand.  We were about a half-mile away, but could not resist the urge to carry them back to the truck.  This was an agonizing endeavor and probably hilarious to witness from the window of one of the many beachside homes, as the collective weight of the two objects was over 300 lbs. 

  Both pieces were really interesting and I almost took them home to put in the yard, but figured I probably had enough giant iron rusting in my yard as it is.  Besides, these things were heavy, and at the scrap yard, heavy means money.  12 cents a pound for number one iron, to be precise, which at over 300 lbs., is pushing 40 dollars.  It's a beggar's ransom, for sure, but money is money and we already had a load of metal anyway.  Honestly, I just need excuses to go to the scrap yard.

  I love that place.  It seems to be one of the last vestiges of lawlessness and chaos left around here. The other day, one of the workers was telling me how the excavator operator dug into an RV with his bucket and hit a full sewage tank, which exploded from the pressure of methane gas inside and spewed stinking human waste hundreds of feet in every direction.  "You should have seen it," he said, laughing and taking long drags off his cigarette. "This place smelled just like somebody's rotten a##hole all day long."  And he was right.  I should have seen it.  And I'm really sorry I didn't.

Elf Buckles And A Mystery Coin

  When I pulled this little item--which is less than an inch in length--out of the ground, Damon said, "Oh, it's a belt buckle." I looked at the object intensely. "For what?" I asked. "An elf?" "No," he laughed. "For a ribbon or something," and perhaps he is right. I also has a button stem on the rear.

  Then there is this little doodad, which I am 95% certain is a very old coin, though I will never know what kind. Many old and ancient coins had holes in the center and alot of those were silver or gold. This, however, is most definitely nickel.

Update on Damon's Coin

  I have been soaking D's coin in olive oil for a few weeks and an image of a shield has become visible on the rear. The front is still fairly caked with crust, but there too, the image of a face is starting to emerge. I suspect it is British and probably early to mid-1800's. I have never seen a coin with such a thick, unmovable shell, and have deep suspicions it experienced a fire.

A Day of Firsts

  It is often said that beginners have a certain amount of inherent luck upon the start of any new endeavor--you hear it spoken of in sports, in gambling, in business, and very often in metal detecting--and though it has never held true for me, I now know it to be true.
  My good friend, business partner, and now treasure hunting partner; Damon Pierpont, went out with me yesterday on his first day of metal detecting. Now, he has watched me MD and he has messed around with a machine a few times, but yesterday was the first time he really got a chance to get out there with his own detector and dig.
  I got a lead this week on an interesting site of an old hotel and we checked it out the first chance we got. I was in the front yard digging up rusty nails and wheat pennies when I heard him shout. At first, I thought he had dug up a hornets nest, then I heard him. "It's a gold ring! And there's a diamond in it!" I couldn't believe it. I have been doing this for over a year now and I have not found one single gold ring.

  "Let me see that," I said and I threw it into the woods. Just kidding. I was probably as excited as he was about the find and I knew immediately that another lifelong metal detectorist was born. I then proceeded to watch him dig up a large cent and a WW2 military medal emblazoned with a swastika. Astounding! The large cent was pretty encrusted, but I am in the process of cleaning it and a shield is beginning to become visible on the rear. I will post pics of it again in a cleaner state.
   My pitiful little finds pale in comparison to Damon's but I will list them anyway. There was the usual small buckle, an interesting knife blade, a small musket ball, and some small piece of something that I suspected at first was a Spanish "piece of eight". There was also a great big axe head, which I have not photographed yet and will soon, along with my rather large axe-head-collection, which I keep displayed on the kitchen table, much to my fiance's dismay.