Sidewalk Treasures

  The more I do this, the more I am approached by friends and strangers who have their own treasure hunting stories, from mystery objects found beachcombing to accidental discoveries like the used car coin collection I posted last month. Yesterday, I ran into my good friend Ronald at the new Owl and Turtle Coffee Shop, and he pulled out a little tattered blue coin purse. He plopped it into my palm and I was immediately impressed by its unusual heaviness. "Years ago, I lived in New York City," he said in his thick Dutch accent. "One day I was walking down the street and I found this little change purse just sitting on the sidewalk beside a trash can." 

  Inside, I found about a dozen medium sized musket balls, two larger walnut sized grape shot or musket balls, and forty or so heavily worn pewter buttons that were obviously of military origin. Many of them bore numbers on their faces and I assumed from my own past finds that they were Civil War relics. However, after talking with my friend and co-worker, Mark Becker, who has a pretty expansive knowledge of that sort of thing, and doing a little research online, I have determined they are actually Revolutionary War artifacts. They are made of pewter, with rusty iron loops on the backs, and some were probably silver plated, with the numbers representing the regiments. 

  I cannot imagine what this little purse was doing on the sidewalks of NYC. Perhaps some desperate individual stole it thinking it was full of money and disposed of it just as quickly when he or she realized it was just filled with worthless lead balls and nasty broken buttons. Little did they know, they were actually tossing aside an incredible little collection of important relics dating back to America's war for independence. I would be excited to find any one of these buttons, never mind an entire sack of them. Once again, it proves that "treasure" can be found anywhere, at any time, as long as you keep your eyes open.

Metal Underground- The Movie

The Metal Underground from The Salt Institute on Vimeo.

Icons and Symbols

    The ground is starting to thaw. Still frozen in most places, there are spots in the sun where I can dig down twelve inches without hitting ice. A few visits to these soft spots in a local park have yielded up a couple of nice finds: a pre-war nickel, the second Buffalo of the year, a funky jeweled star that looks like a cheap carnival  prize, a beautiful silver Catholic amulet marked "Hayward Sterling 1830", and my favorite, an amazing piece of Victorian jewelry in the form of a lion headed copper ring. The gold plating is still visible in the grooves, a diamond in the mouth, and one ruby eye. This immediately became one of my favorite finds ever. 

  Also, my buddy Matt Pollis came up with a really interesting brass plaque labeled "Milling Cylinder 1908". We both did a little online research and couldn't figure out what it was from, ultimately assuming it was personally engraved by someone, probably for their lobster boat.

Beach Bells and the Indian

  Back to the old beach again for a little more hunting. You know, until the ground thaws, it's really my only option. Ended up with five more battered wheaties and a 1905 Indian head, which was surprisingly in better shape than the wheats, and even better than most of the modern clad. Clad totaled out at 2.57 and a half. There was a 1939 Jefferson nickel, which I think was the second year of their production. There were a few interesting beach relics, including a nice copper lure spoon and a beautiful brass crotal bell, which happens to be on my list of favorite things to find. Also, a couple nice lead weights, a very old file, and some curious little odds and ends.

The Real Gold

  That's right. I found a solid gold bullet. They are used for killing werewolves, and sidehill gougers, and dreams of success. It turns out that five hundred years of silver bullets have caused lycanthropes to build up an immunity that can only be circumvented by the use of golden ammunition. Someone must have missed, as the bullet is intact, which means he or she was probably eaten after the stray shot plunged into the icy salt water of Penobscot Bay. This was a propitious find for me, due to the recent increase in local murders attributed to cryptozoological anomalies, and the fact that I can reuse it for self defense.

  Ok, so it's not gold. It's copper-coated lead. But I thought it was gold and got very excited for a few seconds. Physically excited. I mean, almost erotically excited. Gold! It's not gold. It looks like gold. Then I looked around at the abandoned winter beach I was detecting. The frigid waters rolling up onto the expansive, shell-strewn, nearly frozen sand of the shoreline--interrupted occasionally by cruel outcroppings of the ancient, weather battered rocks and boulders that define coastal Maine. The awful wolf moon howling in the sky and twitching on the uneasy salt sea surface. The dwindling timeless twilight of a New England February dusk settling around me, and I remember why I'm here, and what I'm really looking for, and it isn't golden bullets.

January Bottle Dig

  Well, we were blessed and spoiled last week with temperatures reaching into the upper forties and I could not resist the urge to do a little bottle digging at my favorite lunch spot down in Round Pond. There is a picturesque and quiet little cove just down the road from our job site and we eat our King Ro Market sandwiches there while we stare out at the sea or poke around in the mud for clams. Just before winter set in, I was climbing along an old stone wall beneath the trees and noticed a few broken bottles sticking out of the dirt. I moved a few rocks and pulled out a couple of old whiskey bottles, but never really got into it beyond there. So, when I saw the snow disappearing last week I decided to go a bit deeper. It's mid-winter, you know, and my opportunities for treasure hunting of any sort are severely hindered by solidly frozen ground. 

  Anyway, I didn't come up with anything earth shatteringly ancient, but I did find a dozen or so more old whiskey bottles, a few of them with interesting insignias and one green. Here they are, lined up on the tailgate of my truck:

The Ground is Freezing

  Well, I didn't get out nearly enough this, for a variety of reasons, but I am trying to squeeze in a few hunts before Winter completely sets. These items were found on a beautiful nineteenth century farm. Some in a plowed field and the rest near an old barn.

  The dime sized coin like object is a lead bale seal, similar to the one I found last year. Lead bale seals were used to label bundles of twine or wool or sacks of wheat, etc... The initials of the maker would be stamped on one side and the length, weight, number, etc... on the other. I think the MC stands for Maine Central, as in Maine Central Railroad.

  The little twisted thing is a copper butter knife. There is also a small bell, about two inches tall, that probably hung from a goat's neck or a sleigh. (Are you listening?) And lastly, some silver, in the form of a "925" (indicating the highest quality Sterling silver) stamped earring. 

  It just makes me want to move to Florida for the Winter.

The New Old Cellar Hole

About three weeks ago I took a walk down an old carriage road near a house where I was putting in a patio. The road was well groomed and looked as if it was being used for horses and probably snow-mobiles in the winter. Walking down the wooded trail, flanked on either side by crumbling stone walls, and crossing fast-moving streams on tiny bridges, with not a single modern home in sight, I felt as if I had travelled back in time.
I was waiting for materials to show up at the jobsite and so I couldn't go too far, but before I turned around I spotted a thick patch of strange looking grass in the woods uphill from the trail and I knew immediately what it meant. I checked it out, and sure enough, there was an early nineteenth century cellar hole, with possibly one of the finest looking stone foundations I have ever seen in one. Of course, I didn't have my detector with me and it would be nearly a month before I could find the time to return.

Well, I finally got back there and did a little hunting and I don't know what to think--it's different. There seems to be an unusually large number of signals and nearly all of the diggable items seem to be just an inch or two from the surface. Maybe the tree-cover there is relatively new and was all open field until recently, so the buildup of decomposing forest matter, such as leaves and dead trees, happens very slowly.
My first signal was the little Everlast pocket flashlight, which is dated 1912 on the lid. I am assuming it is a little flashlight. At first, I thought it was a makeup case of some sort, because I thought it said Ever Lady on the lid. After cleaning, however, I could read it correctly and I noticed the tiny filament where the bulb had been and the on/off switch.
Then there was the rusty skeleton key bottle opener and the beautiful little decorative silver heart-shaped bookmark. The ornate floral pattern brass necklace pieces were buried right beside each other amid a number of bricks and must have been part of a larger piece, the rest of which I could not find. I really like the small copper frame, which measures about 4 inches by 3 inches, and which will go to good use when I think of one. The ocular object seems to be the eye-piece to a brass microscope, but there are certainly other possibilities. One of the photos shows our leonine housemate Georges attempting to frighten a squirrel away from the bird feeder, as seen through the still unbroken 150-year-old lens. Also, there were the little copper pieces of advertising tin that say something about "Koch", but we won't go there.
Then came the cannonball. Cannonball? That's right, cannonball. At least I think it's a cannon ball. I don't know what else it could be. It's a big metal ball that weighs about 15-20 pounds. There were definitely problems here with the British in the 1800's and there were certainly cannons and their accompanying balls around. I'm going to post pics with the experts on the Metal Detecting Maine website and see what they say. Those guys and gals can ID anything. I do know one thing--that along with a 5 pound sad iron, a pile of rusty junk, a metal detector, and shovels, a cannonball makes for an unpleasant load to hike out of the woods with.

Downside Up

Stopped by an old foundation site where I had previously found three or four old coins, one of which was a fine Civil War Token, and was shocked to see that the foundation was gone! As were the remnants of the old well and the old perimeter walls. I didn't even know such a thing was legal. Literally, every stone had been removed, the trees torn up by their roots and the earth roughly re-graded. I mourned the loss of the site for a few moments, also realizing that the upheaval and bulldozing might have pulled some old things to the surface. I turned on my machine and set out across the furrows, immediately turning up a number of ammunition shells from the 1800's laying right on the surface. I explicitly remembered digging a sackful of these same shells up on my last visit, but from a depth of 6 to 8 inches. The sun was going down and the cold wind was blowing hard, so i knew I didn't have much time. Firstly, I turned up a strange little copper ring, which I at first thought was a bracelet, and then some sort of animal tagging ring, and now believe is a kind of pocket-watch part or locket piece. Then I found a very tiny brass button, smaller than a penny. It was easy digging. Most of the finds were either on the surface or just one or two inches deep. I was just about to pack it in when I found the Indian, with an immediately visible date of 1863! A very early Indian Head penny. I decided then and there to come back on the following day, which is today, and which I am going to do.

Under the Boardwalk

Here are a few more items from the 19th Century foundation I have been hitting in Union. The gold plated change-purse was really exciting and I thought for sure there would be a pile of coins around it, but alas, no such luck. The last time I found a change-purse, it was filled with silver coins. That was beside an old well on North Haven and there is a past blog that goes into more detail. Also, a nice old spoon for my spoon collection and a fantastic little brass buckle that is thick and heavy and still has the ring on back. (Penny for size comparison)
The letters and the 8 were found beneath that pier I mentioned a few days ago and probably came off of boats. This is my third or fourth 8 and I never tire of finding them. Infinity...