Another Old Check in a Book

  Not as old as the last one, but definitely written for more!  This one, I definitely cashed.

California Couple Finds 10 Million Dollar Gold Hoard!

  Now, I'm sure by now you have all heard about the California couple who stumbled onto 10 million dollars in gold coins while walking their dog. I know this sounds like the beginning to a bad joke, but it's not. These two hit the damn jackpot. And they weren't even using a metal detector. There are hundreds of articles out there at this point, but I thought this one had a good selection of photos.

http://www.newstimes.com/news/us/article/Couple-stumbles-upon-10-million-in-rare-coins-5266388.php

Star Me Twenty

  This is only the third star bill I have found and the highest denomination, the others being a one and a five. This one has a low serial number, too, starting with 002. At least, I think it's low, judging by the paper money people on ebay and such.

  As I have explained in previous posts, the star on bills seems to indicate that the bill is replacing an error bill that was removed from the lineup. So the serial number stays the same as the reject, with a star placed beside it. They have some appeal to collectors because of their rarity, especially if the serial number is unique in some way. So keep an eye out for those star bills! 

  I actually threw this one up on ebay this morning, so we'll see what happens. Hell, anything over twenty is an improvement, right?

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.

Mental Detector

  This is from an odd little book I found called "Worms of Wisdom" by Peter Mason and Patricia Martin. I related to it on multiple levels.

Diamonds Are For Never

I  You know, I have never found a real diamond, and I thought all of that had changed in an instant. I wasn't even metal detecting--just walking along, looking at the ground for gold and diamonds, as I have a tendency to do, and there it was. I picked it up and thought, no, it couldn't be. The earring still had the clasp on the back, so it must have fallen out of someone' sprocket or purse, or was torn out in a terrible "cat fight" and flung aside in the melee. I pulled off the clasp and could see the number 925 imprinted on both pieces, so I knew it was real silver, at least, and that led me to believe that it may be a trinket of high enough quality to hold a real diamond. I stewed over it for a day or two, imagining how I would reuse the enormous rock in a new piece of jewelry designed by myself for Laura and trying to research diamond identification techniques online, which are ridiculously varied and complex, by the way. Never, do the "scratch test", by the way. It doesn't hold true and it ruins the diamond. Finally, I took it to a local jeweler and asked him what was up. He looked at it and said "Hmmm". It's an impressive looking stone, sparkling brightly and large enough to be quite valuable, were it authentic, which he then said it was not. "How do you know?" I asked him. He handed me his glass and said, "See the clear ring around the edge? That means it's cubic zirconium. Diamonds don't have that clear ring." We both laughed at my ignorance and I thanked him before going on my way. I have accepted his statement as truth, but I'm going for a second opinion anyway. Maybe he just hates people who find real diamonds and wants them to be very sad and depressed all the time.

  (Also, pardon the terrible state of my fingernails. Stonemasonry does a real number on my extremities.)

Check This Out

  Though not as exciting as the Confederate bill I found last time, this "book find" is still pretty interesting. I was photographing a large, ornate Bible for an ebay listing yesterday and found a check dated 1881 tucked inside--a check for a whopping one dollar. Incidentally, if you are wondering what one dollar meant to someone in 1881, the inflation rate is such that it would be equivalent to roughly 24.43 in today's economy. I am currently engaged in trying to locate a bank that will cash it for me, and thus far, am having no luck.

Basement Find

  I have always heard that dirt basements are a great place to hunt, especially in the winter, when the ground is frozen solid. The thing is, this basement doesn't have a dirt floor, but is 99% poured concrete with just a dirty hole in one corner for a submergeable pump. My friend Ronald and I have been performing some minor restorations down there and while scraping around in the mucky pump hole, he spotted a greenish little disc-shaped object, which turned out to be a coin! He cleaned it off in the water and found it to be a quarter-sized coin of Arabic origins, the year and denomination of which I have yet to research, but here are a few shots:

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.

Bed Knobs and Soup Sticks

I have been so busy for the last two weeks that I haven't really had the opportunity to get out with the detector, but I finished a little job over near Hosmer Pond a few days ago and noticed the crumbling remnants of a nineteenth century stone foundation near the jobsite. I had less than 30 minutes till I had to be at my next appointment, so I couldn't spend much time hunting, but I turned up a few interesting items in that time. I do not believe the site has ever been hunted, as in that brief amount of time, I found a few rather large copper objects that surely would have discovered by anyone searching with a machine. The first was a fine copper thimble, the only copper thimble I have ever found, as most of them seem to be aluminum or silver. Also, a large brass bed knob and an interesting old spoon, the age of which I am uncertain. The surface seems to be soft and dull enough to be lead or pewter, but the inside is certainly of ferrous composition and is rusting through in spots. Also, there is a fantastic little floral or leaf or fire design on the rear. I will have to do some research, but in the meantime, it's great for eating cereal...

Recent Park Finds

Have been working in Camden this week, so I haven't been able to get out to any old cellar holes and have been limited to a few short hunts in the local parks. Nothing too mind-blowing: a very large 1800's brass button and a '51 wheatback, another video arcade token for my token collection, an interesting '77 British New Penny (only minted between '71 and '81, I believe), a small child's bracelet charm (circa 1970's), and a bigfat stainless ring with crucifix designs around the perimeter and a two-piece construction that allows for the outer ring to rotate around the inner. Fits on my pinkie.