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.