1919 Buffalo

  Another nice buffalo nickel pulled from the forgiving soil of Rockport Park, this one with the clearly visible date of 1919; the year of the Boston Molasses Disaster, when a giant wave of molasses burst forth from an exploding storage container and swept 20 unfortunate Bostonians to their deaths. One onlooker responded to the tragedy by declaring, "It looked like a sweet way to go."

1920's Pocket-Spill

  I paid a visit to a local park I have been wanting to check out and came up with a few items of interest: namely a beautiful Buffalo nickel with a fantastic patina (unfortunately no clear date), a 1912 Barber dime, a devastated 1880 Indian Head penny, two wheat pennies (still in the cleaning process), a nice 19th century buckle, and a pretty little bejeweled brooch from the 1800's. The Barber dime actually came out of the ground wedged between the two wheaties, the result of some unfortunate pocket-spill about a hundred years ago.

Another Day In The Park

  I'm really getting spoiled by this place. I mean, it's a park--the terrain is flat and the grass is mowed, there is minimal modern rubbish, no hacking my way through the underbrush in search of some overgrown cellar-hole filled with rusted-out automobiles and tick-infested wild raspberries bushes. I just stop at the park on the way to work and dig up a few old coins and buttons. It's too easy.
  1915 Buffalo nickel, 1905 S Barber dime (silver), small belt-buckle, wheat penny, little #2 fishing weight, and two brass buttons.

My First Buffalo

  I went out yesterday morning for an hour, searching for the site of the original Camden High School, which I knew from light research had been located somewhere behind the existing school on Knowlton Street. The area behind the school is now comprised of three large baseball fields, and that is a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. So I picked a small plot of ground, about one hundred square feet, in what seemed to be the most promising parts of each field, and worked them hard. Nothing. Just a bunch a modern clad. I had about ten minutes left when I noticed a large cluster of tall old maples at the far end of the westernmost field. Everything about the spot screamed antiquity; the hundred year old trees, the exposed roots, the roll of land. It was literally the only patch of ground in that vast expanse of ballfields that hadn't been visibly flattened by the machines of man. I looked first under the closest and tallest maple and almost immediately pulled up my first Buffalo nickel. It was extremely worn-out, almost to the point of unrecognizability, but there it was, dammit. I just said about three days ago, "I want to find a Buffalo nickel." Let's try this, "I want to find a pot of gold."