Spring Is Here

  I got a lead on a good beach for finding porcelain doll parts last week and I checked it out. No body parts, but I did find this great spring and a nice light blue bottle-bottom. There were a lot of people searching the place, so my guess is it's probably a hot-spot for great sea-junk. I'll have to hit it early one morning after a big storm.

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.

The Infinite 8 of Willendorf

  I found this great little one-inch brass eight at an old home-site the other day. I gave it to Laura and she said, "Hey. It looks like a cross between the number eight and the Venus of Willendorf." I think it has a future in necklaces.
  This is the second brass eight I have found, the previous one discovered on North Haven last summer.

The Bottomless Park

  The park continues to give up the old goods. I am literally only covering about twenty square feet of ground on every hunt. Apparently, the large county fairs were held there in the mid-1800's. It's funny, in any other state metal-detectorists would have picked that place clean years ago. I picked out a few more heavily worn Indian head pennies; an 1878 and an unreadable date.

  I found this great little three-and-a-half inch brass pocketknife. After cleaning I could make out the words "W-ville co. Waterbury." It turns out that this was a pre-Civil War pocketknife made by the Waterville company out of Connecticut. I may try to soak it in oil for a few weeks and see if I can bring it back to life.

  Also, there was a rusty ring, a gold-plated costume ring, a small brass buckle (probably a shoe buckle), and a few tiny brass buttons.

Liberty Head Nickel

  A search in one of my favorite old parks yielded up this battered 1912D Liberty Head (or V) nickel. Alas, it was one year off from being the highly sought-after 3.5 million dollar 1913 Liberty Head.

19th Century Cellar Hole and Field

  I had a great hunt in the rain yesterday, around the remnants of an old cellar hole and a field in Pittston. The find of the day was a great 1863 Civil War Penny Token, the date of which was visible coming right out of the ground. These Civil War tokens were privately minted between 1862 and 1864, due to the lack of currency during the war, and were made illegal directly after. The rear says "Army and Navy", though it will take a little soaking in olive oil to clean it up.

  I also unearthed three Indian head pennies; an 1861, an 1886, and one still unreadable--a record number of Indians in one hunt for me. Two of them were actually stuck together in the soil, with their faces inward, which is why they look so good in the pics. They will clean up quite nicely.

  I found this great brass badge in the Pittston field. Apparently, it is circa 1930's and was issued for some "Boy Detective" comic strip. It is small, being less than 2 inches across. I was as excited to find this badge as I was to find the coins.

  Then there are the odds and ends: a few rusty knives, a tiny brass button, a large rusty iron button, watch cog, brass handle, unexploded artillery, an unidentifiable neat things. All in all, a fine day underground.

Insulators

  I seem to find these things a lot near the ocean--some kind of old electrical insulators. I believe they are carbon-based, but they register on the detector as nickel.

Blood, Mother! Blood!

 
  I was going through last year's sea-glass finds and putting together a jar of the best pieces for Laura, when I came across this great little fragment. I suspect it's from a bottle of blood, which was a huge seller in the 1800's.

Water Works

  I found this great piece deep in the forests of Camden, at the site of a large collapsed 19th century stone dam. I love the verdigris patina and the raised numbers and I plan incorporating it into one of my first first stone sculptures, if I can stop accumulating junk long enough to do any sculpting.

Union Field Finds

  I thought that button was a coin. It looked exactly like a large cent coming out of the dirt. Alas, it goes into the button collection, a nice big 19th century brass. A crazy rusty spoon, a bone-handled knife, a wheat penny (almost 30 wheaties so far this year--too many), and a couple of rusty whatchamacallits. I think the small one is a gun part and the other a long-distance bottle opener or tongue depressor.

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.

Pins in the Ground and Some Love

  These items are from the same old home-site in Boothbay as the aviation pin. The heart and the other thingy both seem to some kind of hat-pins or shoe-buckles or ribbon-clasps. I don't know who lived there at the turn of the century, but they seem to have had a knack for losing pins and buckles. It must have been a hobby.

Flying Underground

  I found this WW1 aviation pin in a backyard in Boothbay. I am uncertain of it's purpose--possibly a collar-pin, whatever that is.

Silly Possum?

  Damon and I went back to the old hotel for a little more hunting the other day. No more gold rings, but we both came away with a few interesting items. Most notably for me was a large coin-sized brass button, with a beast of some sort and the words "Silly Possum" on it. I was bemused and befuddled by both the image and the slogan. I figured it was some sort of clown-suit button or something. I showed it to people and said, "Look. Silly possum. Ha." I looked it up on-line and could find no silly possums. In fact, I wish I had never punched that combination of words into Google. Don't Google "silly possum". You will regret it.

  It wasn't until this evening, when I decided to try searching for a "possum button", that I discovered it was not "Silly Possum" at all, but "Billy Possum", otherwise known as William Howard Taft, our 27th President of the United States of America. Apparently, his nickname was Billy Possum and the buttons were political advertisements. I don't claim to understand how referencing marsupial scavengers could help win votes, but it does make me want to have a catchy animal nickname. Maybe Aaron Aardvark.
  I found a handsaw, which I momentarily thought was a gun. Actually, I thought it was a gun for about six hours. I made a holster for it and everything. I felt so tough, and handy.

    Another fork... I love forks. So does Laura. She's always asking me to bring home more forks. Here's another fork, babe.

  And some jewels. I don't know what they are, but they fell out of a nineteenth century brass hair-clip as it was being unearthed. I hope you like them.

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.

Lost Treasures of the Little People

  I thought the last ring was small, but this thing measures like a quarter of an inch in diameter. These are the little people that little people call little people. It is most definitely silver. The ring was banging off the gauge at eight inches deep--I thought I had a silver dollar, and it took me about twenty minutes to find this teensy-weensy ultra-tiny mini-person ring in the soil.

 Also, there was this small gold-plated shirt button, from some early 20th Century fancy-pants. "Oh, look at me, I'm Mr. Fancy-Pants, with golden buttons and silver bells and tra-la-la-la-la. I'm off to see the little people."

Cocos Island Treasure

  Last night I finished reading Sailing by Starlight, In Search of Treasure Island, by Alex Capus, which one of our thoughtful librarians sent home for me with my fiance the other day. Sailing is a remarkably concise, entertaining, and informative little volume of only 122 pages; in which we are painted a realistic, if not harsh, portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his chain-smoking wife, Fanny, as they suffer and flounder in their paradisiacal South Seas estate. We are also introduced to Cocos Island, which is apparently the most mysterious and notorious of all the "Treasure Islands", and given a rich history of not only the scoundrels and pirates who used the place as a sort of home-base while plundering the west coast of South America, but also the descending line of explorers and treasure seekers who fruitlessly excavated the entire island searching for the buried treasure of Lima Cathedral, the most famous lost treasure of all time. I was never aware that Stevenson's Treasure Island had any basis in actual fact, or that he died so young (age 44). Sailing is an enjoyable and educational read for anyone interested in literary history or treasure hunting, or someone who just enjoys reading salty tales of wooden-limbed pirates and plunder on the high seas. Thanks, Rockport Library.

Some of a Gun

  Another object dug up in Union Commons. It was sitting on top of a buried tree stump, about three inches below the surface. They are obviously two sides of a very old gun, though of what kind I am entirely uncertain. I am guessing it was a pistol, judging by the size, and probably from the 1800's.

Hooked

  Found in Union Commons. I don't know, I suppose it was used to hook something. My plan is to clean the rust off and use it in conjunction with a rusty chain to hang a particular birdfeeder in our yard that currently blows around in the wind a little too much. Are birds fond of rusty junk?