My friend Angie and I lived in an RV park north of Deming NM. The park was full of mostly retired folks, most married but some single like Angie and I. Everyone knew that Angie and I were a twosome although we lived seperately on our own rigs. Some of the bachelor types would like to have beat my time with Angie (you can add a few of the married types in there too 
) Angie and I had this little game we played. She always had a "honey-do" list of things she wonted done that might require some male assistance and the game was.....she would try to get me to do the "honey-do" stuff and I would come up with the wildest excuses to get out of them. It was all in fun and just some joking around between Angie and I.
The guys in the park were always accusing me of treating Angie bad. I would go up to the recreation hall for coffee and a bull session with the boys every morning. Angie and the girls would be having their own gaggle at the same time. Then Angie would approach me with one of her silly "honey-do" jobs and I would go into my evasive maneuvers mode and grab my metal detectors and go hunting at Camp Cody, a WWI army base on the outskirts of Deming, NM. Then some poor sap would volunteer to help Angie with her "honey-do" job. Even if Angie told them "thats OK, J will get around to it." They would insist on being at her beck and call and she, "Ort to just forget about that old J character, he is lazy and no account anyway."
That worked out pretty good....especially for me. Angie and I felt guilty about it....just a little....but what the heck....if it made those guys happy, who were we to interfere with the system.
I would get to Camp Cody about 9:00 to 10:00 and hunt untill 12:00. At 12:00 on the dot, Angie would pull in there to pick me up and we would go to Denny's to eat. By 1:00, she would drop me off at Camp Cody. I would hunt untill 2:00 and then go to Arby's restaurant for coffee and tall tales with H. Glenn Carson and some other treasure hunters. It was a good life.
On a Thursday, I found a nice Barber dime, something like a 15S as I recall.
On Friday, I wonted to run some tests on a bunch of detectors I owned. I didnt have a Fisher detector but wonted one for a comparison check so I went by and borrowed Glenn's Fisher. We jokingly agreed that If I found anything with his detector, we would half it. I found a really nice Mercury dime (17S as I remember it) but not with Glenn's detector. Never the less, when I returned his machine and showed him the dime, he said he would get his hammer and chisel so we could half it.
Saturday morning at the recreation hall, Angie approached me with one of her "honey-do" jobs. I told her, "Angie, Im on a dime a day kick up at Camp Cody and just aint got time to fool with that kind of stuff." The guys thought that was bad of me but I headed out to Camp Cody in a high lope.
Just before 12:00 I got to thinking it was about time for Angie to pick me up and was even having some guilt pains for not helping her with her honey-do job when my detector went BEEP! I scooped up some desert sand with my nugget spoon and sorted around through it and came up with another silver dime....a mercury. At the same time, I saw Angie pulling in to pick me up for lunch. I was giggling to myself thinking, "I told that woman I was on a dime-a-day kick and sure enough, I got another one."
Without even looking at the date on the dime, I started putting on a silly little show for Angie's sake. I was jumping up and down and around in circles and yelling my fool head off while Angie just stood there by her truck with her hands on her hips and shaking her head at my antics.
I went running over to her and triumphantly said, "I told you I was on a dime a day kick and here is another one." Only then did I look at the date and said, "and it is a 1916......." My mind kind of went blank as I slowly turned the dime over to see the mint mark....and then whispered, "D...." I dropped my detector in the sand and made a run for my van to get my coin book. I knew the 16D was the key mercury dime, I just couldn't convince myself that it was true untill I could double-check myself. After all, other people found stuff like that, not me. But danged if it wasn't a 16D in almost perfect condition, had one little tiny dark spot on it.
I was sort of in shock. Like I told Angie, things like that happened to other people, not an old trash digger like me. I was so tickled that I got plumb goofy and sort of got carried away, even insisted on buying Angies dinner instead of going Dutch like we always did. I dont ofen get carried away like that but it was a special day.
I showed Glenn and the boys my dime at the 2:00 Arby get together. Glenn had lived at Deming for about 20 years and was sort of an unofficial historian of what had been found at Camp Cody. He said as far as he knew, that was the eighth 16D Mercury dime found at Camp Cody during the last 20 years but of course, lots of treasure hunters passed thru there and hunted Camp Cody and there is no way to say how many got dropped out there. The base was only open from 1916 to 1918, the old WW1 doughboys were paid in cash money as I understand it, and since the Denver Mint was the closest Mint, no telling how many 16D Mercury dimes passed thru there. At least a few of them got dropped and I found one of them.
That was about 1998/99 as my shaky memory recalls it and I kept the dime untill about 2005 before selling it to a guy in Fredricksburg, Texas. I had sent it off and had it graded and mounted (blocked I think they call it) and they graded it AU40. I thought I got $2700 for it but it turns out I got only $2400 for it. I sold that guy the dime plus every other coin I had and I had a large suitcase full of them. I had collected coins from all over the world during my travels while in the Air Force and was just tired of hauling them around and fooling with them. While we were dickering around on price, we scribbled a bunch of figgers on a piece of paper and I was just looking at it and looks like we had agreed to $2400 for the dime, $300 for Mexican and South American silver, and $700 for all the other foreign coins, $3400 total.
There was a bunch of coins in that suitcase and that guy who bought them could just barely make it out of my house and to his car with them. That reminded of the time, my skinny but wiry son-in-law was helping me move over in Louisiana one time. The suitcase of coins was on a high shelf in a storage building. "Whats that," he asked. "Money," I said. "Suurrrreeee it is," he said with that know it all smirk on his face just before he jerked the suitcase off the shelve and him and the suitcase almost got smashed through the floor.
Its funny how things work out for the better most of the time if you dont sweat the small stuff and haggle over the details and worry too much about the what-ifs. The next time Angie came up with a honey do job I could always say, "not today, Angie, there is some more 16D mercury dimes calling to me from Camp Cody." I wasn't exactly lying, just hoping. Lightning has been known to strike twice in the same place so why couldn't I find another 16D Merc in the same place? What the heck, the fun is in the hunting anyway.
) Angie and I had this little game we played. She always had a "honey-do" list of things she wonted done that might require some male assistance and the game was.....she would try to get me to do the "honey-do" stuff and I would come up with the wildest excuses to get out of them. It was all in fun and just some joking around between Angie and I.The guys in the park were always accusing me of treating Angie bad. I would go up to the recreation hall for coffee and a bull session with the boys every morning. Angie and the girls would be having their own gaggle at the same time. Then Angie would approach me with one of her silly "honey-do" jobs and I would go into my evasive maneuvers mode and grab my metal detectors and go hunting at Camp Cody, a WWI army base on the outskirts of Deming, NM. Then some poor sap would volunteer to help Angie with her "honey-do" job. Even if Angie told them "thats OK, J will get around to it." They would insist on being at her beck and call and she, "Ort to just forget about that old J character, he is lazy and no account anyway."
That worked out pretty good....especially for me. Angie and I felt guilty about it....just a little....but what the heck....if it made those guys happy, who were we to interfere with the system.
I would get to Camp Cody about 9:00 to 10:00 and hunt untill 12:00. At 12:00 on the dot, Angie would pull in there to pick me up and we would go to Denny's to eat. By 1:00, she would drop me off at Camp Cody. I would hunt untill 2:00 and then go to Arby's restaurant for coffee and tall tales with H. Glenn Carson and some other treasure hunters. It was a good life.
On a Thursday, I found a nice Barber dime, something like a 15S as I recall.
On Friday, I wonted to run some tests on a bunch of detectors I owned. I didnt have a Fisher detector but wonted one for a comparison check so I went by and borrowed Glenn's Fisher. We jokingly agreed that If I found anything with his detector, we would half it. I found a really nice Mercury dime (17S as I remember it) but not with Glenn's detector. Never the less, when I returned his machine and showed him the dime, he said he would get his hammer and chisel so we could half it.
Saturday morning at the recreation hall, Angie approached me with one of her "honey-do" jobs. I told her, "Angie, Im on a dime a day kick up at Camp Cody and just aint got time to fool with that kind of stuff." The guys thought that was bad of me but I headed out to Camp Cody in a high lope.
Just before 12:00 I got to thinking it was about time for Angie to pick me up and was even having some guilt pains for not helping her with her honey-do job when my detector went BEEP! I scooped up some desert sand with my nugget spoon and sorted around through it and came up with another silver dime....a mercury. At the same time, I saw Angie pulling in to pick me up for lunch. I was giggling to myself thinking, "I told that woman I was on a dime-a-day kick and sure enough, I got another one."
Without even looking at the date on the dime, I started putting on a silly little show for Angie's sake. I was jumping up and down and around in circles and yelling my fool head off while Angie just stood there by her truck with her hands on her hips and shaking her head at my antics.
I went running over to her and triumphantly said, "I told you I was on a dime a day kick and here is another one." Only then did I look at the date and said, "and it is a 1916......." My mind kind of went blank as I slowly turned the dime over to see the mint mark....and then whispered, "D...." I dropped my detector in the sand and made a run for my van to get my coin book. I knew the 16D was the key mercury dime, I just couldn't convince myself that it was true untill I could double-check myself. After all, other people found stuff like that, not me. But danged if it wasn't a 16D in almost perfect condition, had one little tiny dark spot on it.
I was sort of in shock. Like I told Angie, things like that happened to other people, not an old trash digger like me. I was so tickled that I got plumb goofy and sort of got carried away, even insisted on buying Angies dinner instead of going Dutch like we always did. I dont ofen get carried away like that but it was a special day.
I showed Glenn and the boys my dime at the 2:00 Arby get together. Glenn had lived at Deming for about 20 years and was sort of an unofficial historian of what had been found at Camp Cody. He said as far as he knew, that was the eighth 16D Mercury dime found at Camp Cody during the last 20 years but of course, lots of treasure hunters passed thru there and hunted Camp Cody and there is no way to say how many got dropped out there. The base was only open from 1916 to 1918, the old WW1 doughboys were paid in cash money as I understand it, and since the Denver Mint was the closest Mint, no telling how many 16D Mercury dimes passed thru there. At least a few of them got dropped and I found one of them.
That was about 1998/99 as my shaky memory recalls it and I kept the dime untill about 2005 before selling it to a guy in Fredricksburg, Texas. I had sent it off and had it graded and mounted (blocked I think they call it) and they graded it AU40. I thought I got $2700 for it but it turns out I got only $2400 for it. I sold that guy the dime plus every other coin I had and I had a large suitcase full of them. I had collected coins from all over the world during my travels while in the Air Force and was just tired of hauling them around and fooling with them. While we were dickering around on price, we scribbled a bunch of figgers on a piece of paper and I was just looking at it and looks like we had agreed to $2400 for the dime, $300 for Mexican and South American silver, and $700 for all the other foreign coins, $3400 total.
There was a bunch of coins in that suitcase and that guy who bought them could just barely make it out of my house and to his car with them. That reminded of the time, my skinny but wiry son-in-law was helping me move over in Louisiana one time. The suitcase of coins was on a high shelf in a storage building. "Whats that," he asked. "Money," I said. "Suurrrreeee it is," he said with that know it all smirk on his face just before he jerked the suitcase off the shelve and him and the suitcase almost got smashed through the floor.
Its funny how things work out for the better most of the time if you dont sweat the small stuff and haggle over the details and worry too much about the what-ifs. The next time Angie came up with a honey do job I could always say, "not today, Angie, there is some more 16D mercury dimes calling to me from Camp Cody." I wasn't exactly lying, just hoping. Lightning has been known to strike twice in the same place so why couldn't I find another 16D Merc in the same place? What the heck, the fun is in the hunting anyway.
Oh the shame I experienced. I can only hope that you, a liberated woman, can appreciate the sacrifices I made in support of the womens movement.
