An 1800's watch case and an 1892 V nickel...

[REVIER]

Just a nothing hunt in a small park I have hit a million times before.
Used to be homes all around here but knocked down long ago.
I have found some wheats here before but never anything really old past the 40's, I hunt this park for clad, jewelry, wheats and maybe a silver coin if I can swing over one someday.
Today I was surprised twice.
Might be the new Sharpshooter coil mounted on the end of my F70, could be just luck but in an area I have hunted many times before two really old targets popped up.
First a big, solid watch case that is marked Nickel Silver from the Illinois Watch Case Co.
The serial number is 363337 but there are no surviving lists to date just cases from this company, just the movements.
Still it might be 1800's so I will go with that till I research the shape of the case more thoroughly.
The company moved from Chicago to Elgin in the 1880's and started to use the name Elgin on their cases before 1900 so the Elgin Watch Co. was not to happy about that and they ended up in court several times over the years.
Still, no Elgin on this case so a big clue and I am pretty confident this case is pre 1900.

Right near this case I found something else, a crusted over disc that I eventually got clean enough to see a date and someone stars around the rim and parts of images front and back...it is a V nickel with a date of either 1888 or 1892...the last two numbers on the date are pretty scarred.
Either way I broke into the 1800's this season with my third and best V nickel found so far.
I found two others but both were so smooth it was hard to make an ID, no question on this one.
I am now looking at this park with different eyes, the park isn't that old but the land it sits on has some history for sure.

A nothing hunt at a scoured park with two surprising finds...don't you just love when that happens?

 

[dfmike]

With finds as old as that I'd want to hit that park again for sure. At what depth did you get that watch casing ? I'm surprised nobody hit it before at that size especially if the park was hunted out thoroughly. Any idea what it's made out of ?
In my area there are lots of people cherry picking the high conductor signals and they leave lots of stuff behind for the rest of us to pick up.

 

[REVIER]

I have hunted here a ton, I assume others have too because all the public parks have around here since the 60's.
The easy stuff has been scooped up, it is the harder masked targets that are mostly left and both of these were not all that deep but a little strange.
The watch case was a big signal and acted like a full flattened thick can.
Large, numbers at about an 85 like a quarter on my Fisher which is a little higher than my usual full cans, raised the coil up pretty high and still got it.
Most might have passed it by thinking it was a can, I might have too but this time instead of jumping all around as cans tend to do it pretty much stayed on 85-87 and didn't jump much at all off of those.
That is unusual behavior for most targets in this dirt especially 4" deep which is where this was.
My Carrot went off all over the place like it was a big can too but I kept digging if only to get it out of the way to see if it was masking something else as long as I had the hole opened.
Surprised the heck out of me when this thing came up.
It was those unusually solid numbers that triggered my digging instinct, large can signal or not, again not much here comes in solid and stable much past 3" or so in this dirt.
Out of the ground it is more into the low 70's so it up averaged on my Fisher like most targets deeper.
It says nickel silver on the case, this is a copper alloy with nickel and sometimes zinc and no silver although new it might look like it was... it is just a marketing term and goes under many different names like German silver and more.

Could the new coil have given me this more solid signal I couldn't get with my Fisher coils...who knows?

The nickel was only about 2-3" deep, too much deeper the numbers would have soared much higher.
As it is it was a nickel signal, jumped a bit from 31-35 and lots of sta tabs act the same way here but for some reason I decided to dig it anyway.
A few weeks ago I discovered I thought I cracked the code here on the real strange and masked stuff and found a ton of great targets in sites like these that others missed but I eventually realized things are even weirder than I thought so I decided to dig a few more of the iffier signals I come across than I used to on my hunts.
I can't dig everything here, there is just too much iron and trash in most of the sites I hunt but a little more effort digging these odd ones got me this treasure today.

The Nel coil seems quieter than my Fisher coils, the signals I am getting might be a bit different too, just different enough for me to find these things but I can't say for sure.
All I know is I go back to sites over and over for reasons just like this and today something great happened that let me find them.

 

[sddavid]

Good hunt and more to come from that area

 

[Sataro]

Congrats & hopefully you will still find those elusive signals that are left in that old park!

 

[Blind Squirrel]

Ahh - the NEW COIL strikes again! Good finds REVIER! I love finding old pocket watch parts, whenever I do , I concentrate , maybe change settings a bit to look for an accompanying watch-fob. Several times I have been lucky enough to find one. Best of luck and...

Happy Hunting!
Blind Squirrel