I thought I might add a small story about half dollars. My BEST find ever was a half dollar! It was a Franklin half.
Yup, have found stuff worth a lot more money wise... a huge 22 carat gold man's ring with a 3 carat really COOL banana yellow colored diamond. The ring had no initials or anything. I sold it for $5,200. Found a woman's wedding ring with 5 diamonds on the swimming beach at Louisville Lakes (near Omaha) with a Fisher 1260-X. Sold that one for $3,600. Have found COMPLETE sets of Mercury/Roosevelt dimes, Jefferson nickels. The 1916D Merc in the set was in EF condition and I ended up selling it a few years after finding it but I still have the rest of them. Found two $1 gold coins in the same hole once in old, overgrown, deserted cemetery. Lots of 1800s coins over the years, etc.
But my VERY BEST find was that Franklin half!
The year was 1957, I was 10 years old. We were the caretakers of Kountze Park in Omaha, Nebraska. There was, and still is, a building right in the park... we lived there. One evening about 10 minutes to 8 my dad yells at me 'go get me 2 packs of Lucky Strikes'. So he flips a half dollar to me. The grocery store was right across the street and they closed at 8. It had just turned dark out. I took off running out the door and my dad yells out something like 'and don't be spending the change on candy'. As I turned my head to hear him, still on a dead run, the unthinkable happened. I ran smack dab into a huge pine tree about 200 feet from the house, close to the curb. The half dollar went flying. Panic set in! I was on my hands and knees crawling around looking for it for about 15 minutes when I looked up and there was the old man. GULP! 'Where's my cigarettes' he says. I was crying telling him what happened. And crying even more when he whopped my butt. He gounded me until I found that stupid half dollar. So before school every day... and after school every day I looked for it. In vain. After about 2 weeks he ungrounded me and things finally smoothed over.
Now it is 1971. I have my 1st real metal detector... a White's Goldmaster 63TR (actually my VERY 1st one was a crappy Relco BFO that couldn't hardly find a coin on the top of the ground so it wasn't a real metal detector to me). So I figure out how to use the 63TR and head straight for Kountze Park and right for that infamous pine tree. After a couple coins and some junk about 15 minutes into hunting... about 10 feet from the tree BINGO! A 1953D Franklin half about 2" down. I knew that had to be it. I pounded the are around that tree for another hour and found more coins but no other half dollars were there.
So I drive over to my mom and dad's house (they had long since moved out of the park and bought a home in a different part of town). I said something like "Do you remember that half dollar I lost when I was a kid... the one you gave me to buy cigarettes?" Oh ya, he remembered. I handed it to him and told him how I found it. He went straight downstairs with it and drilled a hole in it. He put it on his keychain. It was still on his keychain when he died in 1995.
A few days after his funeral I took that half dollar... all beat up as it was from being on his keychain all those years... and drove to Kountze Park. I buried that old Franklin right where I found it, only instead of 2" deep, like I found it, I buried it over a foot deep. I am sure it is still there to this day.
Added notes: Just to be sure I have hunted around that tree with at least 10 different detectors over the years. No other half dollars. For sure that was the one. If you have read this far more about Kountze Park. We moved out from there when I was in 7th grade because, well I don't exactly now how to say this... I do not want to offend anyone, the area had become predominantly black familys and still is. Very high crime rate in that part of Omaha. But Kountze Park is a very historic place. It was right smack dab in the middle of the 1898 Trans Mississippi Exposition. Look it up, very impressive event. The old dried up lagoon in the park was dead center of the exposition. The park covers 2 city blocks and there are imense 3 story turn of the century homes all over the area. Some still have hitching posts out front. Some are torn down. Buffalo Bill Cody performed 6 blocks north of the park for thousands of folks. If I told you all the stuff I have found in that park and surrounding area (houses/vacant lots/etc.) with metal detectors you probably would not believe me. Thousands of old coins... and many are still there. And that lagoon... I found hundreds of Indian Head Cents in there. It is just such a bad part of town, and I am a LOT older now, that I am wary of going there by myself. And my wife INSISTS that I don't. So I have not set foot there for 12 or 13 years.
