Got three hours last night to go out to my favorite park again. A little history of this park. It had it's early beginnings in the late 1800's as a oval horse race track. Later with the invention of the car it eventually became an auto race track beginning in the teens and also was the site of the county fair for years until the 1940's. One portion of the park I like to hunt always seems to produce nickels, the occasional silver dime, broken soda bottles, rusty nails and shotgun shells. I have surmised that there must have been a structure standing in this field that sold nickel bottles of soda to people as they watched or participated in a shooting attraction.
As I said, I find a lot of shotgun head stamps in this field and you have to dig them all because they fall right in the nickel/gold range. Last night I must have found the main spot people stood while they shot. They were everywhere! Low tone after low tone rang out and I dutifully (definitely not happily) followed my belief of "digging it all". Shell after shell went in my pouch as I chased the possibility of it being an old nickel in the hole. I even dug SEVEN shells out of one 8 inch deep hole! (A personal record I will cherish forever) Of course they were in addition to the usual rusty nails and trash encountered during a normal hunt.
Finally after what felt like the 3,000,000th shot gun shell, there it was! Let me tell you a Buffalo nickel never looked so good sitting in a hole. At first glance, it looked to be another worn out, no date Buffalo but strangely, it seemed that every portion of the coin was worn except for the crisp, bold date of 1917. I then continued on with my task of cleansing Mother Earth of shotgun shells and then finally got a nice high tone signal which turned out to be a wheat. It was a 1917 coin as well. I then realized I not only had two coins of the same identical year but I had rescued them on their 100th birthday. Just shows you that no matter how a hunt turns out there is always something interesting that is discovered when you get out and enjoy this hobby.
After my three hour hunt I found and dug SIXTY shotgun shells and lots of other trash. It's not always silver and gold and the good finds may have been few but they were memorable. Now that I have that area cleaned out of shells, I can return later, run it hot and see if they weren't just hiding some other treasures further down. Dig it all and take it with you.
As I said, I find a lot of shotgun head stamps in this field and you have to dig them all because they fall right in the nickel/gold range. Last night I must have found the main spot people stood while they shot. They were everywhere! Low tone after low tone rang out and I dutifully (definitely not happily) followed my belief of "digging it all". Shell after shell went in my pouch as I chased the possibility of it being an old nickel in the hole. I even dug SEVEN shells out of one 8 inch deep hole! (A personal record I will cherish forever) Of course they were in addition to the usual rusty nails and trash encountered during a normal hunt.
Finally after what felt like the 3,000,000th shot gun shell, there it was! Let me tell you a Buffalo nickel never looked so good sitting in a hole. At first glance, it looked to be another worn out, no date Buffalo but strangely, it seemed that every portion of the coin was worn except for the crisp, bold date of 1917. I then continued on with my task of cleansing Mother Earth of shotgun shells and then finally got a nice high tone signal which turned out to be a wheat. It was a 1917 coin as well. I then realized I not only had two coins of the same identical year but I had rescued them on their 100th birthday. Just shows you that no matter how a hunt turns out there is always something interesting that is discovered when you get out and enjoy this hobby.
After my three hour hunt I found and dug SIXTY shotgun shells and lots of other trash. It's not always silver and gold and the good finds may have been few but they were memorable. Now that I have that area cleaned out of shells, I can return later, run it hot and see if they weren't just hiding some other treasures further down. Dig it all and take it with you.
