Picture Of The Large Cent I Found Along With The Flat Button, & A Friend's Two Flat Buttons We Found At Private Land Wagon Depot Site...

[Critterhunter]

As promised. My button and large cent are on the left, and my friend's two flat buttons are to the right. My button has an intact shank too, I just flipped it upright for the shot. This is the best my camera will do up close. The large cent has a date but is too gritty to tell what it is even under a loop. I need to soak it in some penetrating oil for a few days to get the crust off it and clean up the detais and see if I can read the date.

Often I just rub olive oil on copper or brass coins, tokens, or such like this and it brings the details right out. It's also a great way to prevent air from getting to the coin and further degrade it over time, and I'm always sure to rub it on the sides of the coins to keep it completely sealed from air getting to it, but this one I want to soak in some penetrating oil to see how that does.

I've tried soaking brass or copper coins/tokens in olive oil for months but it doesn't seem to remove the crud like other people say. When a coin has some heavy green crud on it I'll often electralysis it for about 5 to 10 minutes and it does wonders to flake the gunk off, but this coin is so pitted that if I did that it would further degrade the details I bet. Another trick is to heat the coin up over a candle and then throw it in cold water and it will shock the gunk crud off them, but this one doesn't have any real crud on it. It's just crusty/pitted, where I think the oil would be the best approach to cleaning it up and exposing some detail.

Like I said about the site, the area is grown in with heavy brush so we need to hunt it more in mid winter where we can get into more of the area. We were only able to hunt some short twisting 4 wheeler paths that twisted around in the general area of the depot, the old well, and the hitching post. We still plan to go back to work those short little trails some more though during the summer here to see what else we can find on those.

 

[xwyokid]

I would say that place holds some promise.

 

[JimmyCT]

sweet finds! nice job on the large cent. I hope you can get back there and give that place a good cleansing - Jim

 

[dewcon4414]

Have you considered walnut shells to tumble it? Works well on copper and brass. It will be interesting to see if those flat buttons are scoefields or just of that time frame.

Dew

 

[Critterhunter]

Dewcon, you'll have to school me on that. I don't know much about buttons other than that flat buttons are pretty old. 1700's to 1800's, right? Other than that I now what a few civil war buttons look like. Where I live there isn't any civil war activity but a friend did manage an "I" button in the woods last summer. Blew my mind when I washed it off in a puddle for him and saw it become a bright gold civil war button. No flaking of the gilding at all. He also found another button that day that we found out was also from the civil war. A lead flat button with two holes in the center and no shank. About the size of a quarter I think maybe. A friend of ours looked at it and said "that's civil war too", so I guess it is since he knows more about that stuff. Can't figure out how those buttons got in those woods. I'm thinking they might have been wearing a jacket while hunting they had from the war maybe?

I've got a tumbler but I hardly ever used it. No walnut shells though. I've tumbled some large cents and indians with some aquarium gravel and a bit of polishing powder, soap, and water. Did OK I guess but I hat messing with the tumbler.

For clads I don't tumble either, I just wash them with soap and water and throw into one of those Coin Star change machines at the grocery store. I'd rather pay the 9 cents on the dollar not to have to polish and roll them. I saw that Coin Star cleans/polishes all that change anyway on a TV documentary and then sorts coins that are not good enough for further circulation and exchanges them with the US mint, so they are providing a service I'm willing to pay for is the way I look at it, and so I don't feel bad about dumping stained clads into their machines.

I just have to be careful to pick out the bad coins, which are usually eat up zincs here and there. Now when I dig a bad clad I throw it right into my junk pouch and don't even stick it in the coin pouch, as I've jammed up that Coin Star machine before with bad zincs and the clerk had to come over and open it to get the bad coins out of there. Very embarassing to have her see all those stained coins.

For silver coins of no value, I'll shine them with baking soda and water between my fingers. If they are real bad and that won't take off the black I'll hook them up to my homemade electralysis and that cleans them up real fast, in like 5 minutes. I also will do silver rings with it because it will clean between the fine webbing and stuff where I can't reach. I've used it on a few copper or brass coins that had thick green plaque on them and it does wonders on them as well. Doesn't work well at all with nickles though, but I hear there is a real good way to clean up nickels but can't remember off hand what it was. Anybody? I remember them coming out looking almost brand new and not stained. Might have been soaking them in something?

 

[OldBeechnut]

Nice treasure critter...

 

[deepdiger60]

Nice old Coronet Head Large Cent (1816-1839) Jim

 

[Critterhunter]

Wow, really? Hadn't looked in my book yet to see what years that style of large cent was. So this may turn out to be my oldest coin yet once I see the date on it. My oldest silver is an 1835 bust dime, but I don't remember what my oldest large cent's date is, so either one of those might be older or this one might be. I need to look at them all with a loop and figure out if any are older than my bust dime so I can note my oldest coin in my signature file, plus it's always fun to tell a hunting partner what your oldest coin is and that you hope to beat that date some day. When I get around to checking all these large cents out I'll post what date the one I just found was and what my oldest turns out to be. Good chance this coin might be it, because it was only made for 4 years after 1835 and many more years before that. Thanks again for the info. Really must start carrying my coin book with me.

Thanks for the remarks everybody. Been a while since I've dug a large cent. A couple years maybe, and it's one of my favorite coins to find.

Oh, story about about large cents. One time I was hunting a pounded out small corner lot in a park and ended up with 3 or 4 large cents in a row about a foot or two apart from each other. All were 6 or 7" deep, and every one had a square nail on top of them that made people miss them before. First time I used one of my Explorers there amd that was really impressive to me. Then I went back later with my GT and the stock 10" coil after gridding the place with my Explorers over the years many times and pulled more silver out of there. The GT is smooth as butter over that place and it really showed me what it could do and convinced me there was more to this machine then just some "lowly" base model in the Minelab line up.

That is one of my testing lots. I like to bring any new machine or coil there because it's a small lot with a lot of iron areas, then clean deep black soil areas (where I found the large cents with the Explorer), and then areas of gravel/hot rocks. Perfect storm of about all 3 types of hunting conditions you can think of so it puts a machine or coil through it's paces. Good neutral back soil to test depth, then areas of that same soil with heavy iron masking, and then very mineralized/hot rock type areas as well. All of which are distinctly separate from each other is this small lot I've gridded many times, so it's a good obstacle course and testing grounds for new coils or machines for me to judge them by, as it's small enough for me to grid out in a hunt.

Until I got my Explorers every machine I owned couldn't muster any old coins or even wheats out of that lot, and even my Explorers gave some rather iffy coin hits on some coins in the mineralized/hot rock areas of the lot that were only about 4 or 5" deep, but at least they were over 50% "coin" so I dug them as I knew not to expect the best of coin hits in the mineralized areas. That impressed me about the Explorers over all other machines I had owned up to then and really showed me something.

The fact that the GT has been able to pull more old coins from that lot even with the stock 10" coil really makes me proud of it too. Then I re-gridded with the 15x12 and the 12x10 later on after that and found more. Even found a standing liberty quarter about 7.5" deep in Auto sensitivity with the 15x12 that I believe was on edge and thus I had missed it before, because the SEF coils seem to hit even better than the 10" Tornado on coins standing on end, although the Tornado was the best coil up until then to me on a machine in popping on edge coins.

First time there with the 12x10 I got a thin sterling silver ring standing straight up in the hole about 5 to 7" deep or so. That up/down or "high/low" type of audio from coins or silver rings on edge is really distinct and once you hear it and dig a good target you'll never forget it. It's very different then most trash that hints a high tone to it.

That lot that I've gridding with every machine and coil over the years is one of my main proving grounds. Up until owning Minelabs nothing came out of there old for me, and the fact that the GT could pull even more out of there after my Explorers worked it hard told me that like the Explorers this GT was no slouch either.

Yea, I know without head to heads on undug targets nothing can be said for sure, but just the same I had worked this small lot so hard with so many machines and coils over the years from the same angles of gridding, that at least it told me that these Minelabs had some real potential to them. Especially since nothing old surfaced from that lot until I had a Minelab in my hands.

 

[Ron from Michigan]

Critter,nice finds and site.Thanks Ron

 

[Critterhunter]

Thanks Ron. I just looked at my pile of large cents under a loop seeing if any beat my oldest silver for oldest coin (1835 bust dime), but earliest dates I can read are 1840's. have to next check the style of large cents to see if any are older than that by style with no date to judge. The new one I just found looks like I'll get a date but have it soaking in penetrating oil to see if that helps clean up the details. Will let you guys know how it pans out, because I'm curious if any of my large cents are older than 1835 here just so I know what date I'm trying to beat next time for oldest coin.