It still amazes me after years of water hunting, how coins often come out of the water in identifiable condition.
The Dual Field has helped me retrieve quite a number of these old coins.
It is common to find little more than a wafer of silver or copper, razor thin and with no readable date or even a figure that can be identified so one can know for sure just what the coin is.
These two recent finds will illustrate, to the hunter who has never seen one of these coins, what I am talking about.
[attachment 203653 LostRings016Large.jpg]
This Indian Head penny is from 1891!
[attachment 203654 LostRings019Large.jpg]
This Mercury Dime is from 1919 (as nearly as I can make out the date under magnification and careful lighting)
The dime is laying on top of a new dime to show the amount of metal loss that has occurred.
A friend told me yesterday that he had recovered a silver dollar, in mint condition, from the water and I was inclined to question his honesty until he explained that the coin was more than a foot deep and buried in a heavy layer of clay which is a relatively inert substance and prevented the coin from being abraded by wave and tide.
I have only recovered one silver dollar and it was oxidized and worn badly enough that I could not tell what the date was (It was a liberty coin as I recall, but that's questionable!)
GL&HH Fellow Hunters,
CJ
The Dual Field has helped me retrieve quite a number of these old coins.
It is common to find little more than a wafer of silver or copper, razor thin and with no readable date or even a figure that can be identified so one can know for sure just what the coin is.
These two recent finds will illustrate, to the hunter who has never seen one of these coins, what I am talking about.
[attachment 203653 LostRings016Large.jpg]
This Indian Head penny is from 1891!
[attachment 203654 LostRings019Large.jpg]
This Mercury Dime is from 1919 (as nearly as I can make out the date under magnification and careful lighting)
The dime is laying on top of a new dime to show the amount of metal loss that has occurred.
A friend told me yesterday that he had recovered a silver dollar, in mint condition, from the water and I was inclined to question his honesty until he explained that the coin was more than a foot deep and buried in a heavy layer of clay which is a relatively inert substance and prevented the coin from being abraded by wave and tide.
I have only recovered one silver dollar and it was oxidized and worn badly enough that I could not tell what the date was (It was a liberty coin as I recall, but that's questionable!)
GL&HH Fellow Hunters,
CJ