silversweeper
New member
I still can't believe I found this! I honestly never thought I would ever find anything like this beautiful little coin. Everytime I see other members post pictures of 1/2 dimes I almost salivate, then when I found a 1/2 of a 1/2 seated dime last week I figured that would be as close as I'd ever get. Well.....I pretty much hunted out that little spot where the seated piece of a 1/2 dime came from and figured the rest of the corn field would be empty. Well yesterday I found another little hot spot right before I had to head home and picked up a piece of a very old thimble, a few more colonial-early 1800's buttons and some assorted what-not. Today I had exactly one hour between work and when I had to be home so.....I broke a couple of speed limits back to the spot and started swinging my etrac again. For at least two rows of several feet I got nothing, then a small button and again nothing for a while. Finally I hit another signal, fairly decent but debatable whether or not it was conductive or falsing on iron. The numbers aren't worth paying attention to because I am using a 10x12 sef and have everything amped up as far as it will go and remain stable. Numbers are way off but I hit the deep small stuff with no problem. This half dime I almost gave up on, it was so deep that I was beginning to figure it was falsing on another big chunk of farm equipment. I kept sticking my pin-pointer in and scanning the bottom and sides with no results. Finally when I dug the bottom out one more time, now at about 14 or so inches (no kidding, fortunately there weren't any bits of nails or any other trash. And little to no mineralization) I waved my coil over the dirt that I dumped out and got a nice conductive hit. When I bent down with my pinpointer I immediately saw the little round disc. Too thin to be a button and too crusted with hard dirt to tell anything other than it had to be another 1/2 dime. I carefully packed it in cotton in a medicine bottle and hunted my remaining time of my hour. Found two more nice colonial buttons and headed for the van. All the way home thinking that it was my first seated and please, oh please let it be in good condition. I briefly thought that "hey, you know it could always be a draped bust!" Well lookee, lookee.....this coin is in near perfect condition. I can read every letter in Liberty as well as the E Pluribus Unum! I am totally stoked and can not wait to get back to that field! Won't be many more days before the corn is too high to hunt. Now....back to looking at my 1834 1/2 dime!!!
Now thats a nice looking Bust half dime! Congrats!