Treasure Hunting

On June 30, 2005 the fate of the early American silver dollar coin changed forever. A 1794 Flowing Hair silver dollar was graded by Numismatic Guaranty Corp. as an MS-64 and sold for $1,150,000.00.

Did your mouth drop open when you read that number? So did mine!

Now 1804 silver dollars are expected to command that much attention as well as that kind of money due to their scarcity and demand. But, as the article at Numismaster.com says, ‘to say that a price of more than $1 million for a 1794 dollar was unusual would be putting it mildly.’

1794 is, without a doubt, historic but there may be 135 known to exist and a few of those in Mint State. Coins with over 100 examples known don’t usually bring in more than $1 million. But the rise in value for the early silver dollars didn’t stop with the 1794 Flowing Hair.

A 1795 MS-65 brought $230,000.00 and later a 1776 Continental Dollar graded MS-64 brought $126,500.00. Shortly thereafter an 1802 bust dollar graded MS-65 sold for $247,250.00. What this means is that Bust dollars ‘have apparently found an audience of collectors and that audience is willing to pay top prices for the best early dollars of the U.S.’

To read an excellent and engaging history of how America first came to issue silver dollars, check out the full article at Numismaster.com. The article also details the creation of the highly coveted 1804 dollar, and explains why you’ll never dig one up.

Articles like this make you want to run out to those Colonial sites you know about and spend a few days combing every inch, huh?

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This morning I found a story about a great find that ends in tragedy - that is, if you consider losing a hunting partner and good friend a tragedy (and I do).

The Yorkshire Post is reporting the story of Metal Detectorists’ Charl Richardson and Richard Hunter. They were good friends, frequent hunting buddies and treasure hunters who often searched North Yorkshire together. Together they found an amazing find of great historical significance - A silver medieval seal that portrays the murder of former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket in 1170!

Now most of us would do everything short of flipping out if we found something that old. And who better to share that news, excitement, fame and possible fortune with then your loyal hunting buddy? Unfortunately that’s not the way it worked out for Carl and Richard.

Carl claims sole ownership of the seal he says he discovered in a field belonging to farmer John Wray in August or September of 2006 while he was out with his mother.

Meanwhile, fellow detectorist Richard is the one who reported the find to the Portable Antiquities Scheme at Newcastle Museum. He says he was with Carl when the seal was found and said that they had a “gentleman’s agreement” to share anything they uncovered that day.

Since both refuse to give the seal to the other, or share it’s ownership with one another, the seal will go to the British Museum where it will not be released until ownership can be established without a doubt.

A lengthy and costly legal process is in store for both the men and the seal. Meanwhile, it’s already cost them a friendship.

For a more uplifting story about two hunting partners who understand and respect their friendship more than a valuable find, check out an earlier post we made about how a Penny Is a Dream Come True. And check out our article about Britains Portable Antiquities Scheme for more information about how submitting an item works.

In the meantime, treasure your friends more than your finds and have fun - together!

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This post is a little more on the frivolous side but I thought it was really interesting and wanted to share.

Suzanne Donegan, owner and founder of Mannin Studio’s was an avid collector of rare artifacts and objects. Apparently she scours the world to unearth items of historical significance and she incorporates those items into jewelry. “The pieces in the Mannin collection are an unexpected mixture of museum studies and haute design, a clever blend of history and the present.”
“The meticulously curated designs include distinctive cultural legacies from the past such as rock crystal carved intaglios, rose gold and jet Albert chains, monogrammed seal fobs and gold sovereign cases that are juxtaposed into innovative and thought-provoking pieces of art. Donegan views herself as a cultural anthropologist, rediscovering forgotten craftsmanship from decades past.”

Her website has some excellent examples of how she’s incorporated rare antiques into her jewelry designs. One of my favorites is the “Quin Collection / No. LXVIII. Not one piece of the necklace was created after 1900. It includes a rolled gold book chain from 1880, a gold and quartz intaglio seal from 1860 and a collection of links and clasps from early 1900.

The Mannin website is a great place for inspiration. It shows us that while things we find certainly do impress people from outside their glass cases, those things were created to be appreciated and there’s more than one way to show ‘em off!

Check out the Mannin Studio to kill some time and get inspired!

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I got a kick out of an article I read this morning about a nurse, Vicki Armstrong, from Shreveport, LA who is planning to FINALLY cash in her collection of pennies - All 55,000 of them!

Apparently Vicki has been saving her pennies for almost 19 years! And while she’s definitely no treasure hunter, I couldn’t help but be impressed by her appreciation for the value of a penny. How many times have you been out there, swingin’ the coil, and you find perfectly good pennies sitting right on top of the ground, thrown away and completely ignored as real currency?

Well Vicki might not have a metal detector, but she has certainly bent down and picked up every penny she’s seen in the last 19 years. She “knows the $55.00 won’t make her rich, but says the symbolism reinforced frugal spending habits and helped be a little bit more conservative in her lifestyle.”

If you’re wondering where she kept all those pennies - apparently she stored them anywhere she could! Vases, bowls, even shoeboxes were fair game! I wonder what this woman could do if she had a metal detector!

Remember folks - A penny saved is a penny earned. And if people laugh at you for stoppin’ to pick one up, just laugh right back… on your way to the bank!

Check out the original article at The Baltimore Sun.

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As usual I spend the majority of the Winter browsing the internet; researching and educating myself about our hobby. Of course the purpose of this blog is to share what I “dig up” online with other people as into treasure hunting as me and today I wanted to revisit one of my favorite sites.

Sergei, an avid treasure hunter and metal detectorist from upstate NY, has his own webpage at MetalDetectingWorld.com and he has packed his site with useful tips; my favorite of which is Halo Effect & Test Garden Construction. I’ve featured his discussion of the Halo Effect in an earlier blog post and I think the steps to making a Test Garden are important enough share also.

If you’re asking yourself “Why would I need a Test Garden? There’s plenty out there to find!”
Sergei has an excellent answer: “Construct a Test Garden to help you learn the capabilities of your detector and educate yourself about what you intend to find. It can help you better understand the effects of ground minerals, moisture content, target angle, oxidation/rust, trash proximity, target defects, surface textures and provide practice in target pinpointing.”

Here are some steps recommended by Sergei to help you create a Test Garden:
1. Create a test plot as soon as you purchase your detector (Remember: You want the Halo Effect to happen. So the sooner, the better!)
2. Select an area for your Test Garden and detect it with no discrimination to remove all the metal that may already be there.
3. Pick targets to bury. Include various coins, a bottlecap, a pulltab, other objects of different metals and a few nails. Also select a pint jar filled with scrap copper and a gallon can.
4. Bury all these objects in rows about three feet apart and make a map showing where and at what depth each item is buried. Coins should be buried at varying depths - 2 inches deep for the most shallow, 10 inches down for the deepest. Be sure to bury a coin on its edge about 2 inches down. As for the jar - bury it at 12 inches down, to the top of its lid. The gallon can with the lid should be buried about 2 feet below the surface.
5. Mark the target locations with colored, nonmetallic objects. A golf tee works great! And be sure to map it out (no need to get fancy, just a sketch is fine) so you know where you buried what object!
6. Wait for a little while (gotta let that Halo grow!) and then start going over your garden! Reference your map and listen to the sounds.

A Test Garden can help you learn a lot and improve your chances of making better finds. But believe this - a Test Garden is well worth the effort!

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Finding old coins is certainly rewarding, but most metal detectorists walk away with more “clad” then anything else. Thankfully About.com has give us keepers-of-the-clad some hope and provided a list of the most valuable U.S. coins still in circulation.

The article describes 10 coins that could be jingling in anyone’s pocket right this moment, or buried just beneath the first layer of soil… waiting for a metal detectorist to come along and scoop it up. The majority of the coins are valuable due to errors in die varieties or mint marks, and they’re often overlooked by people because their distinguishing characteristics are small. The price of these mistakes range anywhere from $50.00 to $35,000.00 - so I highly recommend you take a look at this list, take a closer look at your change, and keep picking up that clad in your quest for treasure. And if I find a 1969-S Lincoln cent with a doubled-die obverse… well… you folks will be some of the first to know.

And here’s the link to the rest of the article and the complete list of top 10 most valuable U.S. coins in circulation.

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I just stumbled onto a new website that is managed by the folks over at TreasureQuestXLT, - one of the many metal detecting forums online.

It’s called MetalDetectorResource.com and is a brand new website, certainly worth your attention.

It looks like they’ve put together an online resource for metal detectorists that provides reviews, tips, and techniques for specific machines. Users write reviews for metal detectors they have experience with and rate them on a five star scale.

My favorite part of this website is the organization and ease-of-use. With a blog style not too dissimilar from TreasureHunting.com you can easily write a review, search reviews by a brand or name, find information and background on any manufacturer, or hop over to the forum to chat.

I’ll happily track this websites progress as it grows and gets more content. But I do believe MetalDetectorResource.com is mandatory reading for first time metal detectorists as well as those of us that have been swingin’ the coil for awhile now.

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I promised myself I wouldn’t post about our friends across the pond and their mega-finds for awhile, but the story of bus driver Tom Peirce was just too good to resist sharing.

Amateur treasure hunter and self-confessed “metal detector fanatic” was combing a field he had stumbled upon after taking a group of school kids out for a day at a farm near Swanage, Dorset. After asking the farmer/land-owner for permission to search the two-acre field, Peirce returned with his friend Les Keith and within a few minutes his metal detector started sounding off.

Buried 10 inches under the farm land was a partial axe head. Digging even deeper revealed even more. Over the next two days Peirce and Keith uncovered nearly 500 bronze age artifacts, each one over 3,000 years old and one of the biggest hoards found in Britain!

In total, the loot is worth over 80,000 pounds (over $150,000.00), and the 60 year old bus driver will be splitting the proceeds with the farmer/land-owner, Alfie O’Connell.

What really drew me to share this story was Peirce’s quote “You do it as a hobby - you don’t do it for the money but if you strike it lucky then so be it” - and that is so true. This is a hobby; it’s fun, invigorating, exciting. It give history buff’s an excuse to research another time and era. It gives environmentalists an excuse to clean up the earth. It gives the rest of us something to do! Getting rich is just a bonus.

Happy hunting everyone! Spring is on the way!
- Elizabeth

Check out the full story at www.DailyMail.co.uk.

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Lately I’ve dug up quite a few articles about ancient finds and consequently I’ve seen some pretty amazing pictures of coins and jewelry. It seems everyone has a great story to share about how they found something, who they first showed it to, and even how much the piece sold for. But no one addresses whether or not they cleaned the piece and if they did clean it, what they used to get it done.

So I started poking around some of my favorite websites and came up with a few pages that focus on the controversial topic of cleaning really old and really dirty coins. Take a look at these pages before you start cleaning or just file these away for when you’ll need to know!

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If you inherited a unique and significant relic from a dying culture and no one knew you had it, would you give it back?

Marilyn Lewis of Port Townsend, Washington had the opportunity to answer that question last year when she inherited a Shaman’s mask with the faint inscription “Taken from a medicine man’s grave on King Island.” Her answer to the question: “yes.”

The story goes like this: In 1898 Lewis’ great uncle Nate traveled by steamship from Seattle to Alaska to try his luck in the Gold Rush. After spending three years there, working as a bartender and apparently not finding any gold, Nate went back home. He kept notes from his time in Alaska but no mention was ever made of King Island. In 1927 Nate gave the mask to Lewis’ father, Bill. For the next four decades the mask remained in the Lewis family. Until last year when Bill passed the mask on to Marilyn, asking if she would find where it came from.

Online research led Lewis to an abandoned Inupiat Eskimo village, littered with crumbling homes perched high on stilts. The people of King Island have long since re-located 80 miles southeast of the Bering Sea island to Alaska’s western coast, and all that remains of their culture is struggling to survive in the city of Nome. Lewis personally took the wooden mask with red-ochre face, beaked nose and black painted hair, to Alaska and delivered it to Tribal Coordinator of the King Island Native Community, Charlene Saclamana.

Saclamana said: “It gives me and my family something tangible from our past. We’ve lost so much of the culture. We were eager to have the mask back in our possession. We never had anything that well preserved from the island.”

Currently, the mask resides in an Alaskan museum and will be included in an exhibit featuring the style and ingenuity of ancient Bering Sea Eskimos. It serves as a significant piece of history and stands as a symbol of hope for King Island culture.

Would you have put as much effort into returning a relic you inherited? And where would you have started your research? Check out the original article and learn more about the King Island culture at Anchorage Daily News Online.

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