Treasure Hunting

Local online newspaper, The Wenatchee World is stating the obvious to those of us at TreasureHunting.com.

Metal Detecting is a “damn good hobby.”

Jim Nuesse has used a metal detector for more than 20 years and once found a 2.5-ounce nugget of gold in Alaska, although he says the most common find is pull tabs and bottle caps.

“It’s all a part of it,” Nuesse said. “Anything I find doesn’t go back in the ground,” he said, adding he either takes it to the garbage can, or it goes into his pouch with his other finds.

On Monday after about two hours of searching, Nuesse had found a handful of money and a needle for pumping up balls. This is much more than average, which he attributed it to the first search of the year.

Nuesse estimates he got on his knees about 100 times during his outing Monday.

“At 68, it’s a damn good hobby. It keeps you in good shape”

Well Jim, we whole-heartedly agree! Keep it up and happy hunting!

Share This

If you’ve never heard of the American Civil War “Battlefield Ring,” don’t feel bad. Neither had we. But now that we have we are completely obsessed.

According to the Winchester Star, metal detectorist Tony Lockley of Frederick County found a ring, referred to by some as “the find of the century,” and as a “national treasure” by others.

The story goes like this:

21 years ago, Tony and his friend John Tracy Campbell were metal detecting on private property when John got a strong signal. He handed his metal detector to his wife to pinpoint the signal and start digging. When they finally got to what was giving the sound, a large, gold-plated ring, size 11, popped out of the soil.

That’s an average enough find… but this ring was inscribed… with the names of 16 Civil War battles and skirmishes that starts with the engagements during the 1862 Peninsual campaign (York town and Williamsburg) and ends with the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. In between were landmark battles such as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and The Wilderness.

John and Tony were definitely hooked on metal detecting but neither of them really understood the uniqueness of the ring they found. In fact, John even gambled the ring in a weekly poker game during the mid 1980’s!

Tony, however, purchased the ring back in 1987 and displays it at Civil War relic shows and artifact exhibitions.

The Winchester Star, however, hits the nail on the head with its closing two paragraphs:

“Nonetheless, his curiosity remains at a high level of “pique” regarding the band’s origin. From where the ring was found, ’tis safe to assume it belonged to a Union soldier — most likely an officer who could afford to have the band made — in Gen. Phil Sheridan’s occupational forces that ringed Winchester after Appomattox. The names of the battles inscribed — for example, Antietam rather than Sharpsburg — clearly indicate Union ownership, while the dates of the battles suggest a post-war crafting.

The nagging question, of course, is who the ring belonged to. As there is no hint of identification, that basic fact is most likely lost to antiquity. What might be ascertained, though, is the unit to which that particular soldier belonged. The clue critical to solving this mystery may lie in the minor engagements inscribed on the ring. Two such battles are Williamsburg and Hanover Court House, fought in May 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign. Presumably, if one can pinpoint the Union units engaged in those two clashes and then determine if any were involved in the other 14, the search can be narrowed. Sounds like a job for PBS’s “History Detectives.”

And as for Tony,… he keeps a metal detector in the back of his pick-up, just in case…

Share This

The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend will be getting one awesome donation this week. Coming from Mike Williams, a resident of Venice, Florida, is his father Charlie William’s Whiskey Still. A special building has been built by the Heritage Center to house the Still and the information about its origin and operation. It has been reassembled as closely as possible to its original form for the exhibit, which opened this week.

Charlie Williams lived just outside of Townsend, rumor has it “it was just far enough off all beaten paths that they wouldn’t just stumble onto it by accident.” But there was a good reason to try - Charlie was known for making “some of the best hooch in the hills.”

Charlie learned the skill of making Whiskey when he was just a young boy but three things made his Whiskey stand out from all the others:

The Still was operated by Charlie for 20 years, and he closed it down as recently as the late 1980’s. The Still was capable of handling as much as 450 gallons of mash and could produce 88 to 95 gallons of whiskey per run, which was about every six days.

Mike Williams, 60, said he got his first taste of moonshine at age 4 and missed his senior class photo at Townsend High School in 1965 because he was helping his father pour concrete for the ceiling of the bunker-style structure that housed the still.

If you’re in the area of The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center, make sure to stop by and see this exhibit. It’s certainly treasure in its own right, and is a wonderful tribute to a generation we may never really know.

Read the rest of this lengthy and engaging article at KnoxNews.com’s website, and see more pictures of Charlie and his son Mike.

Share This

The H. L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink a warship, although the submarine was also lost during the process. Owned by the Confederate States of America during the height of the Civil War, it demonstrated both the advanteages and the dangers of undersea warfare.

H. L. Hunley, almost 40 feet long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, launched in July 1863, and shipped by rail to Charleston, SC on August 12, 1863. On February 17, 1864, Hunley attacked and sank the 1800-ton steam sloop USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor, but soon after, Hunley also apparently sank, drowning all 8 crewmen. Over 136 years later, on August 8, 2000, the wreck was recovered, and on April 17, 2004, the DNA-identified remains of the eight Hunley crewmen were interred in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery, with full military honors.

There is apparently some discrepancy as to who first discovered the resting place of the Henley, and at Hunley.org it is reported that “best selling author Clive Cussler established the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA) and spent 15 years searching for Hunley. The world’s first sub to sink a ship in battle was finally discovered on May 3rd, 1995 by NUMA archeologists Ralph Wilbanks, Wes Hall, and Harry Pecorelli.

“With a magnetometer, the Cussler crew located a metal object off the coast of Sullivan’s Island. After diving in nearly 30 feet of water - they removed three feet of sediment to reveal one of the Hunley’s two small coning towers.

“At first we thought we only had a piece of old debris,” said Hall. “But while groping through the silt my hand came upon the hinges of the hatch cover.”

“The NUMA team towed the magnetometer behind a boat as they criss-crossed the water guided by a set of grid-like coordinates. Using this method, Cussler and his team discovered many other shipwrecks in their search for the sub, including Confederate blockade runners.

“As if stuck in time - she lay on her starboard side with the bow pointing almost directly toward Sullivans Island - four miles away. The same direction she was heading that historical, fateful and mysterious night.”

For the last several years teams have been busy excavating the H. L. Hunley, and have found the remains of all the crew members aboard when she sank and a plethora of artifacts. “The tiny sub and its contents have been valued at over $40,000,000, making its discovery and subsequent donation one of the most important and valuable contributions ever to South Carolina.”

For more information visit Friends of the Hunley.

Share This

That’s right. I said it. A gold, U.S. coin worth up to $15 million has been discovered by an Egyptian couple as they cleaned out their apartment.

It’s okay. Jealousy is a perfectly natural emotion and nobody will judge you here.

So what coin was it, you ask? Well it’s a rare double eagle gold coin. First minted in 1850 and used to settle accounts between banks and other financial institutions, it is almost unheard of for one of these coins to be unearthed now-a-days. But alas, the Egyptian couple was cleaning out their apartment and discovered an old box that had once belonged to the husbands grandfather. Mohamed Ismail and his wife Fatima were throwing out old clothes and broken furniture that had been stored in a closet when they stumbled upon the box.

The first thing Ismail did was send the coin to experts, hoping that he would get a few dollars for it. He’s a simple tailor and the extra cash would have really helped the family. You can imagine his shock when the experts told him that his grandfather had left him a “unique coin of American historical value.”

Specialists believe that the double eagle coin found in Egypt could be part of Theodore Roosevelt’s 1933 collection of coins redesigned by famed American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and given to King Farouk of Egypt as a present.

How his grandfather got it, nobody knows. But one thing is for sure - I’ll be cleaning out my closets tonight!

Share This

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!

Share This

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.

Share This

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.

Share This

This doesn’t have much to do with metal detecting, but I think it’s safe to say most MD’ers have an adventurous spirit. Web Urbanist has a post today showing what they call the 7 Underground Wonders of the World. The list is truly amazing, with hidden catacombs, underground churches, and even tunnels under Disney World (Magic Kingdom).

Moscow, Russia

Orlando, FL (Disney World)

Take a few minutes and visit the site to read all about the 7 locations and the mysteries behind them. If you’ve been to any of these, let us know your thoughts.

Share This

I was reading a post by Carl Schroeder from Kalalau’s Korner about risks with cochlear implant. He starts the post with a metal detecting story that I thought was very interesting, and I’d never heard it.

The story goes, President James Abram Garfield was shot in 1881 at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Depot. Three weeks later, Alexander Graham Bell was summoned to the White House. Apparently, Bell had a new invention that was similar to a modern day mine detector. He was called to probe the wound with it to find the bullet, but was unsuccessful in his attempts. It turns out, Bell was placing his detector in the wrong location. The bullet had entered the right side of the spine, but it traveled downward, and to the left. The bullet ended up having a cyst grow around it, making it harmless, but due to the repeated surgeries with unsterilized tools, Garfield suffered infection, blood poisoning, and pneumonia causing his eventual death.

I’m not so sure this is really Bell’s fault. Useless Information has more details in you’re still on the fence about this event.

Share This