Note: this is being simultaneously posted on American Detectorist (its one of my “stories”), so if you’ve read it there, its the same here.

Told my wife this morning that I was gonna go out and dig a 200 year old coin, and that is exactly what I did.  Of course, I had some inside information, as a couple of years ago I discovered an unmapped 1700s homesite where I pulled 13 coppers from a 90×90 grid, and while I gridded the area hard at the time, I’ve become a much better detectorist in the past two years, and figured I might have missed one — so I figured I’d give it another go now that I was a bit better with the E-Trac, and sure enough I did miss one.

But, it was a pyrrhic victory of sorts, as 3 hours of gridding netted only one, which, due to the abusive low pH of the Chester County soil, realistically must be scored as a smoothie

Yes, I can see a bust, and yes, it is either a George II or III (the bust is facing right, but I can’t remember which is which).  The cool thing, tho, is that it is actually made of copper (air tests as 12-46 on the E-Trac), so it is a British import, not a contemporary domestic base metal counterfeit, so we take small wins where we get them   Still worth melt value, and just as ugly.

Well, enough whining about low pH and Chester County coppers (I’ve found 51 now, and all 51 have been abused to melt value by the local condition of acidic soil); it was time to move on to what I do best, and that is bulk modern silvers (too bad most of the old silvers around here are in the old parks, which around here are under the purview of the Fairmount Park Commission, which has decreed detecting illegal), at a different site that gave up an ’94S barber half, and has always given up at least one silver per hunt, but takes a bit of patience to work.

And patience was needed, as the first 7 coins where wheaties   I don’t believe in universal constants, but if I did, one of them would be my golden ratio of 2.5 wheats to one silver.  This has never failed me, and when it has been out of whack, it has always come in.  So, I kept going at it  and eventually I got that sort of 2/3 silver rosie. Are you kidding me?

I decided right then and there that it was counting as a full silver, and not only that, I decided that if I found the other part of it (which I extra carefully gridded for), it was gonna count as a full silver as well, ’cause, you know what, silver coins are hard to find, and had I found the small half first, I certainly would have counted it as a silver, wouldn’t you?

But, I didn’t find the small half, and not only that, I didn’t find much else for quite some time (I mean, a really long time, like shoulder sore E-Trac time (as much as I love the E-Trac, aside from the fact that the pinpointing is more or less useless, the thing is not balanced well for long periods without diggable targets — I have two tendinitises directly caused by the thing, but we love it anyway).  But, press on I did, and eventually I got a beautiful 10-47 on the E-Trac, which turned out to be a walker.  This is the second time in recent memory where a silver Q signal turned out to to be a walker, but, as you can see (and this is why I shot the reverse pic), it is ferrous stained, and no doubt ferrous in the hole was affecting the signal.  Just a word to the wise (but of course you would dig it, but who knows what the competitions’ machines were saying on this one?).

The next signal didn’t have that problem, and it was the best dig me I’m silver signal I can remember hearing in quite some time.   It turned out to be my first ever Franklin half, and my 6th silver half dollar of the year.  It also makes a career five pack on big silver (seated half, barber half, walker, franklin, ’64 kennedy), and I am quite excited about that  Alls I need is one of those really hard to get old ones for the six pack, and that is what I’m gonna do someday.

So that’s that, two big silvers in one day in a first for me.  I was ready to call it a day, but, as always, I finished out the rank of the grid, and hit a pair of dimes in the same hole  How sweet is that?  It was, outside of digging one junk target, 4 silver targets in a row (2 halfs then the 2 dimes in the same hole).  But, that doesn’t account for the hour after hour of dead.  Sometimes it just works out that way.  If you know the site is a winner, just press on, even if it feels like a loser for longer than you’d like.

Well, its been quite a long time since I’ve written one of my stories (probably be just as long before the next one).  Hopefully its all good.   Hopefully Dixie Rebel will have the appropriate response.