Had a couple of rough days in the field of the last entries, like, I didn’t find anything, like not not even junk.  My swinging arm felt like lead.  I decided to move on, at least temporarily, and most likely permanently.

Hit a brand new site, which is some ruins in some woods I recently discovered via some research (as if there are other paths to discovery, like random wandering or space aliens implanting visions in my brain :)).  Had only 90 minutes to hit the site yesterday, and pulled my second career 3 ringer.  I’m not a relic guy, but I do know these things are rare here in Chester County.  That said, all this is to me is a tell for the hope of dead zone silver —

Today was the first full day of hunting at the site, and I managed to pull 8 coins, all of them pennies.  Are you kidding me?

4 coppers, 2 IHs,. and 2 wheaties.  Not the greatest pic, so it doesn’t show that the coppers aren’t as abused as what usually comes out of the ground around here.  The dates on the largies are 1810, 1816, and 1826.  The shield copper is a New Jersey copper, the 3rd of my career, and by far the nicest of them (tho admittedly, the front is toast).  The IHs are also somewhat decent for around here, a 1901 and 1902.  The wheaties are 1912 and 1944.

I guess that means this is a double penny trifecta.  Whohoo!  Those who follow me know there are only three types of coins I like to find: silvers, silvers, and well, you get it.  But this seems actually kinda rare, 4 coppers in one day, as well as the IH’s.  Whatever, where’s the dead zone silver?

The interesting thing about this hunt was that all the coins were concentrated in a very small area of the site.  Yesterday I spent 90 minutes with only one diggable target, and today the first hour or so went by with bupkis, until I hit this hot zone, with diggable target after diggable target.

The site was extremely awkward — thornbushes, other bushes, downed trees, and so forth.  It was hard detecting (and digging, thru rocks and roots), but that is the nature of colonial era sites in the woods.  It was so grueling that I left an hour before I had to, due to burnout (imagine tight low and slow swinging thru thornbushes and downed trees in an iron infested zone, and you get the idea), but in all fairness to leaving early, I’m sick, so I just had to walk off.  Too bad, cause the one section with all the stuff almost seemed like a virgin site,  at least based on the run rate of diggable targets.  I may grid that section the opposite way sometime.

Here are some of the relics from the hot zone —

A couple of buckles and a monogrammed spoon.  I found most of the spoon, but not the middle part.  It looks like silver, but, sadly, is base metal (prolly silver plate, actually).

I also found this cool whatchamacallit —

Its hollow thru and thru, including the bulbous part being totally hollow. I have no idea what this is, or could have been used for, but it must have been cool, given the effort to make such a thing in that era.  If you have any clue what this thing is, please comment. (Edit: I’m told on one of my Facebook groups that: It’s the top to an 18th(?) century fireplace andiron [sic]. I have yet to google any of that to see what it means).