Finally found this lost baseball field in the woods that I’ve been looking for off and on for a while.  Always suspected there was or should be a field there, but could never find it on the historical aerials, and finally did.

Once you know it is there, it is obvious to see; why I never found it before, I dunno.  In my defense, these aerials are quite large, not cropped down like this.

And the evidence, the old backstop found.  Unfortunately, quite overgrown.

More pics of the site.  I’d say about 5-10% of the terrain is actually swingable.  You have to crawl under branches and thru brambles and thornbushes to find these little clearings under the canopy where the thornbushes and underbrush don’t grow.

Given the low likelyhood that the site has been detected hard with an E-Trac, if at all, it seems likely that I’ll be pulling silvers out of here by the bucketfull, right?  Well, we’ll see. yesterday’s take, proving the site is viable —

I dunno.  I’ve probably hit 50% of the clear areas already.  Either the veg goes down this winter, or the land is cleared someday, or this will probably be about it for this site.

Too bad, as these things go.  Last time I found an old ballfield site, I think I found 14 silvers.

But, for me, its also about finding the site in the first place.  Hard to believe that I’ve been looking for this off and on since I started detecting.  Not hard or aggressively, but off and on.  Why I could not see it on the aerials before, who knows?

Dirt is rock hard around here, so we are in Random Field Theory mode.  I like detecting big, nondescript fields in the first place, as they have given up some of my best finds, but when the dirt is like cement, it is the only choice, as you dig very few targets, and you don’t care so much if the plug turns brown.

I’ve hit this field many times in the past year, and got my first silver object yesterday, a cute small silver spoon.  I also dug the 1817 LC, which I can conveniently use for size reference.

It says BATTLESHIP MAINE DESTROYED FEB 15 ’98 on the inside, along with the ship.

7 coppers, 2 indian heads, and a handful of wheaties from this field.  Still no silver coins.  A bit frustrating, but I’m patient.  Outside the coppers, had 2 other nice silver signals, which turned out to be 70s clad quarters.

I feel it tho, I’m pulling an old silver coin out of there today.

Bought me a new metal detecting tool today.  Not exactly what you’d expect —

But when a promising site looks like this —

And you are dealing with this —

You need to make it look like this —

And hopefully you end up with something like this —

It is actually alot of work, but it does work.  That’s dedication, but maybe a bit overboard in the lust for silver.

This is the second silver I’ve gotten from this site, the first being the last one I posted, from a less overgrown area.  Also found a couple of wheaties from the early 20s.  Site has promise if the grass will die down on its own, or I want a real workout.

Well, after finding a 4 reale which could not be verified, and a chain cent that could barely be verified, both stunning rarities if even in passable condition, the universe continues to mock my every move.

Hit a couple of new sites, and a trusty old one that has produced 20 silvers including a nice seated quarter, and pretty much got skunked.  Yesterday’s hunt in particular was quite frustrating, as I thought it was a nice out of the box area that would reward my research and powers of observation, and I was hitting tons of bottlecaps.

Unlike most, I absolutely love finding deep bottlecaps.  They almost always sound like old coins, so everyone has to dig them.  Moreover, lots of bottlecaps means the site was not hunted well in the 80s or 90s, an era when machines couldn’t tell them apart.  They show the site was not detected very hard.

When I find bottlecaps, I usually find silvers in greater numbers

But, these bottlecaps were insidious.  They were big, and sounded like deep silver quarters and half dollars.  They were about 10/11 inches deep in rock hard soil.  Moreover, there was not a lick of a breeze, so it was on the hot side, and the gnats were brutal with no wind to keep them down.

And not a single coin, outside a few pieces of clad.  Not even a wheatie.  My guess is that the evil Fill & Grade twins had visited the site sometime in the past, as the bottlcaps seemed deep for their apparent age, and the machine likely would not have heard dimes and pennies at that depth (there was also 2 inches of grass on top).

Oh well.

One site did produce a lone silver quarter, so it wasn’t a total skunkfest, but that site is so overgrown with grass, only a fraction of it is swingable.

Dug my rarest coin, as a type, today, a chain large cent.  Its not much to look at, but I’ve always wanted to dig one, for some reason.  This is from the same site as the heartbreak silver, and a few other silvers and wheaties.

First, the total digs —

We got the chain cent, a liberty cap large cent, a Franklin Institute medallion, a toasted 1888 IH, a 1941 wheatie, as well as a buckle and a button.  The button has writing on it, but I’m too excited about the chain largie to process it.

The chain cent is pretty abused.  I’ve taken alot of pics to document and prove what it is, and the photography is hard, at least for me.  I’ve documented the weight and size as well, which is consistent with a chain.  Its the only US coin with these dimensions.  I didn’t have to find features to prove it, but I did manage to get some features to come out.

Now, we also have a liberty cap large cent as well.  These things are pretty rare to dig as well, but not nearly as rare as the chain.  I think this is the fourth I’ve dug.  Note something interesting about this coin, tho — someone hammered it down to be the same size as the chain cent.  Why?

I found it about an hour after the chain, about 20 feet away.  Could someone have thought the chain’s unique size was the standard (it was the first, and only large cent at the time), and decided the new liberty cap should be the same dimensions for some reason?  Does that mean that had possessed alot of chain cents, in order to make that judgement that this one was weird and needed to be fixed?  Did they lose any more of them, hopefully in better condition?

We’ll see, as I intend to pound the area again.

Finally, we have a Franklin Institute medallion.  This medallion sounded like, and looked like, the third copper of the day.  I don’t recall the last time, if ever, that I’ve had a copper hat trick, and it was not to be today, either.

I don’t find medallions terribly interesting, but I could not find this particular one online.  It says, in various places — “FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE MECHANIC ARTS 1824”; “THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA”; “IN HONOR OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN”.

It was found at the same depth, and in the same area, as the coppers.  I’d love to know how old it is.

Turns out yesterday’s silver disk may be a 4 reale.  A 4 reale is a Spanish silver coin, probably minted in Mexico City, like most Spanish silver found in America.  If you think of “Pieces of Eight”, a 4 reale is half of that.  Pieces of Eight circulated widely in early America, and I’ve found 1/2 reales, 1 reale, and 2 reales.  (A 1 reale is one “piece of eight”.  The American phrase “2 bits” for a quarter dollar comes from this system, as sometimes they cut the 8 reale coins into 8 bits).

4 reales are incredibly rare.  They may be rarer than the namesake 8 reale, I dunno.

But, I can’t prove it is a 4 reale.  (I did upgrade it from a silver object to a silver coin, tho, so I get an extra silver on my stats :)).  The evidence that it may be a 4 reale comes from its diameter, consistent with a 4 reale, but not with an American half or silver dollar.  Moreover, the edging is consistent with a 4 reale, sort of a spaced reeding, as in this pic.

There is a thread about my coin on FMDF, which is rather interesting, and gave me the idea that it could be a reale (I thought it was a clock part or something).  The thread suggests giving it an acid bath to see if features will come out, as was done with another coin (the acid is a mixture of nitric and diluted HCl, which I just happen to have on hand, doesn’t everyone?).

It didn’t work.  Too bad.  In a way I am glad, as knowing you have a worthless rare find seems worse than thinking you have a clock part or something.

That said, I found something really rare, and really toasted today, that, unlike this, I think I can prove.  About to write it up.

Back to a recent site yesterday, the old farmhouse with the clothesline, which has given up 3 silver dimes and a ton of wheaties, but nothing older than a 1909 penny.

Got a nice big deep silver signal after about 2 hours of swinging, and the dirt is rock hard, so I work the hole for a while, and get a ferrous nail.  Typical, but the signal was too good, so I rescan the hole, and it is still there.  Pound the dirt some more, another nail.  Keep going at it, another nail.

All in all, 5 nails, and still no big silver, but I still hear it down there.  Are you kidding me?  All these from the hole, after about 10 minutes of working the hard dirt.

Still hear that silver down there, and eventually I get it, out pops a 200 year old half dollar!!  Or should have.  Out pops a half dollar sized silver disk.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!  What a heartbreak.

I don’t know what it is, or how old it is.  No markings, but the size of a half dollar, and passes the acid test for silver (also dug a toasted 1880 indian head, my first at this site, and an old button, posted for size reference).  The silver disk weights a touch over 11 grams.

Five nails in the hole (can your machine do that?), 10 minutes of digging, for that heartbreak.  It is really hard to describe the experience of seeing that in the hole at an old site.

And, on Sunday, hit a site I’ve been working and written about a bit, finishing out the old section of the site with no silvers on the day, but did snag a 64 rosie and silver ring in a newer section.  Its hard to say when the newer section was built, not on the 50s aerials, but on the 70s aerials, so not clear if there is more silver there.

A composite pic of the 2 hunts for the gallery:

Not quite today.  How about a finger full of silver?  I think this should suffice to summarize my feelings towards human nature referred to yesterday 🙂

Anyway, we got a single rosie today at the farmhouse from the last hunt.  Found the clothesline, or at least the post anchors in the ground that were likely the clothesline, but just this and a clad dime under the clothesline.  Competition hit it good, but they missed that rosie; a screaming silver signal at 3 inches that even a Radio Shack machine would have found (yeah, I had one when I was a kid).

Almost done this site, one more day, then a huge field which needs to be hayed, so not sure when I will get to it.  Have to be in the mood for Random Field Theory anyway.

I feel I didn’t hunt the site with much skill.  3 silvers, all modern, and about 15 or so wheaties.  Terrible efficiency ratio, which we want under 2.5, maybe 3.5 at a site like this.  Left plenty of wheaties in the ground for the next fellow, but feel I should have gotten more good stuff.  No indian heads.  I think finding indian heads is a sign of skill.  I’ve never hunted them before, as they come out worthless, and are often mid tone trash, but I really want another half dime or trime, so I have been going after mid tones more and more at sites like this.

Last section is the hardest.  Tons of ferrous and mineralization, but we’ll see.

A couple more mercs.  Aren’t they pretty?  You should see the backs of both of them.  In truth, tho, there is no such thing as ugly silver coming out of the ground.

These are from a new site, hunted a couple of days ago.  An old, abandoned farmhouse (as opposed to a new, abandoned farmhouse, I guess).  The site is incredibly difficult to hunt, with tons of wheaties and other high tone trash.

Silver can’t be ugly, but I am going to write today about some non-metal detecting ugliness.  I don’t think I have any readers, so I can write whatever the fuck I want to (of course, I could do that even if I did have readers).  Even the comment spam bots have gone away since I revived this journal and moved it to my other server.

So, I work at a bar, and this dude, one of my customers, hits a woman. I have the bouncer throw him out, and ban him from the venue.  Bouncer and security system saw it all anyway.

Pretty ugly, but there’s more.  This ‘hole claims he didn’t do it, despite multiple witnesses outside me and the victim, and calls me a “racist” for throwing him out and banning him.  He’s lucky I didn’t call the cops, but that call is up to the owner of the bar and the victim.

Well, you hear about this narrative, do something illegal, and if an authority tries to remediate said atrocious behavior, accuse them of racism, and it all goes away or gets worse or muddled, and the original crime is obfuscated, because we care more about the bogus racism claim than the actual original crime. That concept has always been a bit of an abstraction to me, until the firsthand experience.  Of course, he also called the victim a racist.  Remember the victim?   What sick world we live in.

Well, turns out, on top of the actual incidents of this that happen all of over the world all the time, there is an insidious externality to all of this (us economists who work in bars like using fancy economist words (when not working at the bar, of course)), and that is this —

Another victim of this sort of thing are actual victims of racism.  As the din of these bogus “racist” claims rise in these situations, it dilutes the legitimate ones.  A “cry wolf” sort of thing.  So, one selfish ‘hole, who can’t control his temper and thinks hitting women with a security camera rolling is a good idea, causes more damage to the greater good than his pea brain could manage to comprehend.

If he is so concerned about racism, he should shut up, and not cry wolf, but human nature tends to be dark and selfish, and will seek any advantage it can (I wouldn’t be a good economist if I didn’t state this bleak, but true fact), and leveraging the stupid narrative our society is in the process of creating, that every non-white who is accused of a crime is a victim of racism, is one way to do so, at the expense of true victims, and the gullible public buys it hook, line, and sinker.

Well, hopefully I’ll find a wheelbarrow full of silver tomorrow, and I’ll be able to get this train back on the metal detecting tracks.  We’ll see.