Tuesday, August 17, 2010

It's Shenandoah Yard Crawl Time!

Yay! The annual Shenandoah County Yard Crawl is one of our "mark the calendar" events - hey, we're thrift-shopping pirates, what can I say?  It is a 43 mile long yard sale through several small country towns in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia.  This year marked our 4th year in a row we have shopped the Yard Crawl.  It was a lot of fun, and we did find some neat treasures.  The day was overcast and in the mid-80's, which was nice.  In past Augusts, it's been so hot, we were pooped by 11AM.  This year we were still going by 1PM, and that's saying something, since we hit the road at 5:30 to be at northern end of the sale by 7AM.

On the hunt!
We usually make our best finds in the first hour or two since everything hasn't been picked over too much yet.  This year it didn't seem like there were as many crawlers and we were still able to make some good finds later in the day.  Of course, it all depends what people are looking for.  There is a little of everything at the yard crawl, from furniture to antiques, clothing and every kind of toy and household item you can imagine.  There are a few dealers selling, but it's more like just people who have sheds or barns along the Valley Pike pulling their stuff out alongside the road.

Got some treasures!
In our case, we collect old holiday decorations, toleware, pewter, Carnival glass, jewelry, and what have you. To be honest, we have started many collections just because we found 2 matching items. Thankfully, we've come to our senses and cleared a lot of those collections out over the years. We do have a little antique booth, so we have an outlet to keep things moving on to those who will appreciate them.

  A lot of the fun of the Yard Crawl is chatting with people and moving on down the road to the next potential treasure score. It's a nice drive out in the country too, and the scenery is pretty.  I have to admit, there could be a few more bathrooms! LOL. We had a lot of fun and came home with a lot of nice finds.

Vintage Christmas treasures
Here are some neat old Santas and Christmas decorations we were able to come up with.  The red deer and sleigh in the middle are an old flocked set from the 50's or 60's.  The santa in the box is a really nice set that looks like it may never have been used.  He has a cloth outfit and beard, I don't know what the vintage of that is.  The old santa in the front left may be the best find of the day at 25 cents!  He is an old old cardboard Father Christmas made in Japan.  His beard is cotton and he is holding a pine branch in his hand. These finds will make nice additions to our vintage Christmas display.   

Assorted fun finds
Here are some other assorted goodies.  For some reason I attract Whiting and Davis mesh evening bags as you know.  Here is a more recent one for $2. The brass dipper is pretty old, the frame on the old picture must be from the 1800's (50 cents), the tole painted bucket is a nice old country piece for $1, and there's a silver bracelet up front that was $1 also.  We liked the black cat pitcher since we have two black cats.  We had to wait for someone who promised to be back by noon to get him, but she never showed, so we took him home for $1 too.  The sellers helped us count down the seconds till noon.  It was a good time.

All in all we didn't spend a lot, had a great day, and found some neat treasures.  I'm sure we'll head back up into the Blue Ridge Mountains again next year for year 5!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Gold, Diamonds and Cash This Month

  July was a good month for treasure hunting as you can surmise from the title above. Gold, diamonds and cash, woo-hoo!  First of all, the moneywalking continues to impress me. I was able to find 81 coins and two dollar bills on the ground or in machines as I wrote about in a post on July 16.  That was good for a total of $10.32 - not too shabby! I try to walk a few miles per day, and this year I combined that with searching for coins along my walks.  In 7 months I have found almost $48 in coins and bills laying on the ground or in machines.  I have gotten to the point that I expect to find coins now and they continue to turn up.



I took the metal detector out seven times and was able to come up with 213 coins that way.  It has been hot, hot, hot this Summer, though, and the ground is pretty well baked dry, so I've had to hunt in playgrounds for the most part, and only for short periods due to the heat. I was able to hunt along an ocean beach last week, and was lucky enough to find a 3-stone diamond necklace in the dry sand. That was a nice find and made the hunt.  The Ace 250 detector is pretty limited on the beach, though, it gives a lot of false signals on the wet sand, so I had to stay up on the dry sand.  I still was able to find quite a few coins and clean up a lot of pulltabs off the beach. 

Of course we both continued to hit the yard sales to see what treasure is out there.  I found another gold mesh Whiting and Davis evening bag, strangely enough.  This one cost a dollar. I can't believe what people sell stuff for sometimes but the economy is tough and people seem to be clearing out a lot of unneeded clutter. There were some other good finds too, but I can't remember them all now. 

Next week is the annual Shenandoah County 43-mile long yard sale.  We will be attending for the 3rd year in a row.  It's a lot of fun and great treasure hunting.  I will take some pics and write a post here on our adventures. Keep hunting!

Monday, August 2, 2010

Treasure In The News

I've run across several treasure stories here lately.  Maybe stories about treasure just catch my eye, but it just goes to show that there are treasures of all types being found every day.  Here are a few from the last week or two:
Bronze Cannon From 1715 Shipwreck Found - A salvage company recovered a bronze swivel gun from the 1715 Plate Fleet that sank off the east coast of Florida in a storm 300 years ago. The gun had 63 gold and silver coins inside it.  The fleet took on a cargo of millions of silver coins in Veracruz, Mexico. Most of that is still waiting to be found.

Superman Comic Saves Family From Foreclosure - A family facing foreclosure found a Superman comic book in the basement as they were packing up their belongings.  The comic turned out to be Action Comics Issue Number 1, from June 1938.  It introduced Superman to the world, and could be worth more then $250,000.

An 1885 Pocket Spill - A man using a metal detector found 7 cents in one hole along an old trail through the woods.  The coins are dated 1865 to 1885.  While not enough to retire on, they still are a neat treasure to find, and make you wonder whose pocket the coins slipped out of on that spot almost 125 years ago.  There's tons of it still out there, all around us.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Good Yard Sale Treasure Hunt

    This past weekend was a pretty good treasure hunting one in a strange way.  My significant other is the antique hunter and yard sale shopper extraordinaire.  I am more the coin and ring hunter, although I've developed a decent eye for antique styles, vintages, and marks over the years. Anyone who spends time pursuing the hobby of treasure hunting in all its forms has "inventory" collected up at home. So when a neighbor announced she was having an impromptu yard sale, we jumped onboard, a good opportunity to sell off some stuff and clear some space.  We didn't set up a lot of stuff, and it was a girls thing, so I was dispatched off to do the yard sale hunting, while she conducted the sale.  Perhaps a  bit perverse, but she didn't want to miss a Saturday's worth of sales, and I was ordered out.

  So off I went, and once I scored a $20 Hartstone checked mixing bowl at a moving sale for $1, the blood was flowing.  If you are into antiques at all, you know you can never know everything, and you can't be an expert in all fields.  At another moving sale, I pulled a porcelain doll out of a bin of junk. The person running the sale had no idea, and thought $1 sounded fair, so the doll came with me too.  Dolls are one area I know nothing about, but since she was in good shape, with porcelain head and hands, I figured she's worth more than that.  Things slowed down after that as the heat of the day rose.  I finally met a nice lady who just wanted to move some items.  I got a nice framed print and a wood dough bowl for $1 apiece, and a hanging corner cupboard for $2 (behind the blue pitcher).  We kind of lean towards colonial things, so these were all good captures.  Finally, as the morning wore down, at a sale with mostly household stuff and perfumes, I saw some old glassware on a table and inspected the blue carnival glass pitcher. Good shape.  "Are these cups a set with the pitcher?"  "Yes, $10"  Hem, haw, but don't put down the pitcher, "OK". done.  The blue punch cups are not actually a set with the pitcher, but they are all the same grape leaf pattern.  The cups are worth $8 a piece on Replacements.com, and I knew the pitcher was worth a few dollars since we have some experience with carnival glass.  Looked it up, it's worth $15-$35 on Ebay.  Not bad. 
   Wife was happy, guess I've still got it LOL.  It's all treasure.

Friday, July 16, 2010

How To Find Coins in Machines

I've been keeping up with the daily walks at lunchtime, although it's been in the 90's several days this month. Since I am walking, I am also always on the lookout for stray coins. I'm still surprised that there are so many coins out there in the wild. I've been able to find $5 to $8 consistently over the last few months.  I keep a jar in my desk and add coins to it that I find every day on my walks. Here is a link to a short article I wrote about strategies that I've been using successfully to find coins in machines.  You won't believe it until you try.  I just shake my head sometimes when coins come tumbling out of a machine.

I have to also say that I KNOW there are coins heading into my pocket if I just keep looking.  I know that because it's a rare day that I don't find any.  For that reason, I don't worry about it, I know they will come.  Interesting, but so far I haven't been proved wrong.  
Read the entire article, How To Find Coins in Machines

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Treasure Hunter Digs Up 52,000 Roman Coins Worth Over $1 Million

A treasure hunter armed with a metal detector struck it rich in England recently, digging up a pot filled with over 52,000 Roman coins dated from the 3rd century AD. The pot weighed 350 pounds.  The finder, Dave Crisp, dug up a few of the coins, but then called archeologists.  The pot and contents have been transferred to the British Museum to be cleaned and catalogued.
Under Britain's Treasure Act, the finder and the landowner will split any proceeds of the sale of the treasure. Experts have not yet figured out why the coins were buried, or how they got there. According to Roger Bland, a coins expert at the museum, "No one individual could possibly have carried them to the field in the pot, it must have been buried first and then filled up." Not a bad day's work for that treasure hunter!  Read more here.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Yard Sale Gold Treasure

Well, it is finally Spring. After such a long Winter we thought it might not arrive.  And with Spring comes yard sale season.  Time to clean out Winter's clutter and make a few dollars. This is a great time of year for treasure hunting also.  You can find all kinds of treasures being sold in driveways and front yards.  My better half is the pro in this type of treasure hunting.  Although the season has only just started, she came up with this great jewelry last week.  The two bracelets are 14k gold, really nice, and cost $1 each. What can I say, if she paid retail for them they wouldn't be treasure, right?  The necklace and earrings are unmarked and are costume from the 1940's or 50's and were the same price. 

The gold mesh bag was today's find for a dollar.  It is is perfect condition, and has a row of diamonds or rhinestones across the top. Very nice, maybe 1930's vintage. We are just researching it now.  You just never know what is out there.  As Mel Fisher used to say, "Today's the Day!"

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Visit a Gold Mining Ghost Town


Any treasure hunter dreams about ghost towns from time to time. Just don't get caught in one after dark!   The State of California has preserved an authentic gold-mining ghost town named Bodie that you can visit today.  I drove to Bodie several years ago and it is truly a neat place to visit.  The state has preserved it as it was left almost 100 years ago, with bottles still on the bar in the saloon, and boxes still on the shelves in the general store. Bodie boomed in the late 1870's when gold was discovered, and went from a population of 30 to over 10,000 in less than 4 years. Then big gold strikes were reported elsewhere, and the fortune seekers rushed off to stake their claims in places like Tombstone, Arizona. Bodie's Main Street, pictured here, once had 65 saloons on it, and all the mayhem that you can imagine.

Bodie is preserved as a State Historic Site today, so there's no treasure hunting allowed, but it is rich with memories and history.  Bodie is located between Yosemite and Lake Tahoe in eastern California.  For additional info and Bodie Photo gallery click here. Definitely visit if you have the opportunity.  Bodie is a piece of American hiistory you won't see elsewhere.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Surprise Sweepstakes Win

Well, the treasure is coming in but kind of slowly.  No matter, it's still coming in stea1dily. I dug up a 1945 silver quarter at an old house site that was under construction. I have to get back there with the Ace 250 but it's been raining for 4 days straight so I need to let the mud settle a bit.  CRH has been slow but steady.  After the big snowmelt, the street finds have slowed a bit, but still coming in as well.  I was surprised to receive a sweepstakes win in the mail today from a sweepstakes I entered several months back.  It was a Dollar General sweep and one I considered very winnable. Only open 30 days, many prizes from $100,000 grand prize down to 400 4th place prizes of a $50 DG gift card.  Lo and behold, as you see in the photo, I won 6th prize of a $10 DG gift card.  Ha ha, that wasn't even listed in the rules! Oh well, I'll take it. Treasure comes in all forms. 

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Melting Snow Gives Up Treasure!

Well, one of the silver linings of the snowy Winter of 2009-2010 is that the ice and snow has been piled around vending machines and parking meters for several weeks.  I've heard conjecture in the past that piles of snow would reveal coins when they melt, but I hadn't had the opportunity to test that theory until now.  The big thaw isn't here yet, but the snow has been receding enough that I was able to start checking.  I'm happy to say that it's true!  There were coins everywhere as the snow melted.  It was a lot of fun to walk down a row of parking meters and find a coin or two under every other one. I didn't realize people drop so many coins at them, but on the other hand, their fingers are cold or they may be wearing gloves.  Once the coin goes into a snowbank, it's pretty much gone. 

After being surprised to find 69 coins during my walks in January, I was amazed to come up with 90 in February, including the 20 I found in airports, which I talked about in an earlier post.  That's the equivalent of a couple of times out with the metal detector.  Since it's been so snowy and frozen, I wasn't able to get out with the detector at all in February, so I'm happy that moneywalking finds have picked up.  I got a big surprise in a vending machine when I pushed the return button and a silver 1964

quarter fell out.  I knew the sound said silver but didn't believe it even after I had the quarter in my hand.  You just never know what's going to appear while treasure hunting. As Mel Fisher used to say, "Today's the Day!"

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Indian Head Coins

I used to collect coins when I was younger.  It's still fun to go to a coin show now and then to see some coins you never get to see.  I was looking at a $10 gold coin a while ago and got to wondering how many Native American US coins there are.  It turns out there are quite a few. I think they are some of the most attractive designs on any US coins.  It's not a coincidence that they were designed in the early part of the 20th century during the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, when a lot of utilitarian items were designed more attractively. 

I collected up pictures of all the Indian coins and posted them in an article Native American Coins of the US.  The stories behind some of these coins are pretty interesting.  The Buffalo nickel came through the efforts of President Teddy Roosevelt, who was an outdoorsman and had traveled in the west.  He thought the previous nickels were too plain, and had an engraver study portraits of Indian chiefs to come up with a realistic face on the obverse side.  Other coins like the Indian head penny and the $10 gold Eagle pictured here actually portray Lady Liberty wearing an Indian headdress.

 Anyway, take a look, there are some pretty neat-looking coins in the collection.  Also, I looked up Canadian coins online and I didn't see one that had an Indian design. I think one had a Haida totem pole, but thats it. I wonder why that is.  Tied closer to the crown until just a few decades ago I think. Interesting. 

Monday, February 15, 2010

Airport Money

One of my favorite moneywalking places is in an airport.  I don't go out of my way to go moneywalking there, but if I am there, I do go out of my way to hunt for stray coins, because I know they are there. Airports have several things going for them, they are noisy, many surfaces are carpeted, people are spending money there in food courts, people are in a hurry and carrying bags, and people are lounging around for extended periods. That all adds up to lost coins.


Here is a handful of coins I found last week on a trip.  All except one were found in airports. 19 coins plus a Philadelphia transit token that has a copper strip through the middle.  If you are interested in foreign coins, airports are also a good place to do some coin hunting if the opportunity presents itself. Back home now, waiting for these piles of snow to melt and see whats been dropped in them.  Looks like that might take a month or so, though.  Oy.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Visiting the Mel Fisher Treasure Museum

Well, since the snows continue to pile up in my prime treasure-hunting grounds, I needed a way to stay motivated. What better place to keep my treasure fire stoked than at Mel Fisher's Treasure Museum in Sebastian, Florida?  Mel Fisher made some amazing discoveries right off the beach not far from here, where the 1715 Plate Fleet went down in a storm.  The 1715 Plate Fleet wrecks continue to produce treasure since being discovered over 40 years ago.

Mel Fisher, as you know, is most famous for recovering the treasure of the Atocha near the Marquesas Islands off the Florida Keys. The Atocha and it's sister ship, the Santa Margarita, also continue to give up their treasures to Mel Fisher's treasure hunters.

The Treasure Museum in Sebastian gives a great history of Mel's treasure hunting exploits in Florida. He sold his dive shop in California to spend a year salvaging the 1715 Plate Fleet without promise of pay. His year paid off handsomely as he at one point found "a carpet of gold coins" in a small ravine on the ocean floor. He moved on to hunting for the 1622 fleet which included the Atocha.


The museum has a short film, then you can tour the fantastic finds that Fisher and his treasure hunting team have found from both fleets, which are pictured here.  There is a gift shop with authentic gold and silver treasure items for sale.  You can also get replica coins and jewelry molded from the originals. 

The Mel Fisher Treasure Museum is a great stop if you are in the Sebastian area.  You can see some of the most amazing treasure ever found, and just drool at divers on the film bringing up fistfuls of gold escudos and buckets of Spanish silver coins. 

Mel Fisher also has a treasure musem in Key West, Florida where you can see similar Spanish treasure. Also check Melfisher.com for further info.  Oh, I don't have the detector with me on this trip but I did find a penny washed up in the wet sands while walking on a beach just up the road. The treasure beaches continue to produce. 

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Finding Coins on the Street

Well it looks like we're having a real Winter this year!  After our 16 inch snow on December 19th, the temperature stayed pretty much below freezing for the next month. In mid-January we had a bit of a thaw, but here on the last weekend of the month, we got another 6 inch snowfall last night. In all that, I got out with the metal detector twice and found about $5.00 in change, no jewelry. 

As always, when one treasure source isn't producing, I can turn to another. This month was a bit of a surprise, we'll get to that in a minute. As I've talked about previously, coin roll hunting is a great way to treasure hunt.  I did go through a few boxes of halves but they were very bleak. I think out of 3 boxes, I found one silver half.  I did find a 1980 Panama half dollar (in the same box) which was a neat surprise. Does that count as Spanish treasure?


This month I also went through a couple thousand pennies, just to see what's out there.  I do look for the error coins, but haven't come up with a penny error yet. I have to admit that's a bit tedious. They can be worth some money though, so I'll probably keep looking for errors and see if it's worth my time. Every type of treasure-hunting isn't for everybody.  It's easier to just collect wheat pennies because you can't miss them. You could easily start a coin book for wheats just found through coin roll hunting.  I did have more luck with the wheats. They are fun to find.

Since yard sale season is still a month or two away, there is always thrift store hunting. That's good in any season.  If you have a few stores in a reasonable distance from you, they are worth checking out. My better half trolls through them on a regular basis and sometimes turns up a gem or two. Last week, she found a neat old Carnival glass vase.  They are called that because they were given out as prizes at carnivals during the Depression. They were also used for cheap giveaways at grocery stores to entice shoppers to come in.  Nowadays they can be worth a pretty penny for nice pieces.  The vase she turned up is from the 1920's based on the Imperial Glass cross mark on the base. We haven't been able to figure out what it's worth yet, but certainly exponentially more than the $1.90 she paid for it.  We have a small collection of Carnival glass, and it really looks good when it's all displayed together.  At this point, what it's worth doesn't matter, since it's not going anywhere but into the collection as a piece of found treasure.

So the final type of treasure-hunting I was able to do in January is moneywalking.  I've picked up 5 or 10 coins a month off the street when they appear in the path of my daily walks. But I've not had what you could call steady success with moneywalking.  I've been reading some other blogs for tips on what other treasure hunters have done to increase their coin finds, and I wanted to test out that theory of finding change in melting snowpiles. I put more emphasis on it this month and did the best I ever have.  In January, I was able to find 69 coins. That's like 6 months tallies from 2009.  I was amazed, but it truly does work. I only came up with 2 or 3 coins out of snowpiles, so the jury's still out on that.  I have concentrated on the ground under parking meters, and that continues to produce pretty well. I expanded my walking range to different streets and that has helped a lot.  In my city, though, they are taking out the parking meters one by one and replacing them with  2 or 3 parking machines per block.  I thought that would be the death knell for moneywalking in that area. However, last week I decided to start checking them and I've been pleasantly surprised to find coins in the reject slots, and not just grubby pennies. Here's a picture of January's returns just from moneywalking, over $2.00, including an angel token and a wheat penny.  That's great, I'm encouraged that this avenue of treasure hunting will be a producer as well, and I haven't even hit my first car wash or drive-through window yet! Ha-ha!  

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Quick January Treasure Hunt

Rain Friday, rain Sunday but was able to get out Saturday for a bit.  We finally had enough warm air that the ground has thawed, although there are some dirty piles of snow still around.  Hit a couple of local schools with the Ace 250 metal detector. Came up with about $3 in change, not bad, was pleased to find a necklace and my first gold dollar of the year, always nice to find...certainly more efficient than digging 100 pennies!


Here's a quarter coming up from a few inches deep in a woodchip playground.   Keep hunting, it's out there! 

Monday, January 18, 2010

Hunting the Copper Mine

If you have winter cabin fever like I do, here is an easy way to do some treasure hunting at your kitchen table.  Take $5 to the bank and ask for pennies. All banks have rolls of pennies. This is an easy and inexpensive way to get your family or kids into coin collecting or treasure hunting. 

There are several ways to approach the hunt.  You can buy a penny book at Walmart and see how many slots you can fill. Or you can look for rare coins.  Yes, there are still some pretty valuable pennies out there, and some recent ones too. Go to the Professional Coin Grading Service website, click on Price Guide, and then scroll down to Lincoln cents. You can see what the prices are for coins by grade. There are several error varieties out there. The 1999 with wide AM on the reverse is worth a couple hundred, and there are doubled dies listed from the 90's, 80's, 70's and 60's that are worth quite a bit in excellent condition. The 1969-S is worth about $60,000. That would certainly make my day! I keep a list of the potential valuable pennies and put them aside while hunting, then come back with a magnifying glass and check closely at the end.  The rest I toss into a bowl.

You can also just collect up wheat-back pennies.  You probably haven't seen any in circulation in a while (they changed to Memorial backs in 1959). However, they are still out there.  Hey, there's one right now, see?

I only found the one wheat, a 1958-D, out of this lot of 500 pennies.  But I was able to come up with three of the new 2009 Abe Lincoln pennies pictured below. You may not have seen any of these yet, but the Memorial back pennies that have been the design for most of our lifetimes are now also a thing of the past.  The 2009's have four different reverse sides with scenes from Lincoln's life, since 2009 is the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1809. (The Lincoln cent was introduced in 1909 for his 100th birthday).

The US Mint will introduce a new reverse design on the 2010 pennies that will have a union shield.  The first of these pennies was released on February 11, 2010, Lincoln's birthday.  Some people also collect pre-1982 cents since they were made of pure copper back then, making each copper penny worth more than 1 cent based on just the copper content.  (Now they are made of zinc plated with copper). So you can see there are lots of treasure hunting options.  I wonder if we'll be hunting for Memorial-back pennies in ten years?  Somehow I doubt it, but you never know!

Friday, January 8, 2010

Seasonal Treasure Hunting


Here's what it looked like outside my house 3 weeks ago. Since then the temperature has pretty much stayed below freezing. And then we got an inch of snow last night. Suffice it to say that the ground is frozen solid. So the metal detector stands quietly propped up in a corner, awaiting fairer weather. But that doesn't mean that treasure hunting has to take a season off. As I've discussed in previous missives, there are multiple ways to reap the bounty of treasure that the earth provides for us.
The post-holiday time is a good time to start roaming through the thrift stores, as people clear out the holiday clutter in their houses. There are a lot of donations made between New Years (resolutions to clean out) and the Spring thaw when people open the windows and do Spring cleaning.
Another option is moneywalking. When snow is on the ground, dropped coins disappear silently. Match that with cold fingers and people fumbling with gloves on, and you can find dropped coins on the ground as the snow and ice start to melt. As the piles of snow started diminishing last week, I walked through town and found 5 coins on the sidewalk under parking meters. They wouldn't be there on a sunny Summer day, as they were dropped in snow and the person who lost them wasn't about to fish through a snowpile for a nearly invisible silvery dime. For the same reason, there can be coins in parking lots as people drop them when getting car keys out of a pocket.
Coin roll hunting is another good snowy-day activity that can feed your treasure jones if you don't care to traipse through icy parking lots and city streets.
Oh, and don't forget to check those Coinstar reject trays when you go in and out of stores. You may think they will never have anything in them, and usually you will be correct, but occasionally you'll hit some that have several coins in there and you'll be able to enjoy that little adrenalin surge of finding treasure. Aarghh.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

2009 Treasure Hunting Wrapup







It is snowy and frozen here this New years weekend, so I went through the 2009 treasure chest and took some pictures. Last year I managed to dig up over 2500 coins with a metal detector, not bad. Added up to almost $200. Also managed to dig 21 rings from parks, sports fields and playgrounds, several pretty nice ones. When it was too cold or wet, I did some coin roll hunting for silver. Aarghh. The pictures are 336 quarters, 2 gold dollars, 2 half dollars and a military token, all dug. The pile of half dollars are all silver from the 1960s when they were made of either 90% silver (1964 and before) or 40% silver (1965-69). I picked out the four gold rings I dug, my first mate has already claimed them, as she has the silver dolphin ring. Other stuff is in previous posts. Little by little it all adds up to a full treasure chest.