Old Indian Comes Out of the Wheatfield!

In the Winter I like to search through coins from the bank sometimes. You never know what you will find. I used to search half dollars but the silver seems to have dried up there for some reason. I got a $25 box of pennies just to see what might turn up. There won't be any old silver obviously, but there are still pre-1959 wheat back pennies and there are some old valuable ones. Something to do on a cold afternoon.

So anyway, I was able to come up with some nice old wheat pennies, mostly from the 1940s and 50s. Nothing valuable, but I pulled them out just to have. I had gotten 2 out of one roll and was happy with that, when something odd popped out. I saw the back of it and said "what the heck is that?" Even though I knew what an Indian head penny looks like, it was so totally unexpected to find one that I didn't comprehend it for a second. I flipped it over and said "holy cow!" or something to that effect. A 1905 Indian head penny!  This coin has been in circulation for over 100 years! That is just amazing. It just goes to show there is treasure all around us. You just have to search for it!

Silver and Gold!

Silver and Gold!

Well we are into December, the Holiday specials have started and the College Bowl games are not far behind. One of the classic Christmas shows is the animated Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that dates from 1964. Rudolph and a prospector named Yukon Cornelius help Santa rescue toys from the Island of Misfit Toys and deliver them to children that will love them. All through the story, Yukon Cornelius is searching for silver and gold. The Burl Ives song Silver and Gold comes from this show.

Fast forward to today. It was cool but overcast out, mid-40s. I had things to do, but thought I would head out for a quick treasure hunt at a couple of local schools before I got engrossed in my chores. I fired up the detector and found the usual coins and trinkets at a playground, then moved on to another one. Same pattern there, but then a dime signal turned out to be this nice sterling manatee charm. Okay!  As the hunting season is drawing near the end, I started thinking about what my find of the year would be. I had found 9 nice silver rings and a few silver coins to choose from. I never struck gold this year though, which is odd since I am approaching 3,000 coins dug. And many, many pulltabs, which are in the same range as gold. Oh, and over 250 nickels, which also ring up just like a gold ring. You'd think one of all those gold-range hits could have been a gold ring. But no. Until the last target today as I was walking back to the car.

Solid, just like a nickel or pulltab, worth digging, about 4" deep, just in the grass off a woodchip lot. .....And there she was. Did I talk to it and coax it out of the ground when I saw the possibility of a gold ring? Yes, yes I did, LOL. I was just in shock. A 14K nice softly worn wedding band. Ahhh.  I knocked the dirt out of it and just hefted it my hand to feel the weight. Yes, definitely gold. Then I looked inside to see the 14k mark, which was there. There is also a single first name, so tracking this back to an owner will be near to impossible. I'll poke around though, but it's been there for some time. Anyway, that find of the year thing is taken care of. Ha ha ha!

Today truly WAS the day!

$300,000 in Gold Dust Found

Gold dust found in heating duct

Workers for a heating and air conditioning company recently found over $300,000 in gold dust in a heating vent. The gold dust, hidden in a Sacramento, California home, was in a dozen baby food jars. To the workers' credit, they turned the find over to the homeowners. According to the company, Clark & Rush, they also found $25,000 in gold coins in a house in the 1980's. It just goes to show that treasure is still out there, and comes in many forms. You just have to keep looking.

A Treasure Hunter's Dream Moments

Ahhh!  Treasure hunting with a metal detector is always fun, but it's not all excitement.  There are long stretches where patience is required as you listen to the soft chirps and beeps coming through the headphones, interpreting what they mean. And then a soft smooth tone sounds, indicating a possible treasure.  Most silver rings are in the penny-dime range, and gold rings sound the same or similar to a nickel or pulltab. So you still never know, until you flip out the target, and see something like the above.  Oooh, could it be? A big diamond ring?

Forgive the picture quality, these were taken with my older model phone. But let's get a look at that treasure in the rough!  Yes it's definitely a ring, not a pulltab or piece of mangled soda can. This recovery is happening during a hunt today on a sports field, where there is always the possibility of finding a nice piece of jewelry. This one certainly looks promising, and I want to get silver ring #10 or gold ring #1 before the year's hunting comes to an end.

Time to get this cleaned out and look for a mark inside the band. It felt nice and heavy, certainly looked like precious metal with sparkly diamonds, but alas, it was not to be. Although it's a nice ring, there are no marks, the stones are glued in, and there's a bit of corrosion starting to eat away at a spot on the underside.     

But hey, it's a nice treasure and it delivered one of those dream moments of anticipation. Ah well, that's what treasure hunting is all about, you never know what will be revealed. Keep at it and eventually the good stuff will come up. Today's the day!

Win Cash at Estatesales.org

 

Estate sales.org is offering a monthly cash sweepstakes. This a good double whammy for treasure hunters. You can find estate sales in your area by checking the listing on the estatesales.org site, and win a sweepstakes at the same time. What I do is have my local estate sales emailed to me automatically, then as each weekend approaches, I can see if there are any promising sales nearby. Enter at http://estatesales.org It's all treasure! Good luck!

Silver Treasure Coming in Steadily

So far this year has been good for treasure hunting.  I have managed to keep a piece or two of silver coming in pretty steadily. The Garrett AT Pro detector I bought last Fall is very accurate on silver and nickels. Since I hunt primarily in suburbia, the parks, schools, ballfields and playgrounds are quite plentiful.  They get replenished also. They are never hunted out. I have to say that every school and park has at least one ring, you just have to hunt enough to find it, and believe that its there. 

Above is a nice heavy sterling cross I found alongside a baseball field a few weeks ago. It is heavier than the silver quarter next to it. Below is my ring box for 2012. I have now filled the 3rd row since taking this picture, with more than half being silver. Some real nice ones too. Love it!

Gold rings indicate same or close to nickels. For some reason I haven't been lucky enough to bring up a gold ring yet this year, but I'm sure they are out there. I certainly have dug a lot of nickels and pull tabs, so its just a matter of sticking with it. As Mel Fisher used to say, "Today's The Day!"

Success in 2012

Well, I've been getting out hunting a lot this Spring, seems to be slowing down a bit as Summer approaches . But I must say that since I got the Garrett AT Pro detector last October, finds have picked up dramatically. It is murder on quarters, very distinct readings. This past weekend I only got out once due to work, but I found a nice heavy silver religious medal. Already this year I have over $200 and 2000 coins found. The readings are so precise that I've basically quit digging new zinc pennies so I can concentrate on good stuff. 18 rings, 7 silver, no gold yet, although it is good on nickels also.  well, I'll get some pictures up shortly, sorry have been deficient on posting, as I've been helping my better half get her antiques business off the ground on weekends.
That's treasure hunting as well, and it's been going great also. Details to follow shortly.

Silver Coin Calculator From White's Metal Detectors

With the price of silver flirting with $40 per ounce, the helpful folks at White's Electronics have created a Silver coin calculator for us. White's is the maker of metal detectors, through which many silver coins are found. With the price of silver near all-time highs, this may be the time to sell. As you know from some of my previous posts, we tried our hand at coin roll hunting, with pretty fair success. It amazes me that a 1964 half dollar we paid 50 cents for is now worth over $13.00.  And yes, they do sell for that high on eBay.
You may not have found silver coins with a metal detector, but perhaps you have inherited a few that are stuck in the back of a closet in a jar.  Curious about what they might be worth?  This silver coin calculator is updated every 30 minutes at the spot silver price. It might be a handy reference to bookmark since you don't have to figure the amount of silver in each coin, then check today's silver price. Just enter how many coins of which denomination you have, and the calculator does the rest.  I have sold a few rolls on eBay recently, and I can tell you that what you see on this silver coin calculator is pretty close to what you can get on an eBay sale.  Good luck to you. This may be the time to turn that stored silver treasure into cash!  Aaargh!

Silver Coin Calculator 

Win An Ounce of Gold!

I wanted to share this monthly sweepstakes that I recently found.  This is a monthly drawing to win a 2011 Gold Eagle like the one pictured here.  Wow, that would be a nice treasure to put in this year's treasure chest.  With gold trading near $1,500 an ounce, this would certainly be the treasure of the year.  Enter at APMEX.com.  You can enter once a month per person.  Good luck!

Deep Blue Marine Locates 16th Century Treasure Ship

The Deep Blue Marine company recently uncovered a treasure ship from the late 1500's off the coast of the Dominican Republic.  So far, the company has brought up jade statues, along with silver and gold coins dating back to 1537. That would make the find one of the oldest in the New World, less than 100 years after Christopher Columbus sailed these same waters. The company feels that a lot more is still under water, as they have not yet hit the main wreckage from the ship.  The mirror in the photo above is actually a polished piece of iron pyrite that is discussed in the video below. Not bad for being over 400 years old!   Watch the short video below to see the dive team in action and visit the company's website to see additional treasure photos.  This is one recovery we will be watching closely to see what else emerges.
                                Deep Blue dive video        Deep Blue Marine website

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!

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!

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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!"

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.

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. 

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!"