Treasure Hunting with Rodney In Central New York (Story 7)
The profile of Liberty wearing a helmet with wings, symbolizing freedom of thought, brought me a ton of joy! Mercury dime was my first silver coin find in this metal detecting season of 2008.
1926 Mercury Dime
I still wanted to find musket balls. Instead, a dozen of following signals produced only fired gun shells and old beer cans. That made me think of this spot as a former popular hang-out. So I started looking at the surroundings in a little bit different way, and, when I noticed a big tree, I began moving towards it.
Any Big Tree Could Be A People's Gathering Place in the Past
I also discovered an old stonewall covered with moss...
...and the vegetation that used to grow around the homesteads of the 19th century. It did not mean 100% that there was supposed to be a cellar hole at this location if to consider the site was "in the middle of civilization," not like a remote spot abandoned in the woods, and that all historical homesteads and farms were still standing in the area where they were built in the past. The vegetation, I think it was a wild spring onion type, could be brought here by animals or people from the neighboring farms.
I was just about to stop rationalizing and start concentrating on scanning the ground in front of me, there was a lot to cover, when I received a very nice "bang" - a coin signal, again! I carefully cut the dirt plug out, placed it on the ground and could not believe my eyes when I saw a tiny silver coin, smaller than a half-dime, rolling out of it! I could see its thin silver edge. I still did not know what coin it was.
Only after I brushed some dirt off the coin's surface, I figured out what I found. I definitely did not expect to unearth the smallest, only 14mm in diameter, American silver coin - a 3-Cent piece! One does not come across this coin often.
1853 3 Cents "Made My Day"!
By this time, Rodney and Chad had scanned a big portion of the field which had been recently plowed and had high harrows. The rough surface made it painful for them to metal detect, so they got exhausted quick. They left the field and came to where I was sitting and looking at my last find.
Rodney could not believe that I "happened to find two silver coins in the middle of nowhere!" Once before I told him about my method of "tuning myself to the area to be detected" or, at least, letting the invisible force lead me to treasure, so, this time, I just smiled back.
We searched the spot for another hour and dug up numerous brass casings, pull-tabs and lead slugs - one could imagine how much shooting fun took place here in the past! But we did not find any coins older than a "wheat penny" (we found four of them plus a couple of buttons) because, without a systematic approach by using a grid pattern, we could not not take out all the shallow junk targets in order to get to the deeper, therefore, older and valuable ones. I guess I was just lucky to come across a couple of shallow buried silver coins.
Rodney Rested While Chad Took His Turn in Metal Detecting
To save our strength for the next metal detecting location where we were initially going to, we stopped searching here (we could do it later in the future) and drove to the next site. But before hitting it, Rodney wanted to show me a great view of Mohawk Valley and the river.