I recently invited to detect on some farmland that owned by a co-worker. He said that he knew of some old home sites on the property, which I told him that I love to hunt. I also told him that if anything been lost by anyone I would be glad to look for it too.
He laughed and told me a story his grandmother (since passed) had told him about his then five-year old uncle earning and then losing a quarter in the mid 1950’s somewhere between the house and the barn. He remembered his grandmother talking about what a big deal it was back then for a boy to earn a whole quarter and he was devastated when he told them he lost it. The whole family looked and looked for it, but they never found it. She always talked about how she wished she could find it and give it back to him just to see the look on his face. My co-worker thought he knew the route that his uncle would have taken from the house to the barn. I told him that I would be happy to see if I could find it. I knew my CTX 3030 that I had been using since September 2012, should be able to find easily as long as it has not completely covered by old farm iron.
I arrived at his house Saturday morning, March 24, 2018, at 8:00 a.m. ready to look for his uncle’s silver quarter and then move on to the old home sites on the property. Since I was looking for a silver quarter I was running my CTX 3030 in Combined and Ferrous Coin, Recovery Deep, Response Normal, no Discrimination and pinpoint Sizing and had bin 3 (42-48) at 1050 Hz(my favourite silver tone) and the other bins and the Ferrous bin (20-35) all running at 75 Hz. The house and the barn were about 100 yards apart. He also told me that his uncle was born in 1952, so we knew that the quarter would have been minted in 1957 or earlier. He showed me the probable route and for the next hour and a half I gridded the area. No silver quarter. I did, however, find a 1967-quarter and a couple of clad dimes and memorial cents (and of course lots of farm iron).
I asked him if there was perhaps another route that his uncle might have taken. He called his mother and was told of another possible path, so I started working on it. On my return pass I got a really nice 12-46 and it showed to be 9 inches deep. Had I found the silver quarter that had been lost for 60 years? I dug a plug and checked it with my coil and then swung back over the hole. It was still in the ground. I got out my pinpointer and got a signal in the bottom of the hole. A little more digging and out popped a 1954 Franklin half dollar. Right date, wrong coin! I swung back over the hole and then filled it back in. I then swung the coil back over the spot. I got a silver chirp and a 12-42. What, a dime? How did I miss that? As I tried to pinpoint, it immediately changed to an iron tone and I decided that it must have been some wrap-around iron falsing and walked away from it. But for some reason I turned around and went back to the spot and started circling the area and kept getting that silver chirp, but it kept switching back to iron every time I tried to pinpoint it. I then knew that I had to dig up the piece of iron and see if it was masking the 12-42.
About 4 inches down out popped a large piece of a tie rod. As I swung the coil back over the hole the silver chirp turned into a solid silver tone. As I dug more dirt out of the hole, a rusty nail about 1 ½ inches long came out. And then my pinpointer found its second target in the hole. This time it was a 1920 Walking Liberty half dollar. Holy cow, two half dollars in the same hole? That rusty tie rod was about 2 inches to the side and 5 inches above the Walker Half and the nail was directly above it and the Franklin half was about 6 inches to the side of the Walker half. The 3030 really came through for me on this dig.
I hunted for another hour and never did find the quarter. It nagged me the rest of the day and the following day too about not finding his uncle’s lost coin. I asked my co-worker on Monday if he would ask his uncle if he remembered losing the quarter and maybe we could get a better angle from the house to the barn. He called me that evening and told me that he called and asked his uncle if he had ever lost any money near the barn when he was a little kid. He said, “Yes, I lost two half dollars, and we were never able to find them!” My co-worker said, “Well, we did!” His uncle couldn’t believe it.
We set up the reunion of the “boy and his coins” for April 1, on the very spot that I had dug them. I was able to drop them back into his hand 60 years later. He told me that he had earned the money digging potatoes for his Grandpa. He believed that he and his cousin were out playing and running between the house and the hay barn when he lost them. He said that he continued to look for them for a couple of years after losing them, and his sister told me that their mother had also bought a cheap metal detector several years later to try to find his lost treasure.
I have been metal detecting since 1969 (and using a Minelab since 2007) and this was the first time that I have ever been able to give a coin(s) back to the person who lost it. It was just one of those times that everything was just a perfect fit. The land was still in the family. The person who lost them was still alive. Grandma told her grandson the story. I work with the grandson, and my hobby is metal detecting. If any of these circumstances were missing, the coins probably would never have been found and certainly never returned after well over half a century in the ground. You gotta love this hobby!!!
PryorCreekJoe - Oklahoma, USA
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