Earlier this month my friend bought a home in an older section of town and invited me over to detect it. The house is located along a mill run that used to power the old mills and dated back to the early 1800s. At one time the house served as an icehouse in the early part of the 1900s. My expectations were running high. There could be large, capped busts, seated... This was running through my mind as I started detecting the property with my CTX3030. It didn't take long to realize the property had already been detected due to the lack of old targets. The only things coming out of the ground were modern pennies and clad. Usually when places were detected in the past many machines will miss deeper targets or targets that are concealed by nails/iron. I kept detecting trying to remove all of the surface targets in order to reveal the deeper targets. Doing this made it possible to find a couple of wheat pennies that were overlooked. As the undetected yard grew smaller a deep 9 inch quarter signal appeared. It turned out to be a Standing Liberty quarter with a partial date. So as I always do I posted it on my favourite Facebook forum Dirt Digging PA. It was there that one of the users said that the date looked like an error date, but the date wasn't quite clear enough to tell. That's when I posted it on another forum specializing in coins. A knowledgeable user said there was a die clash on the 1918/7 S error that allows identification on poor dates. The die clash is located by the right knee and resembles a capital E. My quarter has this die clash! I'm bouncing off the walls now. I took the quarter into a reputable dealer and asked for help in positively identifying it. He had a 1918/7 S in fine condition that was graded by PCGS. He compared both quarters using his loupe and said the words I had been waiting to hear, "According to the die clash that is only on this error date, your 1918/7 S Standing Liberty quarter is genuine." Wow! He then mentioned that if I were to send it out to be graded it would most likely come back as VG details with environmental damage. I never thought I would have dug up an error coin that is worth $2000! My CTX3030 has been amazing for me in locating awesome finds in extremely tough conditions. I love my machine. Thank you Minelab!
Jeff – Pennsylvania, USA
