A Few Of Guessologists Finds

Prospecting Australia

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Great day out.

Love the bling. Makes it all personal. The carriage plate is cool too. And the Royal Letters button is the first that I recall seeing.

Congrats!
 
Detectist said:
Great day out.

Love the bling. Makes it all personal. The carriage plate is cool too. And the Royal Letters button is the first that I recall seeing.

Congrats!

Yeah it's an interesting one that button, seems to have been affixed to whatever it was on via a rivet of some sort rather than thread. Google search is a bit of a dead end with it though.
 
Guessologist said:
Detectist said:
Great day out.

Love the bling. Makes it all personal. The carriage plate is cool too. And the Royal Letters button is the first that I recall seeing.

Congrats!

Yeah it's an interesting one that button, seems to have been affixed to whatever it was on via a rivet of some sort rather than thread. Google search is a bit of a dead end with it though.

I wonder if it was military mail related. Age of some of the finds in your site may fit with its establishment (Crimea, and later after a few attempts).
 
One of these things is not like the others...
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This particular site has been frustrating until now, serious potential for old coins but giving up nothing but decimals...
 
I've done it. I've found the King Buckle, largest of all wild buckles. I highly doubt I'll ever detect a bigger one. Solid 37 on the equinox...
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It was one of those mornings where everything just clicks and everything that comes out of the hole is good. Same site as the above post with the 1878 penny. Given the scarcity of old finds so far, I did not expect a cricket buckle and a snake buckle at all, let alone in the same hunt. I guess it's really a swan buckle, alternatively a duckle. The cricket buckle isn't in the Book yet either by the looks, so that's cool.

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Good finds. The detail on the cricket buckle and snake buckle is fantastic. And that is one big sash buckle. I wonder if its for a drummer??
 
The horsier parts of my family suspect it's off a dray horse's tack - there's some chunky bits of brass around in the same spot giving the impression of some form of metalwork having gone on there. Went back with the E-TRAC this time - over the years I've mentally begun to tune out some types of signals on the Equinox, it just won't entice me to dig them. The E-TRAC gives a little more information and I'm finding I'm leaving a few obvious good targets behind, like these:

MacNiven & Camerons pens gaming token ~1880s/90s
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Silver thimble (think it might be the first silver one I've found/recognised, plenty of aluminium though)
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1903 Threepence (Fe number was all over the shop but Co was consistently high, was expecting junk)
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Kero lamp burner, not sure what make but it has a Dec 1867 patent date
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Another couple of oldies snuffled out from between a bunch of modern bottle caps with the equinox and 6" coil, no chance of a date on the Victorian threepence at all, way too worn. The EMI where these came from is foul too but not insurmountable...

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Here's an interesting one, same site as above. Got a quiet and iffy 30 and suspected immediately a token at depth. This popped out at about 10 inches down, completely devoid of detail thanks to being hammered to hell. I figured a token or early Victorian penny, but it turns out it's too big and too heavy. It's holed, weighs 24.8g and the minimum diameter sits around 38mm, and about 3mm thick in places. I suspect that in a previous life this might have been a cartwheel penny (28.4g, 36mm, 3mm). I've dug a few copper discs before that might have originally been coins, but this one seems very, very coiney, particularly with the off-center hole. Thoughts?

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Other side next to a pre-1860 copper penny for comparison
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edit- the photos make it look even more out of round than it is, it does have a reasonably sharp original rim around most of the coin disc
 
Back to the jewellery site with a dig everything attitude, came up with an engraved silver band and a few buttons (fouled anchor, "BEST SOLID EYELET" and "ADVANCE AUSTRALIA". The lamp thumbwheel is off a Edward Miller "Stellar". Not pictured - a 1912 sixpence which I lost in the field, not a bad reason to go back!

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Results of the Christmas break, the heat was oppressive and limited the time in the field. Most of the areas I did over I have done to death down to dig all the solid targets regardless of ID so not a huge haul. Still managed to snag these guys out of an old homestead site on family property with the E-TRAC, just digging anything with a high CO number regardless of if the FE number is behaving. Again these are all targets that would have been swung over by the Equinox and not given enough of a hit to dig, probably still says more about how I use both machines than their capabilities perhaps?

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Been in a little bit of a lull with detecting lately, downsizing the fleet a bit but still making the effort to get out and swing, today was a bit harder than usual. First I had this happen:
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Eventually I got a ripper signal, to the point where I bothered to get the phone out and record the dig. This was the cause of the signal:
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Cursing the whole job out and walking back to the car wondering out aloud why I'm out here subjecting myself to heatstroke, I got a fairly sweet tone which turned out to be this:
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Being slightly placated but not fully feeling it, kept walking back to the car and pretty much straight away got an odd but solid 12-35:
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Great, probably just gilded I thought, but the gold didn't rub off as I cleaned! Finally, my first gold ring, 9ct 3.86g:
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Says ALL MY LOVE MARIA 2.10.69. Yeah, that's probably why I'm detecting.
 
Yes it is! The photo I took makes it look a bit terrible, it's kind of buffed up a treat versus that super scratched look. I'll get onto the locals to see if Maria was a local too, not a big town so should be easy to track down in people's memories (assuming 1969 from the type, 1869 is perfectly reasonable from the area).
 
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The best of the last few weeks, going through a bit of a patch of pocket watches it seems... Also a nice chain, top off a box of phonograph needles and another WW1 victory medallion. The ground I'm covering at the moment is pretty heavily mineralised and I'm feeling minor regret for moving on my Equinox 600, I do miss the 6" coil and I reckon the ETRAC is only getting the bigger objects for me. At least I didn't pre-order a Legend to replace it straight away!
 
Been a while since I've uploaded anything, haven't been out too much. In the time that I've been in the field though, I've been rocking a Detech 10x5" on the E-TRAC (cheers grubstake!) which has sparked it up a bit, much better separation in the rubbish piles and gets between the coffee bushes a lot better. Badges have been popular, and I've started to use tiny paper jewellery price tags on strings to catalogue my finds, works great:

Back to Heathcote 1937 - already found a 1930, if I can find the 1925 one I'll have the full set...
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Victorian Protestant Federation - ~1917
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And the top off a Hohner harmonica, text is pretty much illegible but the design is destinctive enough for an ID. Not sure why this is the first I've found when the reeds are practically more common than 1-2c coins here...
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And the results of yesterdays hunt, a neat old padlock, 1919 penny and a little copper disc that's been used as a base for some kind of punch on both sides - any ideas of what might have been punched on it?
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