RIdirtdigger
05-30-2016, 09:08 AM
I found perhaps my best find ever yesterday, topping even the gold coin I found over 2 years ago. But I'll save that for last. Did a brief hunt during the week in my yard, where my family is putting in a patio. As a result a foot of fill dirt had been removed and of course I swung my detector in that spot. Managed to pull out a 1963 Rosie dime about 6 inches down! Would have been 1.5 feet down from the normal surface, impossible to reach normally with my detector. Saturday I went on a solo cellar hunt in CT. First stop was deep in the woods but was right on the edge of public and private land. The private side, sadly had been recently logged and the loggers threw a lot of brush into the cellar hole. Not much other than the iron around the hole to indicate there was anything there but I managed a tombac button and a shoe buckle fragment. Site was hit before too. I moved on. After a long hike in and about 20 minutes of actually looking for the cellar hole cause I didn't mark the exact place of where I thought it was on my phone, I finally found. Nice old hole built into the stone wall. First two signals were a shoe buckle chape and an eschuchion plate. My third find was... a very angry turkey hunter. Apparently I had wandered onto private property. No posted signs or any signs at all to indicate it either. Shame, it was probably a nice site too. Needless to say I left that site pretty quickly and was pretty disappointed as almost all the woods in that area is public. Oh well. Sunday I met up with Jarrod and we headed out to CT again. First site we couldn't get into the parking area as the gate was locked and we didn't want to hike for a mile just to get into the woods. Second site we knew there was a cellar there but never found it, most intense barberry I've ever seen. Totally overgrown, I think we were 5 feet away from the cellar hole and never could even see it. We got out out of those woods and headed to spot number 3. This site was on a hiking trail that seems to be used regularly used. After a 10 minute or so hike we found our colonial cellar hole right on the side of the hiking trail. Someone had been there obviously, there was an ox shoe placedon a downed tree. About 50 feet or so from the hole I get a nice consistent mid tone and about 6 inches down pull out a nice big dandy button. I tell Jarrod I got a dandy and then notice it has words on it. I read out "Long Live the... King" Jarrod was actually disappointed cause he was hoping it say "Long Live the President". I knew I had something special, I've never seen one dug (but I know they have been), but I didn't know the rarity of this button. I assumed it was maybe a loyalist button from the revolutionary war but it's much better than that. This is a 1789 "Long Live the King" British button possibly made to celebrate King George III's unexpected recovery from a very serious illness. It is usually only found in countries that were loyal to the crown at that date in time so it is highly unusual and rare for it to be found in Connecticut. It is also considered to be a variation of a George Washington Inaugural Button which means I have found two GW's in less than a month. I am extremely happy about amazed by this find and never expected to find something so rare especially at a cellar hole that had been hit really hard by others. Overall despite only actually detecting for 1 hour yesterday, it was quite an incredible day!!!