A New Favorite Detecting Tale
During one of our hunts in November, a gentleman in perhaps his late 20's approached my father and I saw them talk for a bit. I wandered over to see what was up. As it turns out, he wanted us to detect his parents' front yard to find a Mercury dime he believed he dropped about 10 years ago. This seemed a bit odd to me, but we agreed. Walking over to the house in question, he explained that as a child he and the kid next door were in the back yard burying a dead pet parakeet. In the process of digging the hole they found a Mercury dime. They were quite excited by this treasure, but in the process of running inside with it he dropped it somewhere in the front yard and was never able to find it. He showed us the general area where he was sure it had been dropped. I figured we were in for a wild goose chase but I wasn't about to turn down the opportunity to detect the lawn of this large, 100 year old home, especially since he had told us we could keep whatever we found, including the lost silver dime. The first target was a wheat penny, which really had me excited. I was a bit wary about pulling anything but the choicest signals since he was watching us operate and I wasn't sure how he would react to seeing even the neatest of plugs pulled from the lawn. While we chatted I dug a few more targets which proved to be scrap copper, clad, etc. Perhaps 10 minutes after starting I got a sweet, shallow tone, pulled a small plug, and started laughing when a beautiful 1945 Merc pops out. He asked if I had found more trash and I responded to say "Nope, there's your dime." I don't think he believed me until he looked for himself and pulled that shiny beauty from the dirt. Even though he said we could keep it there was not way I was going to - that dime was absolutely his! He was very thankful which I took as an opportunity to ask if we could keep detecting the front yard. He said no problem. We poked around for about an hour but found only clad and another half dozen wheats, but again I was only digging the better signals for fear of disrupting the lawn more than the owners might be comfortable with. The guy came back out with his mom a bit later because I don't think she believed the story. She offered us drinks and thanked us repeatedly. "He's been talking about that dime for the past 10 years!" she said, which made me very happy to hear knowing that he now had it again.
For the record though, I still put that dime toward my silver count. As I explained to my father, I count the stuff I find, not just the stuff I keep! :lol:
