Seated Half Dime...

[Jeff (or)]

Congrats on both finds!

[odave]

She's a beauty thumbsup01 thumbsup01

[Carver]

OMG Joe,,,,that is a beauty of a coin!!!!!! Big congrats on that one!!! I'm still looking for my first!!!!!!!

[RobW]

sweet!

[milco]

Yeah, I'm a wanderer too. I like to have faith that some unconscious force will direct me the right way. Plus, like you said, easier to find hotspots, etc. Hopefully that whole property will be one big hotspot for you!

I like to wander, but especially on yards and certain areas of old parks, I patiently grid the area.

[li tom]

That's a great first Seated,Congrats!!

[Toadman]

Sweeet 1/2 dime ! happydance02 happydance02 happydance02 happydance02

[russellt]

what a whopper of a find .. and darnit its 4 years older than my oldest half dime. nice.

[hockeyguy]

I missed this post...that's a keeper......very nice....1857 American Silver is a great find. A half dime.....priceless!

[coinnut]

The reverse of that half dime looks uncirculate That coin was dropped brand new and it stinks that it got clipped like that. Mint struck so hard that the reverse rim bulged out. You can even see that beautiful uncirculate glow to the reverse. What a great piece. I can't find anything on that button, but it could be almost anything...a university, organization, local chapter, etc... Great digs

[aloldstuff]

a 1/2 dime, people hunt forever and never find one of those. huge congrats

[silysavg]

I was suppose to go out with Dave this morning but with my niece's birthday party, sadly I had to postpone. We got home at 5:15 and in very short order I had my detector in the back of the truck and off I headed.

Went back to the spot ( HERE ) I recently found a Shield Nickel and picked another very small portion of the yard. I am really forcing myself to slow down and grid this site. So far it is paying off. It is tough fighting the urge to wander around, but I'm sticking with the grid here.

The coin targets were sparse in tonight's 20x10 foot section. Picked up one wheat and then out came a dirt encrusted small silver disc. Like so many times in the past, the thought of a half dime popped into my head. All previous times the rush was crushed when a small token, toy money or foreign coin was revealed.
But on this one I did catch a small glimpse of what appeared to be a seated woman. This brought my excitement level up a notch and decided to walk to the truck and rinse the dirt off with some water. On the way, I decided to swipe a small clump of dirt off a portion of the edge of the coin to see if it was reeded. Sure enough it was. At this point I was thinking, There is no way this can be a half dime. As the water rinsed away the surrounding dirt... I was simply shocked. Shocked that I was able to find one of those small, early silver coins. <: Just a few days ago I was happy to finally get into the 1800's with a 1898 dime. You can imagine my excitement when I realized I just beat my earliest silver coin by 41 years.

The half dime has some nice detail but it appears to have suffered a little damage along it's life.

jkress,

I remember the first one I found years ago. It was not that deep and when uncovered and the small size was seen I actually thought it was a play coin from some board game. What a great thrill it was when I cleaned off the dirt and noticed what it actually was.

I get that vicarious thrill reading of your find.

Congratulations.

Mike

[Civil War Nut]

Thats nice J. You are hunting the best way now. Takes a lot of time to cover the ground , but at least you know you have well covered it. Slow and eazy.

[jkress]

What a great thrill it was when I cleaned off the dirt and noticed what it actually was.

Boy you aren't a kidding. It was certainly a big rush for me. Congrats on yours... I would love to hear about that hunt.

You are hunting the best way now. Takes a lot of time to cover the ground , but at least you know you have well covered it. Slow and eazy.

Yeah... I'm learning. Sometime this summer when I'm looking for new grounds to hunt, I'm going to head back to one of the spots I quickly wandered through before. Slowly grid the heck out of it and see what I missed.

[silysavg]

Boy you aren't a kidding. It was certainly a big rush for me. Congrats on yours... I would love to hear about that hunt.

That was a looong time ago - 7/8/1982. My friend and I had permission to metal detect the property of a long gone girl's college - St. Xavier Academy. Many acres. We were pulling seated and barber coins out daily, along with other silver up to 1964, whenever we had time after work.

After hundreds of silver coins taken there by me and him it was bound to happen that someone would find a half-dime.

To be honest, the only thing I remember about the first half-dime was how excited I was. It was totally just another normal signal with that deep sound we became accustomed to on that property. Just about anything found there was old but the Barbers and Seated were usually around 6 to 8 inches.

We were using the 12 inch coil on the Garrett Master Hunter ADS III. I still have it now, and indeed, it is running as good now as the day I bought it in June 1982. I quit detecting in 1984 and hung it on a pegboard hook in the cellar and there it hung since then.

Anyway, getting back to the half-dime.
That property ( the Sisters of Mercy established a school, St. Xavier Academy, near Latrobe in 1847) was a dream come true. It is a rural setting, old oak trees everywhere, no buildings anymore but the grounds were well maintained. There was practically no bad signals. It was either a threshold sound or a good find. But to this day I still remember that 1839 Half-Dime.

You should be doubly proud of yours because you found yours in this era, the era when most every conceivable place someone could think of detecting - was! - and heavily at that. Mine was easy in comparison.

I would love to hear that you found another tomorrow. Those great finds are like getting an eagle playing golf. No matter how bad the game is until that eagle, it's the eagle that keeps you swingin' .
Keep that coil swinging, there's another eagle waiting.

Mike