Cold hunt--but gold warmed me up :)

[kurtnks]

Hello all,
It was around 29° here today with drizzle and sleet. wasn’t going to stop me from getting to my favorite ghost town site I took my F75 because wanted to try it on this field and wasn’t ready to take my new E-trac out in the weather :-\ By the way…love that F75! Anyway,I hunted for about 3 hr’s was building ice on the coil and my mustache and wasn’t finding much, brass rivet’s, small pieces of brass and copper--then found a what looks to be shield nickel? It’s very crusted over and nasty looking, but it’s the same size as a nickel and can kind of make out part of a shield. So a maybe on that one. So with my luck starting to turn I got a deep signal, was bouncing around the tab zinc area showing 11� down. After digging it was more like 12-13� deep “in a plowed field� I seen a beautiful gold colored item,this thing has a luster that is amazing I don’t know anything about it, haven’t had time to look it up yet, and was hoping I could talk the research guru tanacat into helping me figure it out! It’s some kind of Masonic thing I think, it looks like it may have had a skull and cross bones on the front? It’s plated but plating is THICK maybe 1/16 on each side! (about an inch across)Any help would be great. The place I found this dates from 1874-1895 and has been farm ground since 1896 with no activity there. This is the same place I have found a 1853 seated half dime, newest coin being 1883--Thanks Kurt