Beep... beep... beeeeeeeep!

I've found one!

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd bought a Garrett Ace 250 metal detector so I could go digging for history around The Lodge, the first decent find from which was an aluminium thimble.

That simple thing - probably given away as a promotional item around the beginning of 1900 - kept us smiling for days, but it wasn't quite enough.

Because I'm an uncomplicated kind of chap the whole point of me getting the metal detector was to find coins. For me, coins represent the passage of time and history in a way that things can't do.

They're minted in a particular year which is clearly stated (unless you go even further back in time), then spend the rest of their lives being passed around by maybe hundreds or thousands of people as they go about their daily lives. Coins would be used to pay rent or wages or be offered in exchange for bread, meats, cleaning products, Calvert's Carbolic Tooth Powder, jewellery, clothing... stuff to make peoples' lives better or prettier or easier or whatever. None of this internet banking lark. No debit cards or contactless payments. Pah. These are from a time when cash was king.

It just feels like there's more life in old coins. Does that make sense or am I talking rubbish?

King Georgivs V couldn't even spell his own name

Anyway, I've found one!
After nigh-on 100 years buried in the mud, along comes an idiot with a fancy machine that he can't use properly and suddenly it's back in the daylight. I know metal detectorists treat such finds with little more than idle curiosity once they get used to digging them up, but for Dawn and I it's perfect and hopefully the first of many.

The obverse (I've been Googling) is in good condition and clearly shows that it's a George V copper penny, complete with monster moustache, which places it between 1911 and 1936.

The reverse is in poor condition, but you can just make out Britannia and the fact that there's a date there too, but it's very unclear. 

I've given it a brief rub with a vinegar and salt mixture, which has lifted some of the grime and decay, but it's still not entirely clear - 1916? That would certainly be a happy coincidence.

Nevertheless it's now soaking in olive oil for a few days, which also apparently helps, and hopefully I'll be able to read it better towards the end of next week. I'll update this post with new pictures when I can but in the meantime I might set up a 'metal detecting finds' page so I don't have to bore everyone with tales of my latest Tizer can ring-pull whenever one makes an appearance.

EDIT - I made the page then I ditched it. I've run out of land to detect so while I write to local farmers for permission to roam their land and wait for their replies (I'm expecting it to take months) I've loaned the metal detector to a friend.

1916, maybe?

EDIT (March 10)

After posting this I decided to give the coin a brief soak in the salt/vinegar solution - just 10 minutes or so... then went to bed. Needless to say I'd made a right mess of it, with dull grey blotches, green patches and general unpleasantness on both faces. Not only was the tarnish still there but it was 10x worse. The only area of tarnish to come away encompassed the date, so it seems the pic above was always going to be the best I could get.My first coin (discounting a 1988 2p)... I was gutted. So I Googled again, where it seems the best advice is that less is more when it comes to cleaning. Toothbrush, water, nothing more.

But if you have to clean them up electrolysis is, apparently, the answer.

So having knocked together a DIY electrolysis bath out of an old 12v phone charger, some alligator clips, salty water and a spoon I left the coin fizzing away for a couple of hours. Of course when I say 'left', what I mean is 'switched off and checked obsessively every two minutes'.

Despite losing the date altogether the result is actually very good. I'm delighted that I've managed to save the coin and keep the it nice to look at.

George himself looks good (although to be fair he also looked good with the black 'just found' patina too. Britannia, on the other hand, has come up a treat. She could barely be seen originally but now you can certainly make her out, especially in the right light.

Anyway, enough of this. Photos.

How she would have looked in happier days

Digging for buried treasure

Back when I was a kid and still in 'explorer' mode, I persuaded my parents to buy me a metal detector so I could make them rich and they could buy me a bike.

Garrett Ace 250

I have no idea what kind it was but it was cheap, it was blue, it made noises and it gave me an excuse to get muddy, so naturally it was brilliant.

My only memory of using it, other than a vague recollection of trawling the beach for pennies, is when my folks - totally illegally - took me and it to Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands to look for Irn Bru cans dropped during the massacre in 1692.

After 10 drizzle-soaked minutes I found a rusty old beer barrel hoop at the bottom of a tree, then got bored, went home and gave the metal detector away. The hoop stayed where it was and we weren't gaoled.

Now, a mere 30-some years later and with a small patch of historic land I can legitimately call my own, I'm back. And I'm packing a Garrett Ace 250, which is apparently perfect for a newbie like me.

Moving here has given us an appreciation for the history of the property, so the promise of literally unearthing a piece of it is too good to resist.

The metal detector might be £175 but it'll be completely worth it if I find just one Victorian or Georgian coin.

My first spin around the place ended with the Ace 250 going bananas for no apparent reason and refusing to power-up, so it went back and was replaced a few days ago.

This time the new one is behaving better, but I've read that getting to know how it responds to different triggers is a steep learning curve - and that's proving to be true. Often it beeps once but won't repeat it, many times I get a beep which seems to move around like I'm chasing a robot mouse and on other occasions it'll insist there's a horde of treasure beneath my feet only to petulantly stop beeping altogether when I've dug a crater big enough to bury an elephant.

The garden, yesterday

Nevertheless I have been finding stuff: a 5ft length of bent iron bar; a lump of lead with a bolt in it; a nail; acres of chicken wire and three small calibre bullet casings. I've also found what may or may not be an original hinge from the original gate at the front, but because that was lying on the surface under a tree it doesn't really count.

But yesterday I found my first proper Thing, and we're well chuffed! Dawn was Googling all night about it.

It's a mostly-flattened Calvert's Carbolic Tooth Powder thimble, and at first I thought it was probably silver (I wanted it to be silver, too) although it has since been suggested that it could be aluminium, which sounds more likely because it was clearly a promotional freebie.

Thimble, left

If that's the case I reckon it's possibly dated somewhere between the last few years of the 1890s and the first few years of the 1900s because it seems that aluminium production in Britain sky-rocketed around the cusp of the new century (with prices dropping accordingly), and the latest Calvert's advertising I can find that uses the logo enclosing the 'a' inside the 'C' is around 1908.
Also, see the little star on the picture below? It's only used to mark the beginning and end of the legend, but over a century later it looks very much like a Star of David to me. Back then, presumably, once the symbol could be mistaken for signifying Judaism I doubt it would have been used in such a flippant manner - which again puts it somewhere in the first decade of the 20th Century at the latest. Ish.
It's all over-reaching guesswork, of course, but in lieu of anything concrete I'm happy to go with that for now.

Sadly that's the limit of my Calvert's thimble knowledge (should've paid attention in school) and the internet has failed in its duties to provide information about such a thing.

Calvert's, yes - to a point, but Calvert's thimbles, no.

So we're not rich yet, and I still can't get that bike, but I'll keep looking. I won't be happy until I find my first coin. I'll let you know when it happens.

We just happened to have a jar of silver cleaner in the cupboard. This is the result after a lot of soaking.

'Powder * Cal'

The other side. Not a second thimble, dad.

(v on left edge)

'ert's CARBOLIC Tooth'

How nurses washed their big knickers in the 1880s

The 'I will stab you in your sleep' look of the 1890s