Civic Holiday = Pay Day! 08-02-2010

Today was a holiday Monday for us here in Ontario, Canada - Civic Holiday. My morning actually started off early, I was wide awake at 5am - EEEK!! So I got up and did some computer work until Bob woke up at 8:30am and after breakfast Bob played with his G-Scale Train and I painted up some Muskoka chairs and then it got hot, so we headed to Mom's pool for a dip, came home, had a 2-hour nap, got up had some supper and then it hit me, we had not metal detected in a looooooooooooooong time. I asked Bob to call up Cousin Steve and see what he was up to. His house always seemed to pay out nicely with older coins. Bob got Steve on the phone and he said we could come up.

Once we got there, Steve showed us a "cheaper" metal detector he had picked up and try out. No pinpointing feature, it didn't tell you how deep an item was and beeped at everything.

At first we found a bottle cap, a gun shell casing, a nail. Steve found some nails. I walked over to Steve and detected one of his holes to see what reading I was getting on something he got a solid hit on. The numbers came up negative and iron. I found a 70 reading nearby and marked it with a stick for him.

Steve and his find:

It ended up being a 1969 penny which appeared to have been used for target practice. Steve figures it was a handgun which was used on it. This penny was found near the side of the house about 2 inches down. He doesn't own one and no one in his family who lived in the house previously owned one. Very strange.

Bob and I had an awesome time hunting.

We first found bunch of firsts for us a 1899 Indian Head Penny, a 1918 US Dime, Canadian 1903 Penny, Canadian 1917 King George Nickel (such a cutie small thing). We also found what appears to be some sort of brooch or clip-on earring with a diamond looking stone in the center, 1951 US Penny, 1964 US penny, 1973 Canadian Penny, 1977 Canadian Penny and a 1982 Canadian Penny.

Close-up of the brooch or earring with the stone.

Close-up's of the front & backs of the older (first time finding) coins!

Overall, a totally excellent hunt and I think we only did hunt for 1 hour and 1/2.

We had been here before previously two or three times and have always found old unique items. We hope it keeps paying off for us, it is so fun searching Steve & Nadine's yard. :o)

The Secret Locket

We had my (Mary) Mom over for dinner last night and ended up stuffing ourselves. lol After Mom left we weren't sure what to do with ourselves. Actually, we wanted to have a nap, but I suggested why not use that last bit of daylight and detect our yard. We started in the back yard and found nails and moved to the front yard. We actually stopped to talk to a neighbour who wanted to know what we were looking for. :o) It was great to finally meet another neighbour face to face. After talking to him for a while we continued detecting as it was getting dark. We located a kick-stand to a bike under the big tree in the front yard (away from the ruins) and a round thing in the front garden. It was dark so it was time to retire.



After a stressful day at work and then coming home and becoming more stressed out (long story) we decided to give my (Mary) cousin a call and see if he wanted to share a pizza and go detecting. (Time to release the stress) My cousin Steve and his wife Nadine live in a nice old house and we have done VERY well there last year locating old coins dating back to the 1800's. Unfortunately, Nadine was working late this evening so we popped over with dinner and ate with Steve. We started at the back of the house and found 1 penny (1973) and the as it was getting darker I really wanted to detect the front yard as that had paid off last year. We were finding more "junk" mail. Steve found this fork shaped thing (See above picture). I let Bob detect this time as he is normally the "Digger". He was playing with the RELIC setting and we were only digging the high-pitched noises. He got a "brass" signal and was really expecting to find a bullet-casing. WE LUCKED OUT and found the following.

We found this awesome locket, unfortunately there wasn't a picture inside. :o( It was still an exciting find. Until the next time! :o)