Truly a Golden Age

by Donna A. Trefry
Article reprinted with permission from
Lost Treasure Magazine
as published in the April 1997 issue of their former publication
Treasure Facts

Four dollars, sixty-eight cents was the face value of the sandy, corroded coins I held in my hand. They were the result of a sunlit Saturday and a very nice day practicing my favorite hobby. I had spent the day swinging a metal detector over the sands of our local beaches.

In the "Ed Biz", we teachers always covet a weekend of good weather. It helps charge the mental batteries and restore more sensitivity to dig deeper into our work. My working days, however, had begun to take a toll on my physical well-being. Thoughts of retirement often ran through my head whenever the aches and pains nagged at me. Although most weekends were enough to send me back to the classroom rested and raring to go, these thoughts returned ever so often when I could imagine spending my time and pain at the more leisurely pace of detecting.

"Let's see", I said to my metal detecting partner, Pat Sweeney, as we headed home from our day at the beach. "Four dollars, sixty-eight cents... that's less than a dollar-an-hour for my five hours of digging in the sand!" "And I want to retire to do THIS?" "You bet!" I grinned, answering my own question.

Now fourteen years into my retirement from public school music education, my love of the metal detecting hobby has not waned. The hobby is providing me with more than outdoor recreation. I've met a worldwide assortment of new friends, rediscovered an interest in local, U.S. and world history and have found a new tempo of living. In my retirement, metal detecting has taken me to the haunts of my childhood, the back yards of my neighbors, the nooks and crannies of colonial New England and for the last several years, across the sea to the ancient Roman roads where Caesar and his Legions entered olde England in 44 B.C.

As a young student, I had no interest in history. I reluctantly did the compulsory reading and my grades showed it. Would I have believed back then that in retirement I would be writing about history, living it, and better... digging it up?

I enjoyed Elizabethan music and hoped to research some obscure Elizabethan composer in the libraries of England as a part of doctoral work. I referred to the venture as "digging up a bit of Elizabethan history." Instead, I continued my career for another 20 years. Coincidentally, the first hammered silver coin I dug in England was an Elizabeth the First half-groat. Now that is truly "digging up Elizabethan history!"

Metal detecting has produced more than a post-graduate history education for me. It has produced the goodies we all yearn for in this hobby: Large cents, Indianhead cents, silver - and a few years ago GOLD! - every TH'ers dream. While in England with Jimmy Sierra's group during the summer of 1997 I struck the yellow stuff on my fifth day of searching. Much to my surprise, a large gold coin of King James the First tumbled out of a freshly dug clod of clay. About the size of an American half-dollar, it was very thin and in very nice condition! Barely able to believe my good fortune, my mind wandered back to the $4.68 day ... "Yes! Retirement is is truly the golden age!"

Other articles by Donna
"Four Centuries of Treasure"
"Truly a Golden Age"
"The Mystery of the Seven-stoned Ring"
"Ghosts of History Guide the Searchcoil"
"Cache or Bust"
"Treasure Hunting Through the Internet"
"Where Gold Coins Grow on Trees"

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