|
Follow
Them Backhoes
by
Jason Joseph
|
|
In the line of
work I do, I have occasion to travel around the country a
few times a year. In May of 1999 I found out I would be
going to Massachusetts for a week in June.
I posted on the online forums about my
upcoming trip and asked anyone interested in getting
together to email me. I received an email from Scott in MA.
I mentioned to him that I had one goal while there, and that
was to find a large cent. He offered to take me to some
cellar holes to give me that chance.
|
|
I arrived in MA on a Tuesday, and
immediately gave Scott a call so that we could make plans
for the hunt on the upcoming weekend. He lived about an hour
away from where I was working, so I asked him if he knew of
anything in the area that I could hunt until meeting him on
Saturday. He told me of a cellar hole that was near a place
where he used to work, and was only 10 minutes from my
hotel. |
 |
| I got off work on Wednesday at
4:00, and grabbed my detector and headed for the cellar
hole he told me about. I walked down the path into the
woods, and found the remains of an old foundation and some
out buildings. The place must've been a hangout for
teen-agers, because it was littered with beer cans. It
wasn't the trash that drove me out of the woods after a
half hour of hunting, it was the skeeters. They were
thick, a few more minutes and they would've sucked me dry. |
| I jumped back in the
car to go look for some repellent. I drove down the road a
few miles and ended up in the town of Marlboro. About
halfway down Main St. I noticed an 1880's looking school on
the left hand side that had all of the sod removed off of
the front lawn. This looked good. Wasn't as old as the
cellar hole, but I've had good success in sites like this in
the past. I jumped out of the car, fired up the XLT and went
to work. I immediately started finding wheaties laying right
on top of the ground. In the first hour of hunting, I had
found around 20 wheaties and no silver? I knew with the
amount of wheaties it was only a matter of time until I saw
the gleam of silver. |
|
|
1723 Hibernia Halfpenny |
| I received another
wheatie type reading on the XLT. When I pulled the coin out
of the ground, I saw the unmistakable wreath of an Indian
Head Cent. I turned the coin over and saw the date of 1871.
That's better, this was the kind of stuff I was after.
I had about 2 hours of daylight left and decided to
concentrate my efforts in the area I found the Indian Head.
That decision would prove fruitful. Over the next 2 hours I
found 3 more Indians, two silver rosies, a merc., an 1882
foreign coin that turned out to be Greek, a large copper
coin that would end up being the oldest coin I have ever
found; A 1723 Hibernia Halfpenny. I also found the most
gorgeous dug seated dime you could lay your eyes on, and of
course more wheaties. |
| I ended up hunting
this place for around 10 hours total and took quite a haul
out of there; 11 Indians, 3 Seated Dimes, 1 Barber Dime, 1
half reale, 1 Standing quarter, the Hibernia, as well as
numerous other coins.
Oh, and the cellar holes, I had a great time and found
some nice relics and a few coins. Scott and Bill are couple
of the nicest guys you could meet. I never did get that
Large Cent (I think Scott found 3 or 4), but I'm not
complaining. -------JJ |
|
|
|
