Metal detecting *treasures*

[LaCroix]

I thought it was time to share some of the treasures* I found while metal detecting.

*(Things that aren't boring junk)

A 1942 1 Pengö coin. Aluminium, pretty good condition. Found on an area of my farm that was once the town's livestock marketplace.


A 1954 2 Filler coin. Aluminium. From a scrap metal landfill(farm scrap) under a tree nearby (100m) the livestock marketplace.
There was a hole with an inset rivet in the middle of the coin - that rivet got smashed along the way, blocking the hole, and the coin is far gone.
(Most likely due to a lot of corroding iron nearby and wet ground - that combination does a galvanic number on aluminum. A minor wonder it's still there.) The laurel wreath is still visible, and it can still be partly read under 20 magnification, though. The back is so far gone I didn't bother taking a picture of it.



A 8x50mmR Mannlicher bullet (maybe 8x52). Lead core, steel jacket, bottom uncovered.
Found in an area that had been dense woods and swamps during the time, near a presumed bomb crater.
Due to the steel jacket, it was most likely a M90 or M93 version, which meant it was used in the M95 Steyr-Mannlicher, which was the primary rifle of Austria-Hungary. It may have been a 8x52R, which means it was used in the less used M1888 rifle (which was phased out and replaced by the M95 in 1895.) But they only built a million of those, and almost 4 million M95, so it's more likely to be the later, as the M1888 were phased out quickly.
In 1930 this bullet was obsolete, as almost all the rifles were converted to 8x56mm, which was a pointed bullet. So while it most likely was produced during or after WW1, there was never any fighting in this region, and it was not in civilian use.

The gun was still in use in Hungary and Austria right up to WW2, so it's most likely been fired in WW2 by Hungarians or Austrians, using obsolete arsenal weaponry, fighting alonside the Germans when Russian forces advanced towards Vienna in 1945.

[LaCroix]

Another day, another hunt.

Apart form 4€ and 12.20 Austrian Schilling in coins (and a lot of crap), I got these:


Gold logo, don't know it. It isn't marked gold, but it isn't tarnished even though it was 2 inched deep buried, and acid did not touch it.
1 or 2 grams of 18c, I guess.

This one is really the stuff you want to find.

A ring of lead/pewter/silver? with gilded writing. I think it was worn on a necklace - there are 2 marks on it that look as if it was ripped off. Inscription (in English) reads:

"When thou art nigh, it seems a new creation round; The sun hath fairer beams, The lute a softer sound. Though thee alone I see, And hear alone thy sigh, Tis light, tis song to me, Tis all." (Research showed it is "When Thou Art Nigh" by Thomas Moore)

I'd love to know the story behind it, but we'll never know.
There is a stamp inside - looks like "Orieks", or "Crieks", or "Grieks".

[madd0ct0r]

was english love poetry popular in vienna?

[LaCroix]

No, it's practically unknown.

It was found at a tourist area, and it looking at the places that show wear from the necklace it was supposedly worn on (or which happened when the necklace got torn) - which are polished shiny, still , it wasn't long enough in the ground to have corroded that much. Thus, this corrosion was already present before it was lost, and somebody valued it high enough to hold on to it for some reason. I had it tested, and it's pewter, so there is no monetary value to it, just sentimental, I'd guess.

Along with fact that the fine calligraphed inscription that was gilded, and the signs of this ring having been professionally sized to a finger (which you don't do for crap jewelry), I believe it might be a wartime wedding band, (maybe even WW1), and that somebody had been wearing their grandmother's wedding band as a pendant while on vacation in Austria.

I am planning to put a call for help in facebook to try finding the original owner, for I really want to know the story about this, and would like to see this back where it belongs.

[LaCroix]

News from the Scarbantian region.

Today, among lot's of modern money (enough to pay for entry and new batteries) I found one of these little interesting things that make the hobby so interesting.

It was found at the shore of Lake Neusiedl (submerged part of shoreline),and 20cm deep in the ground. (which might be a dating hint, but water bodies are notoriously trollish in that regard, especially at the shore, which might have been altered artificially, as well. So no idea if it was lost here, swept her by tides or brought here by truck.) Lake Neusiedl is also a solely rain-fed water body, so the shoreline altered radically during history.

Finding this,my first thought was "damn, all this digging for a fucking 2cent".
The next one, after washing the muck off and inspecting the obverse was "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!"

obverse: SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP X, laureate head right

reverse: Victory walking left, holding wreath in right hand, palm in left. Greek letters, the ones I can decipher are "tau pi gamma chi"
this side is rotated about 90° right in relation to the obverse, and not centered properly - implying manual dies were used.


First things first - before Thanas crucifies me for even implying that it might be - this is NOT a roman coin.
That's what a true denarius looks like.


My coin is too round (perfectly round when compared to a modern coin - which means that it is definitely industrial age).
It's copper/brass instead of silver - there were versions made with a copper core and a thin silver shell - but even those would not look like this (sharp angles at the sides, etc.)
And the pictures are waaay too filigrane compared to the originals I know. ( I might be totally wrong on that, there was no central mint in the Empire, and a greek-made coin might have been vastly different to a roman one in how they depicted things in the die - I did not find one with a greek reverse. Thanas might know.).
But it was obviously enough a reproduction that my third thought was "nice one - I've never seen on of these"

It's a really nice made coin, and somebody really did his research on it, and tried to make the coin look as if it was hand-made (or actually made them manually). It's most likely made from a 2 cent - it is identically in size, but it has no groove around the sides, and retained the same thickness. Even the weight of 3-3.5 grams is pretty much spot on to the original weight range. The greek reverse is a nice touch.
The interesting thing is - where is it from? There are a lot of roman sites here that might sell one like that - but they would sell tin or copper versions of actual coins, not something that was "redesigned", you'd think (But then again, I may be wrong - maybe there was a design like this around).

Still - it was buried really deep, which should mean old - Austria did have a "roman-greco" phase in it's art history, but I doubt somebody made these coins back then - if they went that far, they would have made them of real silver.

So pretty much a case the lake trolling me into thinking it is very old, when it's most likely been lost just last week or so.

I might ask a numismatic guy later, maybe they know that coin's origin.

[Elheru Aran]

Lovely find, that. My guess would be it's a modern-ish reproduction for people who are into that kind of thing but can't afford the real thing. There are plenty of places on the Internet where you can find them. Usually they go to a little more work to make them look asymmetrical and all that. I suspect whoever made this was starting with stamped disks of metal, hence the perfect roundness.

As to specifics? Wish I could help, but it's still cool