Heavy metal

So… metal detecting. I’m hooked. And yes, there’s a fishhook in the picture.

Each session is a little bit different, but they all follow a pattern. I go to the beach and dig a lot of holes: being new I still don’t fully trust the machine to tell me what’s valuable and what isn’t. And even the not valuable stuff might be interesting.

I get plenty of trash, mostly related to drinking from cans and bottles. I get scrappable metal –copper, brass and lead – in the form of screws, nails, wires, fishing gear, etc. That goes into a bucket and eventually maybe I’ll have enough to take to the scrap man. I get recognizable manufactured items, or their carcasses: pocket knives, shell casings and even a .69 caliber musket ball, vape pens, cutlery, and so on. Mostly that’s just trash.

Then there’s coins. I’ve got identifiable coins going back to the early 1900s. NZ has changed its coinage several times, so a lot of what I’ve found isn’t spendable anymore (although as a very precocious young man explained to me after walking up and asking me a bunch of questions, you can still cash it in at the Reserve Bank). But I’ve got about $30 in spending money without really targeting places like playgrounds that are seen as the most lucrative. I was a kid coin collector and it’s still fun. Especially with the older coins… is a shilling worth more or less than a florin? And what year did George VI change from King and Emperor to plain old King?

I also found this guy, who looks very much like a coin from 355 AD minted in Carthage during the reign of Constantius II. Is it real? Who knows. Even if it is, it’s not worth a ton, so I’m unlikely to spend the time or money to have it authenticated. Fun to imagine how it might have gotten here.

And finally there’s the jewelry. I’ve found a dozen plus rings already. A few are gold and a few silver. Wow! And a couple of necklaces and pins… the list grows longer each time I go out.

Digging the stuff up is fun enough, but so is Googling around to try and identify what I’ve got. Today, for instance, I got a little badge, badly corroded but with a partially legible motto. Kids here wear a LOT of such badges on their school blazers. I typed in a couple of guesses at Latin words and hey presto, found a good picture and identification of where it came from.

So, thanks again Lee for my Christmas present!!