AirmetTango
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Excellent weather yesterday here in NW Ohio, so once I had all of my honey-do’s and kid’s activities (they’re on spring break all week) out of the way, I managed to sneak out for a couple hours for a hunt in the late afternoon. It’s a regular theme for me anymore, but with time being short, I decided to hit one of my tired old permissions that’s close to home…placing my bets that less drive time and maximized hunt time would give me greater chance of success rather than “wasting” time driving to somewhere new.
The site is a former old home site set in the middle of a farm field. The house is marked on an 1886 map for the area, and aerial photos show that the house stood until about the 1970s. Previous hunts have yielded some nice, old finds, but you need to work at it - since the home was occupied until the 70s, not only do you have the usual problems of iron contamination from the demo debris scattered and dragged across the field, but there’s also plenty of modern aluminum to contend with. It’s more like hunting a modern park than field! For this hunt, I decided to go with the smaller 9x6 coil to help improve separation in the trash.
Anyways, the first 45 minutes were remarkably uneventful with lots of mid tone signals, as expected - I was pulling the usual brass bits and aluminum junk typical of this location. That’s when I got over yet another solid mid-tone, but this one was a firm nickel signal. As I dug into the ground with my trusty Sampson, my absolute highest hopes were that this one really was a nickel or token rather than more balled-up aluminum…then I saw a distinctive flash of yellow that I haven’t seen in years! 14k gold ring!! I was beyond ecstatic, and always in awe of how beautiful gold looks coming out of a hole even cleaner than silver…like it was dropped yesterday!
So the crazy thing is, this is the first gold ring I’ve found in 4 and 1/2 years…and the last one was at this very same home site! (FMDF Thread: Better To Be Lucky Than Good). What a weird coincidence to pull two rings out of this field years apart! Apparently the people at this home site couldn’t keep their gold rings on their fingers! The previous ring (maybe mid to late 1800s) is definitely older than this one - my guess is maybe 1950s for this ring, judging by the design and the maker’s mark. The temps were chilly enough that the ring fit on my ring finger while out in the field, but warmed up at home it doesn’t fit anymore. The thinness of the band makes me think it’s a lady’s ring, but otherwise the design is somewhat masculine. I haven’t found an exact match for the mark yet (AK), but the closest appears to be maybe Allison-Kaufman Co. I’m not entirely sure about the maker mark - in the pictures below, the AK mark appears to be upside down compared to the 14k mark, but the best I can come up with is VV if 14k is right side up.
After the ring, the field opened up a bit more, and over the next hour and a half I hit on a variety of finds: a cool, scalloped flat button with some remains of it’s gold gilt; a buckle from a Sawyer’s Crack Proof oil coat (c. 1920); a Sampson Brass Plug, used to patch bike tires (c. 1898-1920); George Luft Co lipstick tube (c. 1940s); a green glass industrial marble; an 1917 Wheat; and a 1950s Ford F250 steering wheel horn cover!
The site is a former old home site set in the middle of a farm field. The house is marked on an 1886 map for the area, and aerial photos show that the house stood until about the 1970s. Previous hunts have yielded some nice, old finds, but you need to work at it - since the home was occupied until the 70s, not only do you have the usual problems of iron contamination from the demo debris scattered and dragged across the field, but there’s also plenty of modern aluminum to contend with. It’s more like hunting a modern park than field! For this hunt, I decided to go with the smaller 9x6 coil to help improve separation in the trash.
Anyways, the first 45 minutes were remarkably uneventful with lots of mid tone signals, as expected - I was pulling the usual brass bits and aluminum junk typical of this location. That’s when I got over yet another solid mid-tone, but this one was a firm nickel signal. As I dug into the ground with my trusty Sampson, my absolute highest hopes were that this one really was a nickel or token rather than more balled-up aluminum…then I saw a distinctive flash of yellow that I haven’t seen in years! 14k gold ring!! I was beyond ecstatic, and always in awe of how beautiful gold looks coming out of a hole even cleaner than silver…like it was dropped yesterday!
So the crazy thing is, this is the first gold ring I’ve found in 4 and 1/2 years…and the last one was at this very same home site! (FMDF Thread: Better To Be Lucky Than Good). What a weird coincidence to pull two rings out of this field years apart! Apparently the people at this home site couldn’t keep their gold rings on their fingers! The previous ring (maybe mid to late 1800s) is definitely older than this one - my guess is maybe 1950s for this ring, judging by the design and the maker’s mark. The temps were chilly enough that the ring fit on my ring finger while out in the field, but warmed up at home it doesn’t fit anymore. The thinness of the band makes me think it’s a lady’s ring, but otherwise the design is somewhat masculine. I haven’t found an exact match for the mark yet (AK), but the closest appears to be maybe Allison-Kaufman Co. I’m not entirely sure about the maker mark - in the pictures below, the AK mark appears to be upside down compared to the 14k mark, but the best I can come up with is VV if 14k is right side up.
After the ring, the field opened up a bit more, and over the next hour and a half I hit on a variety of finds: a cool, scalloped flat button with some remains of it’s gold gilt; a buckle from a Sawyer’s Crack Proof oil coat (c. 1920); a Sampson Brass Plug, used to patch bike tires (c. 1898-1920); George Luft Co lipstick tube (c. 1940s); a green glass industrial marble; an 1917 Wheat; and a 1950s Ford F250 steering wheel horn cover!
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