Gotta Dig the Zincoln Signals!

AirmetTango

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I’ve not had a lot of time to detect for the last several weeks - although I don’t have any significant work activities thanks to shelter-in-place, I’m now a 5th grade and kindergarten teacher for my two girls, instead. Plus we took in a new puppy just before all this started, so a lot of my remaining free time is spent training and caring for her. I’ve been getting out for 1 or 2 hours at a time every few days, but all I can really hit is the local parks and some of my tired out existing permissions.

On Monday I had about an hour to myself, so I decided to do a few coil swings at a nearby park - not a lot of high tones left there of course, but patience can still wring out some occasional goodies especially if you aren’t afraid to go after the Zincoln signals. Didn’t end up with much but it was still fun: 34 cents in clad, plus a key, an interesting Wheat cent, and my first silver ring in over a year and a half! Not a hugely productive hunt, but not bad at all for an hour in a pounded park!

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The first good signal rang up sort of like a Zinc, but a little more variable - mostly 20 to 21, but a few 22s, 23s, and 24s sprinkled in on the EQ800 as I circled the target. It was showing up too deep (4 arrows on the depth meter) for the usual Zincoln, but could easily still be a crushed up metal twist cap. I had to dig down further than I expected - a full 8” - before I finally popped out the key. It was a little bent, and I imagine that, plus the non-round shape, accounted for the variable VDI readings. Neat thing is, I’ve now dug two of these keys, and both times, I recognized them immediately - my wife currently has one exactly like it for her office! I found the first one about a month after I started detecting:

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The Wheatie came next - a somewhat inconsistent, iffy high tone at first until a couple of investigative sweeps made it clear that I was dealing with a slightly masked target. Tightening up my sweep, I isolated things down to two individual targets separated by a couple inches - a pretty good high tone, and a junky mid tone. I still couldn’t turn completely around the high tone target without it getting mucked up by the mid tone target, but I had quickly gathered enough info to know I had a potential coin - but indicating 3 arrows down, I wasn’t expecting anything more than a copper Memorial or maybe a clad dime. Sure enough, from only about 3-4 inches down, out came a greenish penny. I could see Abe’s head right away, but as soon as I see that green color, I suspect Wheatie! Flipping it over on its back, I confirmed it - cool! Wheat stalks! I did a little wiping in the field to try and get a date, just trying to clear the area to the right of Abe where I knew the date should be, but it was pretty slick. “No worries”, I thought, “slickies are usually oldies”, and I popped it into my “good coin” pouch. When I got home, things got a little more interesting as I slowly realized that I might have a pretty neat grease-filled die error on the obverse of the coin! During my initial cleaning at home I was still focused on the date which was almost completely unreadable, I presumed because of circulation wear. But as I continued cleaning, it dawned on me that “LIBERTY”, “IN GOD”, and the entire rim of the coin were still quite crisp, but “WE TRUST” was completely missing, even more so than the date. The reverse seems normal other than usual circulation wear. Overall, the pattern seems to suggest a grease-filled die rather than normal wear - pretty neat!

The best I can make out using oblique lighting is that it might be a 1909 Wheatie - I think I can make out the “0” after what looks like the first “9” in the date, and the 0 seems to match the orientation, shape, and size for the zeros on the 1909 Wheatie examples I’ve seen online. I still have a little work to do cleaning the back, but it doesn’t appear to be a VDB - oh well...can’t have it all!

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The best find of the hunt came near the end, though - pretty solid high tone, right in the Zincoln range on the VDI. The depth scale only showed 3 arrows, so most likely just a Zincoln as advertised - but I dig them. Ironically, as I cut the plug, I tried to stay positive by thinking “you never know when it might be a ring”! As soon as I flipped the 4” plug, there it was...a small, delicate silver ring! I couldn’t see the stamp in the field, but it was unmistakably silver - I could also see that there were setting spaces for stones, but my eyes weren’t good enough and the dirt was clinging too well in those spots to see if the stones were there. Clean up at home revealed three small but beautiful stones still firmly in place, along with the “Sterling” stamp and at least one makers mark. There’s a symbol in front of “sterling” that I assume is the makers mark, but there’s also some partially worn away script lettering after “Sterling”. I’m not sure if that’s also the makers name, or if that was some sort of engraving on the ring done by the owner? Best I can make out is maybe “Ridd _ _ _ _ n”? If anyone has any ideas or guesses, I’m all ears!

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Yep, most of my silver rings come in the penny range, too. I find 40-70 a year.

The best finds, though, are when they're GOLD in the penny range. Those big boys are fun to find!


Nice finds!

Skippy
 
Nice finds - That's an Uncas ring (Providence, RI) - they made a lot of sterling rings. They mark is a "U" with an arrow. The rest of the engraving is "Kiddie...", I forget the rest of the name, but it's a trademark for their children's jewelry.
 
Nice finds - That's an Uncas ring (Providence, RI) - they made a lot of sterling rings. They mark is a "U" with an arrow. The rest of the engraving is "Kiddie...", I forget the rest of the name, but it's a trademark for their children's jewelry.

Yup definitely an uncas ring, I've found quite a few over the years. Awesome finds!!!
 
Interesting Wheat Cent. I saw the high rim right away but missed the missing text until you pointed it out. Grease filled die sounds correct.


Nice finds - That's an Uncas ring (Providence, RI) - they made a lot of sterling rings. They mark is a "U" with an arrow. The rest of the engraving is "Kiddie...", I forget the rest of the name, but it's a trademark for their children's jewelry.

Yup definitely an uncas ring, I've found quite a few over the years. Awesome finds!!!

Nice looking ring.
Anyone know what the stones are?
 
Interesting Wheat Cent. I saw the high rim right away but missed the missing text until you pointed it out. Grease filled die sounds correct.






Nice looking ring.
Anyone know what the stones are?

I would guess small garnets or glass... that's just my opinion though...
 
Yep, most of my silver rings come in the penny range, too. I find 40-70 a year.

The best finds, though, are when they're GOLD in the penny range. Those big boys are fun to find!


Nice finds!

Skippy

Thanks Skippy! You've been putting together some fabulous gold hunts over the past few days - that honker from the other day was tremendous!
 
Sweet find. I am guilty of skipping the shallow penny range when I see and hear it. May have to rethink that...

Thanks TNT! Yep, it's hard to keep digging them, especially when you get into an area were there's so many of them coming up as just crusty, disintegrating Zincolns. For me, the zinc penny signals keep me entertained in a park environment though - with the constant barrage of trash signals, any high tone is a welcome dig!
 
Nice finds - That's an Uncas ring (Providence, RI) - they made a lot of sterling rings. They mark is a "U" with an arrow. The rest of the engraving is "Kiddie...", I forget the rest of the name, but it's a trademark for their children's jewelry.

Yup definitely an uncas ring, I've found quite a few over the years. Awesome finds!!!

Thanks Doug and cellr for the maker info! Doug, that info got me on the right track immediately...Kiddiegem is the rest of the engraving. Apparently pretty popular in the '20s and '30s, but Uncas made the line until the 50's.
 
Interesting Wheat Cent. I saw the high rim right away but missed the missing text until you pointed it out. Grease filled die sounds correct.

The missing text really surprised me - I was so focused on the date at first it took a while before it registered that "we trust" was just gone. Only my second dug error coin (that I've identified, anyway). Pretty cool!
 
Anyone know what the stones are?

I would guess small garnets or glass... that's just my opinion though...

Since DougF helped nail it down as a "Kiddiegem" ring, I would guess that cellr is probably right...glass or maybe garnet or other kind of semi-precious stone. Certainly a nice, pretty ring...my 11-yr-old daughter is eyeing it pretty strongly!
 
OOOooohhh, and I am especially envious of the pulltab on the upper left. How deep was it ? :jester:
 
Thanks Skippy! You've been putting together some fabulous gold hunts over the past few days - that honker from the other day was tremendous!

That big honker was a penny range! :0) It was way to solid to have been a penny, but the VDI # was penny range.

Pennies on the AT Pro/max bounce in the sound between the high tone and mid, regardless of whether the VDI is 68-71 or 72-75 or 78-80 (Corroded Zinc, Zinc, and Copper respectively, in this field)

This was a 68 solid. I knew it wasn't a penny, and had hopes, but they're so rare for them to be gold, I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised!

Loved your title and suggestion, though. DIG THOSE SIGNALS in the range. I'm always baffled that people notch out stuff. Better to discriminate by sound, than VDI notching. I skipped a hundred pennies, or more, that day. When in doubt, though, I dug it. That ring was a payoff!

Cheers!

Skippy
 
.... DIG THOSE SIGNALS in the range. I'm always baffled that people notch out stuff. ....

Skippy, let's be totally honest here : You know that there's environments where "digging all the zinc penny signals" will get you what ? ZINC PENNIES (99.9999% of the time). Right ? I can take you to urban blighted junky parks, turn you loose to dig zinc penny signals all day, and guess what you will dig ? :roll: Thus, yes, If I'm deep-silver-hunting at a junky urban park, then yes, I'll pass shallow zinc. Might I miss a shallow silver ring ? SURE !

Versus other venues/locations like A) beaches after storm erosion has washed out all the light stuff (including light-weight zinc). Or a stage stop location in the middle-of-nowhere, that was totally abandoned after 1870, and no habitation since-then.

Thus, the TID (zinc or tab or penny or whatever) is only a small part of the equation. The much bigger part of the equation is: Location location location.
 
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