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Dream permission! PIC HEAVY!! Continued updates!

TommyJay

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Joined
Jun 17, 2013
Messages
2,225
Location
WY
I havent posted in awhile since I have been travelling a lot, snow birding, and other excuses, but we were able to obtain a months permission from a nearby ranch to hunt some mining towns on their property. We knew of some others that had hunted this place, but we didnt realize how LOADED this place was with coins and relics!

Ill let the pics speak for themselves.

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Silver Washington, and I became a member of the Capt Tims Ivory Stamp Club

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1 sterling spoon at top. Not sure how some of the pics got flipped during the transfer

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Broken toy guns near the school location.

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Belt buckle, miners tags, and broken sterling hair clip in same area.

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1916 25 cent Belgie German occupation token from Belgium (zinc)

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1918D SLQ, 14K masons pin, and someone shot the American Legion badge?

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Miners tokens, company thimble, and general service button that predates town. There were indian battles in the area, but Im not sure if this was from a previous military camp.

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Lock, caps, the Canadians were here, many harmonica reeds, old 45/?? casing.

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Silver ring, 1943D Merc, buttons, tokens, Egyptian spoon?

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Miners tokens (the square one is from another townsites mine), WWI or II general service button, token, rubbed date buff.

Ive only been here 6 times. Many signals, so I leave the iffy signals alone for now. EVERYTHING is at least 65 years old, with very few exceptions and they havent been coins. One of the owners said there is a bottle dump nearby. Sorry about some of the pics.....stinkin phone camera!

The big problem is that they just seeded this area, so our days might be cut short. There are other places we can hunt nearby, but nothing like this!

Thanks for looking, and HH!
 
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Been wondering what you been up to and now i see you been Digging. Very nice bunch of finds.
 
Coooool beans, my man. Nice finds.
You know, I live in a former coal mining town.
My ranch style house was built in 1930 for an administrator. There were two mines worked by the first residents here. 1. The Monarch, across the valley, and 2. The Bessimer, a mile up the road. I know Bessimer was a name that reached far and wide in mining and railroads. I guess Monarch had a much farther and wider reach than I thought. I thought that was just here.

Most of the mines are on private property. There are still others stringing off into the distant hills. Ive often wondered whether hunting around them would just be mostly a big dirty salvage mission, with nothing but buckets of iron scrap and hot rocks. But youve given me new hope. Any chance you would post some.photos of the site? I'm kind of curious if it bears any similarty to here. If it does, then it would seem worth it to organize a little hunting trip here. There is a town park about 15min from here where there was a mine entrance. I can get to it by parking on park grounds. Maybe worth a look if this is what youre pulling out of your site.

Question: How old is your mine? Mine dates to the 1800s..my neighborhood was built in the 20's when production was highest. Ceased in the 50s after modern tech raped it to the core and it began to dry out. Interesting, your ethnic items, Egyptian spoon, etc. There were alot of foreigners here too. The only resident of my town to die in the mines was a Russian. This place was crawling with Eastern Europeans.That adds some mystique to the hunt, doesnt it?
 
Wow a whole season of finds in a short time, congrats on the shiny and some great hunting TommyJay. Beautiful SLQ. Good luck, Mark
 
Been wondering what you been up to and now i see you been Digging. Very nice bunch of finds.

Thank you, George, and yes, Id rather be diggin!

Congrats on all those neat coins! Fantastic hunt! :woot:

Thanks Wolf!

Nice Hunts and Finds !!! Hit it while you can.

Thank you

Wow, that looks like a lot of fun!

Thank you

Coooool beans, my man. Nice finds.
You know, I live in a former coal mining town.
My ranch style house was built in 1930 for an administrator. There were two mines worked by the first residents here. 1. The Monarch, across the valley, and 2. The Bessimer, a mile up the road. I know Bessimer was a name that reached far and wide in mining and railroads. I guess Monarch had a much farther and wider reach than I thought. I thought that was just here.

Most of the mines are on private property. There are still others stringing off into the distant hills. Ive often wondered whether hunting around them would just be mostly a big dirty salvage mission, with nothing but buckets of iron scrap and hot rocks. But youve given me new hope. Any chance you would post some.photos of the site? I'm kind of curious if it bears any similarty to here. If it does, then it would seem worth it to organize a little hunting trip here. There is a town park about 15min from here where there was a mine entrance. I can get to it by parking on park grounds. Maybe worth a look if this is what youre pulling out of your site.

Question: How old is your mine? Mine dates to the 1800s..my neighborhood was built in the 20's when production was highest. Ceased in the 50s after modern tech raped it to the core and it began to dry out. Interesting, your ethnic items, Egyptian spoon, etc. There were alot of foreigners here too. The only resident of my town to die in the mines was a Russian. This place was crawling with Eastern Europeans.That adds some mystique to the hunt, doesnt it?

Thank you. This mining town was started in 1903. In 1904 it had 50-60 homes, and by the mid 50s, the mines were closed. Everything here is OLD, but I did find a zinc penny today that was probably dropped by one of the ranch hands.

Congrats! You got yourself a good location with just about a little bit of everything to be found.

Thanks JAK

Wow a whole season of finds in a short time, congrats on the shiny and some great hunting TommyJay. Beautiful SLQ. Good luck, Mark

Thank you, Mark

Really enjoyed looking through your pics, keep 'em coming! Thanks!

Thank you, Im loading up more today!

A lot of loot👍

Thank you

Killer finds!!! That 1918 D SLQ is a scarce one!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks coin. I have found only 3, and two have dates!
 
Todays update....

We spent several hours at the mine townsite today, and I decided to focus on one side of what was Main St, which is now part of the ranch road. Old pic shows that a row of houses faced the road. I only walked in about 50' on each pass of a grid. The coins and relics seemed to be hot in a 200' section along the road, but the junk is all over.

We are concerned about losing this area because they seeded it with wheat the other day, but so far no one has told us to back off since it was done. A ranch foreman stopped by wanting to know if we had the trespass pass that allows us to be there, once I indicated that we did, he went on his way. I dont think they are too concerned about a couple of guys digging holes here and there, but we DO practice better than normal reclamation. It might change when the sprouts start to show.

Here are the finds from today:

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Todays silvers: 1897, 1914D Barber dimes, 1946D Rosie

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1903 & 1909 V nickels, 1916D Buff, 1891, 1901, & 1907 IHPs, and all of the wheaties except for one are in the teens years.

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3 miners tags, one from a different mine, ornate cap, button, ring bezel?, and a thimble with the words "Breakfast Call Coffee" on it, with a clay marble stuck in the bottom. Not sure if it is silver, and part of me doesnt want to take the marble out to see.

Heading back tomorrow to work that area again. Still trying to figure out why the pics post upside down when theyre right side up when i upload them off of my phone to my PC :no:

Thanks for looking, and HH!
 
Went back to the mining townsite for a little bit until the rain chased us off. It was still enough time to dig some more coins and relics.

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The 1929S merc was the highlight, the pocket watch will find the bin (for some reason there are quite a few here. this is my 4th), 1916D, 1917D, 1944D, & 1946D wheats, 2 buttons, old bullet casing, token with N5Y on the face, but nothing on the reverse. Cant find anything online about it including the token catalog. Back at it again maybe tomorrow.

Thanks for looking, and HH!
 
This is a great play-by-play. And just goes to show : There's still spots out there giving up "4-star signals" @ cool stuff.

So crazy to see other posts of beginners, in some city, tearing their hair out because all they can find is corroded zinc and clad. They're at some sorry-sad-pathetic park. You want to say to them : "location location location". And this is proof of that !
 
This is a great play-by-play. And just goes to show : There's still spots out there giving up "4-star signals" @ cool stuff.

So crazy to see other posts of beginners, in some city, tearing their hair out because all they can find is corroded zinc and clad. They're at some sorry-sad-pathetic park. You want to say to them : "location location location". And this is proof of that !

Thanks Tom. Love the older dirt!

BEAUTIFUL haul! American Legion badge is a real mystery.

Thanks, and it is!

What does the back of the general services eagle button look like?

Large modern button: The shank is bent, so I cant see the company letters on top, but the bottom part says Providence RI

Smaller older button: something MANN PHILIDELPHIA
 
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