At the turn of the calendar back in January, we had a trip of some kind scheduled every month from March through November.
Thanks to the virus, almost all have been canceled: Florida, New York, Alabama, southern Indiana, Minnesota, Ontario, West Virginia and Virginia trips are crossed off my calendar.
The only one that remains is the outdoor writers conference in Gaylord, Michigan, and it has been shortened from four to three days.
Fortunately, some new possibilities have been added.
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We just returned from our first trip of the year. We attended a metal detector hunt in Pennsylvania.
It was a weeklong event, but we only went for two days.
Those days were especially attractive to us because they not only had old coins and prize tokens buried, but also Civil War relics — buttons, bullets and more, plus metal tokens good for special Civil War-era prizes.
When Benjamin, our grandson, heard about this, he said he was going. He is big- time into Civil War history, battles and equipment, and has visited many of the monuments with his mom and dad. The cost for the two days was $140 per person, but his 15th birthday was two days after the hunt and he is our only grandson. It’s only money.
We loaded our gear, and his (he has four metal detectors of his own) into my truck and headed east. We arrived on Tuesday night just in time to attend an auction at the hunt site consisting of coins, metal detectors and other assorted items, plus a bunch of Civil War relics. I saw several items I would have liked to bid on, but the starting bid on most was higher than I could afford to go.
The next morning, we arrived early to sign up for the day’s activities. The first hunt of the day was entirely Civil War relics. Assorted musketballs, Minie balls (a long pointed bullet similar to a modern one), various uniform buttons, and — the item everyone was hoping to find — a prize token. There were about 40 of these with about the same amount of people in the hunt. Susie found one, and Benjamin found one. I found none!
All of us found about 15 or so of the bullets, buckles, J-hooks (look it up), and I found a common uniform button in excellent condition. The hunt was over in about 30 minutes, and everyone headed to the pavilion to see what their tokens would add to their finds. Susie’s prize was a ginger beer bottle (a heavy, ceramic bottle shaped like a Coke bottle) and a Civil War book. An OK prize, but on the lower end of the items displayed on the table.
Numbers on the tokens were called out, and the hunters went to the table to see what they had won. They kept calling numbers, but Benjamin was still waiting. A lot of great items were removed until only three prizes were left. Two were really neat-looking sets of several items in a small case, and the final and best prize was a thin, decorative sword from the Civil War era. This was worn with a dress uniform and was not used in battle.
Benjamin’s number was called. He did not win the sword, but he received a small case with three J-hooks and two Minie balls, one having been fired and slightly damaged from hitting an object, and the other in excellent condition called a “drop.” This was just a bullet the soldier dropped and hadn’t been fired. The last item in the box was an 1840 half-dime in extra-fine condition. The local coin dealer valued it at $100. Not bad for one dig in the ground.
In the other hunts, three a day, we found old silver dimes and tokens for smaller prize items. By the end of the day, I realized I still needed a lot of work at the gym. While not on our calendar at home, we picked up hunt flyers for more of these events coming up later this summer and fall. One was a relic hunt on 300 acres in West Virginia. Another was a coin and prize hunt in Kentucky. October showed a Civil War relic hunt in Mississippi and another coin and prize hunt in New York.
If the virus doesn’t cancel all of these, we hope to attend two or three of these events. It won’t replace all the trips that were canceled, but it will fill in a few of the gaps.
The author may be reached at [email protected].
