Bucket Lister Less Than 100 Known $5 HALF EAGLE DUG DUG!!

Tom(CA) and I have been working a site that we researched and it's produced several 1850's - 1860's seated coins, and some rogue early 1900's coins, as well as a variety of period relics.

We tried to get one more trip in before Old Man Winter completely shut us down, and it did in fact shut us down, but not before I finally, got something I've been looking for for a long time, and after watching others find them over the years, I was starting to think it would never happen.

Well it finally happened, and it turned out to be a good one, an 1865 San Francisco minted Liberty Half Eagle!!

Here she is out of the hole:



Here she is rinsed off:




Here's a video of the hunt: [youtu.be]

Here's a bit of background on the coin from PCGS:

Less than 100 known, Mintage: 27,612

Although the mintage of the 1865-S is quite a bit higher than the mintages of the S Mint Half Eagles from 1858 to 1864, it compares in overall rarity to the 1858-S, 1860-S and 1863-S and is only slightly less rare than the others. Almost all known examples of this date are well worn with VF and lower being all one can expect to find. The 1865-S ranks second in the entire $5 series according to average grade and I do not know of a specimen that would grade better than EF. The very few specimens that I have seen were rather softly struck and the mintmark was always quite weak.

Thanks for looking, hopefully the next one comes easier

wow

Congrats Cal!

Unbelievable!!!
Congratulations..

Once-in-a-lifetime!!!
Never to be forgotten!
Speechless!!!!

Yeah, that would be a bucket lister. Very nice find. HH jim tn

Awesome !!!

Now please tell us what make and model of detector you used so we can all go out and find coins like that one.

SWEET!!!! Congrats Man!!

Another very nice find found by you.

Congrats

If this ends your 2017 year of detecting, you went out with a bang.

Great find... Congratulations

Amazing!!! Speechless!!! WOW!!!


John

Find of a lifetime Brian!

Wow congrats doesn't get much better than that

YAAAAA!!! That'll make you feel young again for a week or two....good deal.

Beautiful coin, excellent find, congrats!!
Jeff

Sweet!!!!!

Sweet Gold!!!!!

Cal, that is an awesome find !

Wooooohooooo!!!!! Sweet dig!!! WTG!!!

Brian, congratulations on your first gold coin. The "hole-in-one" holy grail for all md'rs. A bucket-lister finally completed. Fellow md'rs will now address you as "sir", and you can autograph other's metal detectors now. ><

Since joining up as a research/hunt team several years ago (various west coast sites) we've had 4 gold coins found now. I'm glad this latest one was yours to claim.

The zone you found that at was where several seateds, a few IH's, etc... have surfaced on the last 2 trips. And that area was hit hard. Somehow no one had gotten their coil over that exact signal. Lucky you !

Any gold coin would have worked for the achievement. But you did it in style with a very rare one. A quick look at the coin guide shows you're easily $3k to $4k value. You gonna get it graded/slabbed ?

Also, the reader will kindly note who got the oldest coin of the trip :





I didn't want to be bothered with pesky "newer" coins ya know !

Great job, Brian!!! I have the feeling Tom wouldn't have made it out alive if he found another before you got one. Congratulations on all your hard work paying off.

Congrats---nothing as beautiful as a US gold coin.

Crosby Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great job, Brian!!! I have the feeling Tom wouldn'
> t have made it out alive if he found another befor
> e you got one. Congratulations on all your hard wo
> rk paying off.


Crosby, yeah we have a running joke about him burying me in the desert, or throwing me down the mountain, if I ever find more gold coins in his presence. So perhaps it's better for my life that he found this one, eh ? haha

And I've also threatened him that he has to bow down and call me "oh mighty one" if I find a gold coin. (which he tells me is getting to be an old joke now). But .... I forgot to bow down to him when he found his . We were just too caught up in the moment.

Also: As for this site, it had given up 20 coins total : 12 were of the 1850s/60's era losses (seateds, etc...) , and 8 were of the 1900 to 1910's era losses (V nickel, barbers, IH's, etc...). Brian had been asking me: Based on the locations where past gold coins have surfaced , at stage stops similar to this: What is the ratio of gold coins to other coins. And as I racked my memory, I could definitely recall some of the stops were as little as 5 or 10, or 15 to 1 ratio. So for example if a site had ended up producing 10 or 15 period coins total, perhaps 1 was gold. So we began to reason that THIS site therefore, should technically have potential for a gold coin. And ... humorously, we even reasoned that if the gold coin were of this 1860s-losses period, that several of those dates are key-date. Little did we know that both those musings would come true on this trip !

That makes the not so good hunts worthwhile when you can make such an amazing find. Makes me want to go beeping, something I havent done in a while. Congrats!!!

Congrats. Very nice. Seeing coins like this is what keeps all the rest of us hoping and looking.

Got it!

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2017 07:15PM by Lawrenzo.

Thanks for the comments everyone, it'll be an unforgettable moment, and I can understand now why Tom is so addicted to finding them.

He kept saying on the way there that he was overdue for another one....that greedy S*% - LOL

Miikey you got that right, that's what makes this hobby great though, you can certainly get skunked, but it just takes one good find to turn into a great hunt

Crosby you could be right, after all, rumor has it there's a lot of bodies buried in the desert, and there's millions and millions of acres of desert wasteland

hh,
Brian

Wow. Now that is treasure hunting!

Congrats.

HH
Mike

Really nice. Congrats. Don't expect to ever see a gold coin here in N. MI.

Rick