Have You Found Coins Or Relics While Looking For Gold?

Love to hear of peoples coin/relic finds out in the gold fields while you were specifically on the hunt for yellow with a PI machine.

Surprisingly the most common found coin during my time has been the tiny silver threepence dating back to 1923. This particular one pulled me up, was gold less that day so I hooked up the chain thinking there may be more coins. Not the case, but the "old timer" missed a dozen or so bright shiny nuggets. Two Stump Creek was noted in my diary for a return visit. :goldnugget:

once found a good signal on top of a hill, dug up a chinese button, then another, and another, then a bone, and then more bones, another button, then a lead ball, more bones......penny dropped, put it all back, and covered it up!

Sometimes it's not even metallic. Mrs M found this little spinning top toy. It's made of wood and the shape caught her eye

The only coin i found to date is a token. Found with some buttons. My assumption is the token was in some pants that had buttons for the fly. Pants got burnt in a fire.

A few relics I have found. Some solid Sterling, some gold plated.
Old Knife, still works. Folding Magnifying glass.

Bought myself a Garret A2b and went to Nerrigundah with an old mate for my
first detect with a "Real" detector.
Pinged an 1886 British Penny and was the only find for the day but I was stoked.

Few years went by and I was way out the bush South of the Border when I pinged
a target with the GT16000. Dug down to find a pretty cool belt buckle and it still had
some leather through it.

And a bit of cloth behind it. No doubt you have worked out what it was...
Like Davent up there.

I um, Reburied the lot and marked it with a ring of stones...

Funny the things you find at times.... :8

These unusual Eley 9mm cartridges were found with brass buttons. The only explanation was an old timer may have hung his jacket in a tree then lost it?
No gold near by.





Hang on, just joking, there was a couple of signals nearby! layful:

Would have given anything to bring this old master piece dry blower home and restored it.
They obviously they were onto the gold!

what a project!

Here are some I found with a detector in Laos.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=24108

Cheers

Doug

G'day

I have found quite a few coins while detecting for gold but they are usually few and far between, although on one trip I spied a gold glint a little distance ahead of me in among a mass of quartz rocks, I thought ah ha a sunbaker nugget but to my surprise and in the middle of nowhere it was a $2 coin?, then later found two middle eastern coins from the eighties/nineties, and in another spot also a British half penny and a British 1873 silver three pence, all on the one trip, but on many other trips I have not found any at all.

I have found buttons, old unused cartridges, lead musket balls, watch parts, metal filigree odds and ends, a silver topped scent bottle, and some odd bits of jewelry, old tin toy truck, spoons and old hand forged spanners, the funniest thing I ever found though that left me stumped as it was miles from anywhere more than 100 klms from Kalgoorlie was an oyster shell, I thought it maybe was dropped by some aboriginals who might have carried it as a scraping tool, just laying there on the open ground, later I read that oysters were very popular with the old timers, brought up to Kal from the coast, imagine that probably coming up in wet hessian bags on camel back or wagons or something, dodgy to say the least :awful:, go through you like a Bombay fish curry. 8.(

I do also hunt old town sites for coins and relics as well with my sovereign gt, and I get just as much out of finding coins and interesting artifacts as I do when I find nuggets, often its easy to get lost in the thoughts of who owned it or lost it or simply what it was used for?

cheers

stayyerAU

panther said:

A few relics I have found. Some solid Sterling, some gold plated.
Old Knife, still works. Folding Magnifying glass.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/17342/1583724519_relics2.jpg

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/17342/1583724547_relics3.jpg

Click to expand...

Did the Loupe still have the glass in it , Panther ?

davent said:

once found a good signal on top of a hill, dug up a chinese button, then another, and another, then a bone, and then more bones, another button, then a lead ball, more bones......penny dropped, put it all back, and covered it up!

Click to expand...

On a serious note, did people get buried in shallow graves and not necessarily in a cemetery back in the gold rush and pioneering days ?

I have not had the unpleasant experience of coming across a buried body ,but it will be in the back of my mind when digging now.

I got spooked once when i got lost on a very large outback station and came across a single grave marked off with old iron bed frames . It looked to be at least 150 years` old and no one had been near it for a long time.

Yes they did.
The Chinese used to leave them where they fell until they
were "Requested" to bury them.

just starting said:

On a serious note, did people get buried in shallow graves and not necessarily in a cemetery back in the gold rush and pioneering days ?

Click to expand...

Depending on depth to the bedrock.
There is a group (can't recall who) out there researching and where possible identifying and marking the hundreds of lonely graves out there.

Thanks . I detect alot of old Chinese grounds so this is food for thought .

I found a Chinese coin once and on another day found an old Chinese button.
A good mate of mine found an old .303 Lee Enfield in dry river bed once.
Lucky xxxxxx.

My old man gave me a bunch of nuggets to melt down for him. I was giving them the once over before they would be gone for ever and noticed an odd one. It was smooth and rounded on one side but the other side had 2 or 3 little rod shaped protrusions. It took me a while to work out what it was but I finally twigged - it was a gold filling. I asked the old man where he found it but he couldn't remember.

The best thing I found was with my old man. We were near Nullagine and I was sort of following him up a slope where he had found some bits. The ground was recently burnt and I happened to notice his footprint in the middle of a small burnt spinifex clump as I swung over it. I got a signal from right in the middle of the print that didn't sound like it was the burnt spinifex. Turned out it was a gold cufflink. Really well made, hollow oval dome shaped ends, with a short gold chain between the two. I think it weighed 3 or 4 grams from memory. It is in a safety deposit box so next time I go there I will dig it out and take a pic.

Just remembered, I was out Duketon way probably more than 30 years ago and noticed an elbow shaped branch on its side embedded in the dirt with just the top poking out. I thought that would make a good boomerang. I bent down and picked it up - it was a boomerang. I was with my old man as well that time. He's just turned 90 now and slowing down a bit. Maybe the shared memories you bring back are the most treasured finds of all...?

Not sure if this is aligned with the topic but this was the spookiest thing that happened, again just me and the old man, on second thoughts I might start a new topic

Tathradj said:

Yes they did.
The Chinese used to leave them where they fell until they
were "Requested" to bury them.

Click to expand...

I read an article from the 1800's from trove that documents this exact case.
It was at Margret diggers Ng's NT, and a trooper came to inspect the site with the a tracker.
Hr came across a dead Chinese miner on the way in, and reprimanded the foreman for not burying him.
Even after the reprimand, the trooper had to take the body into the gambling hut/bar and tie it to an upright until someone buried hi m!
The bones and buttons I found , I suspect was a grave, it was as shallow.
It was also about 20km north of Margret diggings.