I found the scrape Thursday morning on my drive to work, but it was raining.  I went back Friday morning, talked to the bulldozer man and this is what the site looked like at that time.

I found the 1826 large cent that morning but could only spend a half hour or so at the site.

The great thing was that the ground was VERY clean and I got almost no "bad" signals.  Everything I wound up digging was either a coin, a button, or my detector was quiet for long periods of time in between . . . The ground was scattered with pottery shards though:

I stopped by on my way home Friday afternoon and spent another hour or so at the site.  This time I found some more buttons and a very worn large cent that I can't see a date on.  By now the whole site was scraped.

Notice how much lower the surface is after the scrape versus before:

I went back Saturday morning and scoured the site, rechecking where I'd been before and also wandering away from the hot area to see what else was there.  Too far away from where I'd found the large cents, I'd find wheaties so I knew the "good" area was back where I suspected.  See the tree in the picture above (that's lying on its side in the middle of the lot?  (Two pictures up.)  I crawled on my hands and knees under it and detected the dirt that was on top of.  I got another good signal. Here's what popped out.

This is a holed "classic" head liberty.  No date, but they stopped making them in 1814, so it's old.  I also found a Mercury dime near the edge of the dirt pile, but every two feet I'd get a hit that would be a crushed beer can and whatever else the surface debris was before the scrape.  Here's the group photo:

It'll be a strip mall soon, so I was just in time to save these guys from another fifty years, buried under the cement!

HH
Steve Lehto

Visit Steve's website DFX Only.
A must read is Steve's "Under the Sidewalks".

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