UK Metal Detecting Finds - Pondguru

Hello there. This is probably going to be a reasonably long video because in this one I'm going to run through the finds that I've made, mostly with the e-track that I've got, over the last year or so. The first thing up will be artifacts which I generally keep in here. Most of the stuff I find is just crap, just gets thrown away, but some of it's not too bad so that's the first thing I'm going to show you. This is a few of the non-coin finds. i.e. artefacts, bits of jewellery and so on and such forth. So I'll just run through them. Apart from the great gold ring that I found, which I returned to the owner, this is pretty much all I've found. A few tatty old rings, one of which might be silver, and a few scabby bits of jewellery. Nothing to write home about really. I generally find one or two buckles when I'm out. This is just a few of them. Don't know why I keep them really, they're not much good those ones. I found quite a few shoe straps. These would be used to keep things like clogs shut, come in different sizes, different designs, some have quite nice patterns on, these ones aren't much good though. That's a really nice toy cannon, see the little hole in there, and these would actually be fired, sit on a little wooden carriage, you could actually load them up and fire little cannonballs out of them. This one isn't split at all, lovely shape as well, good condition. These are a few of the spindle whorls Some are better than others, most have a little bit of pattern on. But again, they're nothing fantastic. There's quite a few bag seals here. You can see on some of them, they've got little holes there, and cord will be passed around the top of the bag through these, and these will be pressed shut, keep the bag shut. Some of them have got quite nice patterns on. Some have got foreign writing, which looks like either German or Dutch, and also some have got numbers on as well. Yeah, not bad. I know that some people find loads of these, but that's the only lead token that I've found so far. It's got initials on there. I can't really read it very well. A bit of writing on there. It's about the size and thickness of a pound coin. These would be used to pay farm workers. They'd give them one of these every day, and they'd bring these back to the guy that owned the farm and get proper money in exchange for them at the end of the week. When I first started finding these things, I thought they were big buttons, but they're actually dress weights. In the olden days, women would have these sewn into the hems of the bottom of their dresses to prevent them blowing up in the wind. And on the subject of lead, these are just... Generally strange lumps of lead that I've found with a bit of pattern on. And there's a nation of lead here. Probably has got about 50 or 60 musket balls of various sizes. This one still has the nipple on the top, never been fired. Some are from big rifles. Others are from little pistols. See, there's a hell of a size difference between them. But I wouldn't like to get hit with either of them. This thing here is a crotal or rumbler bell. These would be hung around the neck of livestock. Some of them, if people find, have initials on or marks, which tells you who actually owned the animal but i found that just next to a couple of george ii half pennies so that probably puts it somewhere in the 1700s there's a couple of spurs broken spurs what people would wear on the back of their riding boots and just here where it's split there'll be a little spiky wheel which is used to dig into the sides of the horse make them run faster these are a few military bits and bobs the badges badge and this one's probably the best It's a 1914 German iron cross. Quite heavy, that. Now, this is a really nice find. That's a snake belt fastener. You can see the scales and everything on the snake there. That's not one of the modern ones from the 1970s. That's a proper, authentic one. Very nice, that. Loads of detail on it. It's probably been gilded at some point as well. It's got a little flecks of gold left on it. But unfortunately, that's all worn off. It's a beautiful shape, that. It's quite an unusual find, but unfortunately, the most important part of it's missing. Listen, this would be worn on a chain. And it would have like a semi-precious stone in here, which would be carved with somebody's initials or like a crest or something. And it would be used to seal wax. So if you were sealing a document or something or putting your seal of approval, you'd press that into warm wax and whatever the design was on here would come off on the wax to show that you had sealed that document. Here's a couple of pipes, clay pipe. Obviously the shaft of it smashed off, but the bulb's still there. That's quite nice. Just found that when I was walking the field one day. This one is actually... From what I gather, a metal pipe with the shaft missing, but it's got quite a nice design on that. And that was about 10 inches down in heavy pasture land. That's quite a nice unusual find. Quite a nice selection of buttons here, although I've found hundreds of buttons. These are probably the best of the bunch, with that one being my favourite. It's a 9th Regiment button. It's still in excellent condition. This one here is actually a lead button. I love that one because it's the only proper lead button I've found. It's a nice pattern on it as well. A nice one as well. A crown and a bit of a bugle thing happening there. That one's actually got a knight on it. Loads of them have got coats of arms and so on. This one here is quite a modern thing, but I actually thought this was my first Roman coin. Caesar on, but unfortunately it's a button. So I was pretty bummed out about that. There's quite a few there. Some aren't in bad condition. Every so often, I'll find a really good coin, which will go in here. Now this is a really nice case. It was only about 15 quid off eBay, but you can see all the silver coins I've got in there. Next one down is just 50 pences I've collected, not found with a detector, but most of the things that I keep in here are things I've found with a detector. Most of the crappy silver coins I have sold on eBay just as scrap silver. No point keeping them. Somebody looks in the case, they're going to go to the ones that are the shiniest, nicest looking ones. They're not going to go to the ones that are all worn and knackered. Here are some of the silver coins that I've found over the last year. Starting at the top end we've got These are George III Sixpences, that's 1816, and a couple of 1819 ones. That's not very good nick, but these two are good. A couple of early Victorian Sixpences. All these ones here, down there to here, are George V Sixpences. You can see some of the detail on them here, they're mostly in pretty good condition. Plenty of them. And all these ones here are George VI Sixpences. Well, after George VI, well... After 1947 to be precise we stopped putting silver in our coins because we had to give all our silver to the Americans to pay our war debts. Damn you Americans. All these fellas are shillings. The George III shilling from the early 1800s. Queen Victoria shillings. George V and George VI. Showing some of the detail on the shillings there. Loads of different designs on there as well which is nice. I particularly like these ones which is a Scottish shilling. Real angry looking lion on it. These are a few of the Threepenny bits that I've found, three pence coin, Queen Victoria, George V, George VI, a close-up of the detail of them, some of them are in pretty good condition, this one here, that one, 1917 was actually the last silver coin that I found, just last week, George V, I don't find many Threepenny bits, probably because they're so small and thin, very hard to pick up, these coins here are called florins, these are like two shillings, so there's a Queen Victoria, George V. I did find a few George VI ones, but I've sold those ones. And this particular florin is probably one of my favourite finds. The Queen Victoria Gothic Florin. It's got the date down the right-hand side here, written in Roman numerals. What was it? 1871. It's lovely, that coin. Nice condition. It is on the top, one florin, and then on the bottom, one-tenth of a pound. Very nice, that. There's a couple of the half-crowns that I've found. George V, George VI. Portrait side's pretty good on that, but that side's all crappy. George V's in pretty good condition, 1932. That was the first half-crown that I found. It's in good nick. And here's a couple of the older milled coins that I found. That one's a William III sixpence. Very, very worn. It's, you know, inside of quite a few pockets, that one. And then there's this one, which is absolutely tiny. It's a George II Maundy 2 pence. And that one is dated 1743. When I first found that, I thought it was a Roman coin, until I saw the Georgius II on the left-hand side there. That's in good condition. I like that one. Because most of the land I go metal detecting on is pasture, older coins tend to be very, very deep. But I have, on occasion, found hammered coins, and these are the best ones. That was the first one I ever found, which is a King Edward, which is the 12th century, which is the late 1100s. It's a King Edward penny, and it's an Exeter mint. Which is a rare mint, in pretty good condition. Around the right hand side of the coin it should say Civitas. And the left hand side EXO, Exeter. Nice little coin. And this one, the Edward I penny, actually came from a field that had only been turned over once or twice in its whole lifetime as far as we know. So, pretty much just out of pasture that one. This one is a Henry III cut half penny. Just about made out of the dude's face cut in half there. Quite a nice design on the back. Unfortunately it's been chopped in half. This came out of a ploughed field, it gets ploughed every year. This is when I was on a dig with Sparky Gus, Gary, so thank you very much Gary. This one here is a Henry VIII half-groat in reasonable condition. It's actually debased silver so it's not very good quality silver. So that's quite a nice find, quite a bit of detail on it. That was found up at Holy Island on a club dig in a well-ploughed field. This one here... Here's an Elizabeth I half-groat. It hasn't got a date on that, but it'll be mid to late 1500s. It's quite an old coin, very worn. Again, that one's seen the inside of a few pockets. And then there's this one, which I actually found on the same day as that. Well, tell a lie, my son found this one. But I'm including it here because my hammered coin collection isn't the greatest. This is a Charles I shilling. It's a shilling, that means shilling. Not in very good condition, unfortunately. But still, it's a hammered coin. It's silver. And that was about 8 inches down. So that's a silver collection, where all of these milled ones, plus a couple of earlier milled, and a very small selection of hammered coins. Again, I'm making excuses for myself, but I do hunt mostly in pasture land, upland areas, where the chance of finding hammered coins is very slim. Now, for every decent thing that finds its way into either the artefact box or my coin case, There's at least ten other things that aren't necessarily bad enough to throw away, but end up in the bag of shame, which is there. Now, I'll tip this out and let you have a look at what's in it. Mostly coins, pre-decimal. All the modern coins I just weigh in. Well, I put them in this machine at the supermarket, then it spits out a credit voucher. Last time I did it, I think it was about 40 or 50 quid, so it was worth doing. But all these are just unspendable, rubbishy coins, not good enough for a collection. I've got some scales here that weigh five kilos, or should I say they weigh up to five kilos. The scales themselves don't weigh five kilos. I'm gonna plonk the bag of shame on there and see what it says about it. It's just murder, Dad. This probably is about, oh, I don't know, eight to ten kilos of crappy copper coins. And this is what eight to ten kilos of crappy copper coins looks like. So that's a lot of crappy, unspendable coins. I've enjoyed finding every single one of these. Obviously some of them aren't coins, the likes of that. Actually quite a nice fork. But 99% of the things here are coins. And the idea behind keeping all of those coins is hopefully to do something in the future with schools whereby if I had numerous detectors, say five or six different detectors, I could give groups of kids a detector, chuck all the coins in reasonably long grass, And get them finding things. And when they find them, identify them and put them on some sort of timeline. I think they would really be interested in that. So that's why I keep the bag of shame. Not only has it got coins, it's got things like big bullet cases, pins, buckles, some blank bullets, old spurs, Georgian doorknobs. All sorts of historical things of interest. Obviously not of any value. So that's it. Hope you've enjoyed watching this epic edition, I've enjoyed finding everything that you've seen here and the beauty of detecting is when you're out you never know whether you're going to find some sackless coin that's going to end up in the bag of shame or whether you're going to find a great hammered coin. Now I know that when I go back in the house and show my wife the state that I've made of my brand new jumper she's going to make me feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit So I might just leave that up here, I think. I'll hide it in me log cabin. See you next time. Thanks for watching.