I metal-detect primarily for Civil War artifacts but I like to find coins also. I do not metal-detect specifically for coins but if I find a Civil War camp, I will probably find a few coins and they will be old. The older the coin the more valuable they usually are. The holy grail of coins are gold coins. I have been metal detecting 21 years and I have only found two gold coins and both of them were in Civil War camps.
I found the first in the middle of Germantown in a Civil War camp which extended on the both sides of the road. I dug 1,000 bullets, four belt plates, and dozens of buttons from this area. I found coins from the Civil War period and before, one was an 1842 two and a half dollar quarter eagle only one inch deep in the ground with no mint mark. I was ecstatic even though the date was hard to read.
The second gold coin I dug is the artifact of the month and will be the best coin I probably will ever find. I found this coin when a Victorian house was demolished and the area was bulldozed for a future business.
I got permission to metal detect this property near Collierville hoping to find some Civil War artifacts or even some turn of the century items.
The house was in an area where Civil War artifacts had been found, which is all along Highway 72 from the Collierville city limits to Piperton.
I found several dozen bullets and a few buttons plus a medical syringe, a silver ring, and three silver coins in one hole from the late 1800s. I then moved on to greener pastures closer to Moscow, Tennessee. About two weeks after I gave up on the Collierville site one of my friends, a fellow relic hunter, metal-detected the property and called me. He had found three bullets and a button. I was happy for him but I am a very competitive person, so I went back to the site to see if I had left anything else. Two feet from where my friend had dug a hole I found my best coin.
The gold coin was only two inches deep in the bulldozed ground and when I had it in my hand it took me a minute to realize it was gold. I could not read the mint mark on back because I did not have on my reading glasses. I went to my car, got my glasses and saw the “C” mint mark and I was not familiar with it. When I got home I researched it and was amazed to find it was an 1848 five-dollar gold half eagle minted in Charlotte, North Carolina and very rare.
In 1788 Conrad Reed found a shiny 17-pound rock in Cabamus County, North Carolina and used it as a door stop for years before his family found out it was gold. This started the first gold rush in United States history while George Washington was President. In the years that followed several sites in the South produced gold. Before the 1848 gold strike in California gold mining was the second biggest employer next to farming in the South.
The problem with finding gold in the South was the nearest mint was in Philadelphia and getting the raw gold to the mint and back was a real problem. The roads were mainly Indian trails and there was always the danger of bandits and Indians along the way. After it got to the mint it was months before it was transformed into coinage and then it had to travel back along the same dangerous route back to the owners.
Under pressure from many sources the federal government on March 3, 1835 passed an act establishing mints at Charlotte, N.C., Dahlonega, Ga. and New Orleans, La. The Charlotte mint produced coins from 1838 to the Civil War. No coins bigger than a five-dollar gold piece were ever produced there. North Carolina seceded from the Union on May 21, 1861 and shortly afterward the Confederacy seized the mint and that ended the production of coins from that facility. After the war the mint building was used as a assay office and later it was turned into North Carolina’s first art museum.
Gold mining went on in North Carolina until the closing of the last mine in 1999.
All Charlotte gold coins are rare — only one percent of these coins still exist today. To have one of these coins, especially in perfect condition, is the find of a lifetime for a relic hunter. I will always remember how that coin came out of ground shining in perfect condition. Now the site is a huge parking lot, but I have the satisfaction of knowing I saved this rare and historic artifact from modern progress. I will share it with my students at Germantown High School and with all those who view my collection at the various events I attend every year.
Knowing about the past helps prepare one for the future. Please help support the creation of a Germantown Museum.
Source: http://www.germantownnews.com/articles/2010/10/19/top_stories/doc4cbd8dce9272b708850054.txt
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