I'm having a hard time finding older sites to hunt in my area. So I went to a "tot lot" last weekend.
This area dates back to the turn of the century, but I doubt if the tot lot is not more than 15 years old.
Like always, I started hunting around the swings. Over the next 30 minutes, I found some trash and some clad.
At the base of a playground structure, I hit a jumpy low foil signal next to the support pole of a ladder.
I'm not sure I would have dug it if it was under dirt, but tanbark is easy.
Digging into the wood chips, I found a gold bracelet four inches down covered in dirt.
While pulling the bracelet from the hole, I found a thin gold chain tangled in the bracelet.
At the end of the gold chain was a locket and I could see more in the hole!
Digging down, I saw two more bracelets!
Now I was feeling paranoid. Looking around, I could not see anyone nearby watching me and I removed the other two bracelets.
I hid all of the jewelry in my pouch and searched the hole for more but it was finally empty.
Eager to see exactly what I had found, I nonchalantly walked over to a water fountain.
Looking around to make sure that no one was watching me, I cupped the jewelry to hide it from view and starting washing dirt from my finds.
The thin gold chain was slightly tarnished but the locket was gorgeous. The hinge pin had rusted out so the locket fell apart revealing an old photo of a young woman. The photo was starting to deteriorate but the person was almost recognizable. Who is this woman, is she still alive, does she live in this neighborhood I wondered?
The thin gold bracelet had plastic "stones" set in it and the plating was starting to peel.
Two of the bracelets were heavy gold and looked as good as the day they were buried.
I tried to continue to metal detect, but was too excited to concentrate and finally gave up and went home.
At home, further washing and the use of an eye loupe revealed no markings on the locket except for three elegantly engraved initials scrolling across the face of the locket. Judging from the photo and engraving on the locket, I guess it's about 50 years old.
Each of the heavier bracelets was stamped 14k.
Knowing that 14k is the mid-priced quality level, I figured they were not worth all that much but was still excited by my finds.
Even though the bracelets are heavy, my detector reads them as low foil (almost iron).
A few months later I saw an article that mentioned you can get 95% of the current gold value and told how to weigh your jewelry to determine it's worth.
The 14k bracelets weighted in at 6.2 and 8.5 DWT or pennyweight. As 14k is 58.5% gold, this is almost half an ounce of pure gold by weight.
The current price of gold is over $1800 an ounce, so these two bracelets alone are worth $800!
This one hole paid for my detector...
So where did this cache come from?
A kid playing with his Mom's old throw-aways at the tot lot?
Teenagers burying stuff after breaking into a house?
I'll always wonder...
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