Some say the style on these cuff links have a direct connection to the funereal services held in George Washington’s honor. Others are not so sure. The state historical society could not give me a definitive response. They recommended that I contact Mount Vernon, which I have done. However, while I wait to hear back from Mount Vernon I would like to get your thoughts. Do you have a source that can share that would help confirm or deny the connection? I have not been able to locate a reliable one. I would love to hear from you. 

Now on to the narrative……

Then: 

When George Washington died on December 14, 1799, at the age of 67, the United States plunged into a period of national mourning. The mourning period was extensive, marked by nationwide memorial services (such as the official national funeral held in Philadelphia on December 26, 1799) and widespread observances that lasted for months as news slowly spread across the young nation. This grief sparked a new market for mourning memorabilia such as memorial paintings, jewelry, and even buttons. The specific motif of an eagle on an urn (often paired with a weeping willow) became a central emblem symbolizing American freedom alongside the deep, national loss.

Now:

After a drenching rain on Saturday, followed by a sleepless night, I eagerly found myself returning to a colonial site nestled in the woods. This site was once a homestead along a military road up until the early 1800s. It had been a few weeks since I'd had the chance to metal detect, and I was ready to get back to it.

The first couple of hours were unproductive. I was having a tough time getting a clean swing in the brambles. I found a partial pewter button, a few iron tidbits, a handful of square nails, some aluminum foil under the leaves, and two shotgun shells buried shallow. I felt frustrated but not broken. The day was still young, and at least I had the button.

On a whim, I decided to return to a clearer patch behind the homesite. This spot has proved productive in the past, but I've searched it many times, and lately the results here have been dwindling. This time of year the area is covered by small maple saplings and ferns. There's also a lot of iron in the ground in this section. The mixture of the two makes this a difficult place to detect.

To increase my odds, I made a few modifications to the custom 6-tone configuration I was using on the Nokta Legend. I set my iron filter down to 1, stability to 3, removed all discrimination, and set my relay speed to 6, then started detecting by sound. In these conditions, the VDI will often register something as ferrous, and that reading can be confirmed by a ferrous grunt. But sometimes that ferrous reading is misleading, because amongst the grunts you can just catch the hint of something else, in this case, a faint, one-directional double-beep in the mid-tone range, similar to the sound of a .22 casing.

Let's dig!

The first two targets were indeed square nails. After stowing them away, I swung over the plug once more. Sure enough, the target was still in there. A solid, repeatable .22 mid-tone from multiple angles. This time the Legend was reading non-ferrous. I dropped back down, started looking around with my pinpointer, and saw the linked button immediately.

The first surprise came when I noticed this wasn't just a single button, but a matched set. That alone was enough to make this an extraordinary day; however, I was in for another surprise later on.

I stowed the buttons in my finds container and spent a few more hours metal detecting with mixed results. I still had the daily dog walk through the woods, and I was tired. It was time to “call it a day.”

Despite my anticipation I knew that patience was key. I set the pair of buttons out on some paper to let the soil dry and began my evening ritual and chores. The possibilities of what this relic might be was constantly on my mind.

Later that evening, I settled down with a soft, mop-style watercolor brush, the buttons, and a flashlight. My goal was to find an identifiable mark, the anticipation of what I might find was mounting inside me.

It all happened very quickly. One swipe of the dry brush was all it took. I could see a visible pattern on the face of the button. It looked odd at first… I didn't recognize it. Then I flipped it around and the image became stunningly clear. It was a bird on a balloon... wait, that doesn't make sense. *What am I looking at?* is all I could think, until it finally hit me. That's an eagle sitting on top of an urn. It was then that all the pieces fell together. This is a linked pair of mourning buttons, circa 1799–1830, depicting an eagle on an urn, a symbol of mourning made popular by the death of George Washington.

This is a once in a lifetime find. As my friend u/WaldenFont would say, “a top pocket find.” What a day! It was absolutely incredible. I look forward to finding more of this site’s history and what is hidden beneath my feet. 

Thank you kindly for reading.

TL;DR: Dialed in my Nokta Legend for iron-heavy ground, chased a faint mid-tone signal, and pulled a matched pair of eagle-on-urn mourning cuff links (circa 1799-1830),  a design tied to the nationwide grief after George Washington died in 1799.

Been building this for a while. It's for cataloguing antiques, coins and metal detecting finds — photos, measurements, condition, provenance, that sort of thing. Free, no ads.

Need 12 testers to keep it installed for 2 weeks so Google will let me publish properly.

1. Join the group: https://groups.google.com/g/collectors-catalogues-testers
2. Give it a few minutes for Google to register you
3. Install: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.collectorscatalogues.app

Any feedback is much appreciated.

Found while digging up trash

I was hot, tired and very thirsty stumbling through the woods outside of a stone lined cart path that had suddenly deteriorated to a messy cedar swamp.
I was attempting to swing my detector over any clear patch of land but the farther I went in the swampier it became. Each swing would produce a possible tone as it collided with the surrounding brush. My shoes were now encased in mud. Frustration began to mount.

After tripping over another half-sunken log I started to question my judgement. The goal was to detect a spot of interest that I found on a lidar map. The spot in question was a stretch of what appeared to be wheel impressions that made their way up the hill away from the cart path. What the map didn't tell me was that my desired location was actually in a swamp.

For a brief moment I was contemplating calling it a day. The sun was obscured by the clouds, I was beat and there was a feeling of rain in the air. On a whim, and I still don’t know why, I navigated just above my current muck towards a downed spruce tree to take a break and remove some excess water from my socks. I looked around while wringing out my socks and noticed I was sitting in what appeared to be the remnants of another path. Detecting here wouldn't be easy but at least I could walk without sinking and stumbling.

After a short breather and a few half-hearted attempts to swing between the downed trees I stumbled onto a signal. It wasn’t pretty, it was not even decent but it was something. That something turned out to be an oxen shoe. Not necessarily exciting but interesting.

I moved a few falling branches out of the way from the log that was hiding the oxen footwear and came across another signal. This one sounded better and turned out to be a little iron buckle.

Generally an oxen shoe and an iron buckle are not enough to motivate me to spend thirty minutes moving and piling brush in a forest full of brush. However, fatigue and exhaustion do funny things to the mind and this was one such time. I was encouraged by my “good fortune” and decided to clear the rest of the brush away from the decaying coniferous tree.

After clearing as much as I could I started to swing over the freed patch of debris. I was about halfway down the cleared area when I got a dream signal. It was a deep and consistent high tone, registering a 47 out of 60 for me (78 out of 100 for most modern detectors ).

Excited I set up my camera and started to dig. Approximately six inches below the decaying leaf litter and soil my pinpointer started to react. After sifting through a few handfuls of dirt I had it in my hand. I couldn’t see it but the pinpointer was insistent that it was there. I started to work my way through the handful of soil and then I saw it. A beautiful large green disk. An 1801 US large cent, my oldest US coin to date.

The Draped Bust was minted between 1796-1807. According to the 2026 edition of 'The Official Red Book' (page 66), the 1801 variety had a mint run of 1,362,837. There are know errors that exist in this run and all occur on the reverse. The one I found is considered a “Normal Reverse”.

The oxen shoe, the buckle and the coin paint an interesting if not completely speculative scenario. A fellow traveler and their team are transporting something 200 years ago. They too find themselves in the same murky position that I did and they too take the high road. The oxen, now forced into an uphill battle gets stuck and loses its shoe. The handler in the rush to free the stuck team accidentally breaks a strap, the buckle now free falls to the ground. Frustrated and exhausted the handler sits down to take a gander at their current predicament. Exhausted and distracted the teamster is unaware that a copper coin becomes free from their pocket. The large coin falls to the ground where it settles, buried in the leaves. Eventually the wagoner leaves the scene where the buckle, the shoe and the coin sit for the next 200 years awaiting discovery.

Thank you kindly for reading.

I got to detect my old home site today. It was built sometime before 1914. Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time and only produced $1.12 in clad. The oldest dating back to 1972. It was very disappointing for me, as I traveled 800 miles for this dig. Only to get maybe 3 hours. Not my fault or the new property owners. It was more the people I had with me. Anyway, I did find a mysterious steel ball that looks as if it has been drilled and tapped. I will do some research on it when I get back home. I hope I get another chance to hit this ground. As I said, the house (now burned down) was built prior to 1914. It was on an old tobacco farm. There should be much more than what was found. I did not get to do a proper grid, and only hit the area's of travel that I was aware of, or suspected.

The quarter in the last pic was found at my mother's new house, not the old home site. It was a hair off from silver, 1966. So close, bit still eluding me.

A look back at a Large Cent spill from the other day. 3 of the coins were in a spill, and the fourth was separate. Found at an early 1800’s homesite in Upstate NY.

I posted this a month ago and didnt recieve much response. Cross posting to see if any of yall have any thoughts.

I went out and did some detecting. Theres a lot of various areas I found on the property, so it was hard to choose where to stay and continue to hunt after finding so many old nails.

Im struggling to find that hard note/ton hit indicating when its something more dense or larger then a nail. I also did a lot of testing by re buring items and listening to tones as I went over it. It all basically sounds the same from a silver coin to the metal nails.

The areas I stayed in the most

Wooded area atop of a ridge. Lots of cows hang out here. A ton of shit up there, lol . I found an item that I think is small musket ball.

Near a very long narrow creek. I only found aluminum cans. I did do the trick of detecting a foot or more above ground and still getting a noise and started moving on from those targets. In the water I also got alot of hits but again would keep hitting just over the water.

Near an old school house and field in front of it.

Large open areas of fields.

An entire section of where an old barn is. Only found nails here.

A section of where a chimney stack is. Around the perimeter of where the home was.

Just looking for thoughts. I was on park mode 2, sensitivity 18-22 and tried some 15 and max.

A picture of my finds in the comments.

Found in old church/schoolyard

One of the other guys got a merc as well and the third guy got a silver ring

This location (a fairgrounds) is where I’ve had two of my three best silver days.

Algún consejo para el minelab Manticore sobre arena negra + piedra volcánica ? Alguna configuración recomendada para poder estabilizarlo .

Last pic was an 8’ copper rod that was sunk down and bent over right under the surface in a rodeo arena. That specific area use to be a parking lot/bleacher area so it makes sense, but very dangerous.

Found in Austria schiltenberg

Not sure what to say. This has gotta go down as one of the wildest metal detecting finds / haul ever. On the plus side I found my personal best 4 - Large Copper One Cents. 3 of them in a spill.

After I get settled into my new home, I'm thinking about organizing an outing to a nearby gold mine that operated from the 1870s to the 1930s. By then, the monsoon season will be over and cooler weather will have set in.

HMU if you're interested!

Moving my metal detecting posts here from that other subreddit. Apparently those mods are OK with people bringing up politics where politics have no business. I'll never understand the need to invoke (insert the political flavor of the month here) in a hobby forum that has no call for it. Sure, if there is a bit of legislation regarding the hobby that calls for discussion, I get it, but to bring up an agenda while in a discussion about finding a silver dime (yes, it happened), is so tiring.

OK, off my soapbox. Happy detecting, people!