In July of 2000 I decided to metal detect a city park in a very small town here in Oregon. The park had apple trees in it so I assumed that it was a home site before it was a park. So armed with my XLT, I started detecting.

I soon started finding several canning jar lids which showed it indeed was a house site. The ground was really hard so I was starting to get very tired of digging canning jar lids but they gave off a really strong signal and I just couldn't pass them up.

Two feet out form the base of one of the apple trees I got the same strong quarter signal that I had been getting from the canning jar lids. Assuming it was another jar lid I wasn't as careful digging as I should have been in the hard ground. After I cut my plug, I looked in the bottom of the hole and saw something silver. As I looked closer I saw the rotting remains of a lady's coin purse and a half dollar was sticking out of it. I removed it from the hole and could see there were other coins wedged around the half dollar in the top part of the purse. In all, there were 8 coins in the purse. One 1872 shield nickel, 6 V Nickel's dating from 1887 to 1912 and a 1904 S Barber Half Dollar, my first Barber Half.

Because of my carelessness I scratched the Barber Half but it still won't take away from the joy of finding the coin purse in the first place and on one hot July day canning jar lids turned from trash to a treasure I will never forget.

B.B.
OR