Pondering the Past

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Pondering the Past AKA on Instagram! Hi! My name is Isaac and I enjoy discovering the stories of our past with my metal detector.

Follow along and watch as history comes to life, one relic at a time!

📍🇺🇸
Based in New England ♦️🌲
Originally from VA ⚔️🏛️

Saved the day with this beautiful U.S. Two Cent piece! I was having a tough day of metal detecting until I started remov...
10/09/2026

Saved the day with this beautiful U.S. Two Cent piece!

I was having a tough day of metal detecting until I started removed a few large pieces of trash from a site that was hit very hard. After removing a tin can, I rescanned the hole and got a faint high tone underneath. I saw the edge of the coin, at first I thought it was a penny, maybe a nickel, but the edge kept getting bigger and bigger as I removed more and more dirt. It turned out to be a two-cent piece, a denomination

These two-cent pieces were made by the U.S. Mint for only 10 years, between 1864-1873. This was in response to a coin shortage fueled by a volatile economy during the Civil War years, causing people to hoard all their coins. Over 30 million of these two cent pieces were minted in 1864 and 1865 alone, which helped bring small change back into circulation.

This is also the first coin to feature the United States’ motto “In God We Trust,” which gives it a little bit of historical significance! It goes to show, it can be worth the effort at hunted out sites to think outside the box a little. That giant piece of trash may be covering up a true piece of treasure that’s deeper!

So I found this weird item the other day while metal detecting the site of an old homestead. This site has produced item...
10/07/2026

So I found this weird item the other day while metal detecting the site of an old homestead. This site has produced items from about 1840s-1880s in the past, so when I found these coins with Roman and Greek imagery, I was a little shocked!

These five paper thin brass charms and a long piece came out from a single hole. The five charms have Neoclassical imagery from several ancient empires including the Greeks, Romans, and Armenians. These charms have soldier marks, indicating they were once connected to the long piece.

Now the question remains, what was this used for? Could it have been a Neoclassical charm bracelet, or perhaps something completely different, something possibly even more significant? I’ve never seen anything quite like this found, and am curious to know the story behind how and why it was lost. It makes you wonder how a piece depicting major ancient European empires ended up buried nearby an 1800s cellar hole in Massachusetts!

Managed to squeak out one really good find on Saturday at a group metal detecting hunt! Got up super early and drove abo...
10/06/2026

Managed to squeak out one really good find on Saturday at a group metal detecting hunt!

Got up super early and drove about 2 hours to do some searching with other fellow metal detectorists at a house built in the 1820s, lived in by a doctor. Sadly the person who metal detected it before us 20 years ago must’ve gotten a ton out of here, as obvious coin tones were almost non existent throughout the property. However, there were plenty of buttons left masked in the iron nail bed around the house, and I managed to eke a good one out.

This button depicts an eagle with an anchor inside a shield, indicating it was at one time a Navy button, probably made in the 1820s. There are two running theories about these buttons I’ve found:

-there was an excess of 1820s Navy Buttons produced that didn’t end up on a uniform, so the extra buttons were transformed into civilian buttons by soldiering the loop on the front of the navy, hiding the logo.

-these buttons were repurposed by Marines circa 1838 (when the group was officially turned into a branch of the U.S. military), and there weren’t enough Marine buttons to meet the demand, so certain regiments may have used the old navy buttons.

Either way, this was at one time a really cool 1820s Navy button worn by an American sailor over two hundred years ago. But obviously that’s not the full story, since the shank is attached to the designed portion of the button! Such a unique piece and I’m super glad to have found this hiding amongst the trash and nails surrounding this 1820s Doctors house! I also managed to win “find of the hunt” with this button, which was really fun!

The best part about this group hunt wasn’t a physical find, but the connections and networking I was able to do with other metal detectorists. It was so fun to meet other people who were interested in the hobby, share stories, and reminisce about old finds together! I’ll post the total finds from this group hunt soon, but this button was definitely the star of the show!

Woah, just dug this oddball up at an 1800s cellar hole foundation! My first thought was potentially a Roman themed charm...
10/01/2026

Woah, just dug this oddball up at an 1800s cellar hole foundation! My first thought was potentially a Roman themed charm bracelet, but not 100% sure! Let me know your thoughts on what this crazy looking item actually is!

10/01/2026

A line of old trees on the side of the road in an otherwise barren field led my friend Sam and I to an untouched, overlooked late-1700s homestead site. We turned on the metal detectors and were immediately greeted with high tone after high tone, each being a different coin or relic dating back to over 200 years ago. It’s crazy how a subtle clue like this can indicate human activity happening in this spot centuries ago, and we were able to find what they left behind by

09/30/2026

My friend invited me out to a permission she got, a 1720 house, with the original wood beams still intact, dating back over 300 years. The owner told us it’s among the oldest homes in the town that’s still standing. To the owner’s knowledge, it hasn’t been metal detected before, so we had high hopes to uncover some truly old history. What we found underground told the true story of this site…

09/25/2026

This backyard is on a parcel of land with layers of history, dating from as far back as European settlement in the 1630s to modern times. I knocked on the door and was granted permission to metal detect behind their house. Let’s see if my research proved to be correct and see how far we could go back in time!

09/20/2026

By using an 1850s map, I was able to locate the site of a large farmstead in what is now the middle of the woods. My friend Luke and I decided to hike to where it was marked on the maps in hopes of locating the original homestead site and finding items someone lost there centuries ago.

I found this beautiful 1916 Barber Dime I found metal detecting in a local park! To find a 100+ year old silver coin is ...
09/11/2026

I found this beautiful 1916 Barber Dime I found metal detecting in a local park! To find a 100+ year old silver coin is an amazing feeling, but it felt even better to give it to an interested kid who had no idea about the hobby!

I was at a local park with some friends, and a family with a children walked by and were intrigued by what I was doing. They came at the perfect time as I got a great little signal, and out popped a silver 1916 Barber dime! One of the kids who tagged along was particularly interested, and watched me as I dug the signal. He saw the coin come out and was completely awe-struck. At that moment, I knew he would appreciate this coin more than I did, so I happily gave it to him!

At one time, before I started metal detecting, I was that kid in the coin store purchasing old coins to fill my numismatic collection. Then I discovered metal detecting, and my mindset completely changed- there are so many old coins in the ground and it’s actually possible to find them! I like to think that he now has a coin and a memory that will last a life time. Perhaps, he’ll take up metal detecting and find some coins of his own one day!

Was extremely pleased to pull this early copper spill the other day! Well- they were one foot apart, but one was 4” deep...
09/11/2026

Was extremely pleased to pull this early copper spill the other day! Well- they were one foot apart, but one was 4” deeper than the other!

I heard both signals, but was skeptical as they were right next to each other in an area that was very well metal detected in the past. This place also had a lot of mineralization, as you can tell by the mica on my fingers, so the nails really sounded good! The first signal was great, consistent, and in the low 90s - I was pretty hopeful that it was going to be an old copper.

And at about 5” deep, I found the first coin. An 1803 Draped Bust U.S. Large cent with a lot of details left. The next signal was way deeper and scratchier, but it was still in the 80s-90s. I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a nail or not, but the faint high tone was very repeatable from multiple directions, so I had some hope. When I heard it on the pinpointer in the center of the hole, it was instant relief as I knew it was probably something non-ferrous. After some careful digging, at over 9” deep, it ended up being the second coin.

This one ended up being a lot older, a British coin, specifically a 1746 King George II halfpenny. It’s well known that British coppers circulated during the time when the United States was in its infancy, having not produced many coins by the early-1800s. It’s very possible these were dropped together and separated when this field was plowed at one time, but they also may have been dropped separately, as the dates are separated by nearly 60 years.

Either way, I’m happy to get out of a small copper drought with these two nice coins! I’ll be showing a cleaned up picture soon to show the full extent of their details. The ground was pretty kind to these coins considering they’ve been underground and exposed to corrosion for over 200 years!

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Yorktown, VA
23690–23693

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