12-27-2008

Eddie Bradley, Gary DelRosal, James Vogt

The weather was very nice, warm enough for tee shirts, with some sunshine and a good breeze most of the day. Gary, James and I took another stab at hunting some spots in Birmingham's Southside. Gary was out earliest and I met up with him sometime after 10:00, with James showing up shortly thereafter. Gary had previously spotted this empty lot that had some very old looking remains of a house foundation. The lot was marked with a "Private Church Property" sign, so we only hunted the sidewalk medians (or whatever you call the grassy area between the sidewalk and street) around the vacant lot as well as along some of the adjoining streets. Gary did dig a couple of wheat pennies and I found a nice merchant's token.

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After working the sidewalk medians we moved on to a park located between UAB's soccer field and I-65. I had only briefly hunted it several years ago, and neither James nor Gary had ever been there. Most of it looks too new to hold older coins, but at the nothwest corner I had seen some of the outlines of old house foundations in the grass. Even though I had not found any older stuff on my previous huntm thouse foundations looked promising. We spent an hour or so hunting and though we did find 5 wheat pennies between us, the silver eluded us. I believe this is where Gary found his watch fob (or whatever it is).

With only a couple of hours of daylight left we decided to head back to Ramsey High School and work an area on the back side. Our plan was to really slow down and try to squeeze some more good stuff out from between all the trash in the soil. I'm not sure what James and Gary found, but I did find one wheat penny, so it wasn't a total loss.

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 Though we didn't find any silver today, I thought it was a successful hunt, meaning I had a good time. Here's the stuff we found. In addition to a few wheat pennies, Gary found this really cool looking watch fob. Anybody recognize the bust on it? Other than a couple of wheaties, I don't know what else James found and I don't have any picture from him yet. So I'll leave a space in case he sends me one later on. I'd say my best find is the merchant's token from The Loop Bar & Grill in Caldwell, N.J.

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Gary	James	Eddie

Wish you had been there.

Eddie