On Thursday July 13^th my wife Erin our son Caspian and I headed over to our friends house. (Christine and Kyle)

Unfortunately Kyle wasn’t there, & as he is a fellow detectorist, I had plans of asking him to detect his property. Lucky for me Christine granted me permission after I had asked. I had been told by Kyle last fall that he himself had detected the property & he didn’t believe much was left to be found.

I did not have high hopes in finding much at all because of what Kyle had told me, regardless I got out my new simplex ultra and began swinging around the perimeter of their backyard.

It wasn’t long before I got my first signal, the machine showed a #77 on the VDI with two arrows down indicating it to be about four inches below the surface.

At approximately three to four inches I found my first target, a 1993 Canadian small cent.

I spent the next hour detecting around the property and found several more Canadian small cent pennies several trashy items, such as bottle caps, wire, aluminum foil, & 2 tent pegs, & a few other miscellaneous items. I did however find one matchbox toy car and one Hot Wheels car.

 

The matchbox car was a toy hovercraft From 1972,

& the Hot Wheels car was from 1957 and one of my faves, A red Thunderbird or T-Bird.

However the most interesting find of the day and possibly for the entire season to date for me this year, was a Crotal Bell, Which was approximately 275 years old, (give or take a few years). I noticed immediately there was a bit of a design on the bottom end of the bell.

( Bells that are decorated only on the lower hemisphere tend to be of later date, usually late 18th to mid 19th century, (1701 to 1850’s) . Those with no decoration also usually date to this later period. There are, however, exceptions to this general rule, and plain bells of early post-medieval date are also known.

 

All the indicators discussed should be taken into consideration when dating a bell. It should also be noted that the decoration can often have a very worn appearance, and is sometimes barely discernible. It seems unlikely that such wear occurred in use, and it is probably mostly due to the use of worn-out patterns when the bell was stamped. )

This particular Bell also had the Markings of “ R W “ on the lower end which made it easy to do my research. The initials RW stood for “Robert Wells Foundry” which dated the item to 1751 to 1780

Not only does this make this item one of my favourite items for the year so far, but also makes it one of the oldest pieces of my entire collection of finds to date.