What is it and is it worth anything? |
|
|
||
| Many items we find in our metal detecting adventures we have no clue as to what they are. Asking friends gets us the same results: "I have no idea", "Never seen anything like it". We don't want to throw away something that is possibly valuable, but don't know if the item has any value, so we store it away somewhere. Over the years the pile becomes larger and larger until we are forced by our spouse to clean up our "dump". |
||||||||||
| If you're like me, you just can't bear to part with those iron relics and bullets, because we know someone, somewhere wants these items. So we keep them. Then, during the winter, we start to go through these items, cleaning and trying to identify them. |
||||||||||
| How do you go about identifing an item? Can you use the internet? I thought you would never ask! The answer is YES! The internet offers a number of ways to help ID a find you made. The best way is to use a search engine. There are millions of web pages out there on any topic that you can name, and many you didn't know existed. Any topic from the strange to the common, has a web page devoted to it. |
||||||||||
| Most U.S coins we find are easy to identify because of the vast amount of books available, so we will not cover those here. |
||||||||||
| The first step is to write a description of the object. Just write down words or phrases that describe the item. Describe the shape, material, size and any writing on the item. Text on the item will make your job much much easier, as these will become the search "keywords". As an example I will use a item I found last spring. It was an ID badge of some sort. I tried scanning it but the scan was not clear enough. |
||||||||||
| These are some of the keywords I came up with: | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| I then entered these keywords at this site: http://www.google.com |
||||||||||
| This search returned the following: | ||||||||||
| a Page on "20th Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio and Representative Citizens" with a listing of Labelle Iron Works. |
||||||||||
| Another on LA BELLE IRON WORKS CELEBRATING SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY http://wheeling.weirton.lib.wv.us/history/bus/LABELLE2.HTM |
||||||||||
| A page at: http://digital.library.pitt.edu By the way, this is a great site, check it out. |
||||||||||
| Sometimes your search will return a link to an item like yours being sold on Ebay or other auction site. By all means check it out. A lot of postings on Ebay included detailed descriptions and photos. You can also get an idea of the value of the item by what the current bid is. Just use the same keywords to search Ebay that you used in the other searches. |
||||||||||
| In my case, an Ebay search returned nothing. Although my search did not help me in ID'ing my find, I did learn more than I wanted about ironworking. But that is part of the fun of this hobby, doing detective work and historical research. |
||||||||||
| Start identifying your items by searching here: http://www.google.com I like this site as it removes a lot of useless sites that have little or no bearing on what you are looking for. |
||||||||||
| Or try:http://www.ebay.com | ||||||||||
| Good luck! Remember to be patient and keep trying. An added benefit of doing this is that you can come across great sites like the http://digital.library.pitt.edu one. |
||||||||||
|
(c) 2001 Randy Steele |
||||||||||
|
Please email me any comments about this article. |
||||||||||
 Brass
turtle I am working on Id'ing |
|
|