I enjoyed reviewing my favorite finds from Early 2025, and I’m excited now to share finds from the second half of the year. Although I only had 2 months to dig, I made the most of it!

Coins

A young digging buddy and I hit several old places in WI together, and we were especially thrilled to find a football field that’s apparently never been hit before!

All 3 of these finds came from the same field, and I can’t wait to visit my friend’s town again to see what we might have missed! The 1917 Walking Liberty Half-Dollar was a real bucket-lister for me. My first silver half, and an oldie at that! Also, I’m a little sad that someone used the collectible Cracker Jack token as a whirligig, though I’m still happy to have it.

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Jewelry & Accessories

Some little girl’s momma wasn’t too pleased in the 1950s when all her makeup went missing Well: “I found them all in a little patch of grass behind the bushes, Mother! It was Jeanie!”

The best part of this yard was finding all these buttons in a plot of grass about 3’x3′. I figure some retired soldier left his WWII Corps of Engineers jacket in the yard just before snowfall and forgot all about it after the thaw. All that’s left now, 70+ years later, are the buttons and cuff links. Enough to tell a story, enough to remember someone went there before us.

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Toys

I found fewer toys this time around, I guess because the kids chose to play with mom’s crap instead!

I would have loved to find the rest of this Hubley Jr. Tractor, but the informative sides were a great rescue anyway. And this Texas Ranger Pin is so solid, I actually thought for a moment it might have been the real thing! They truly don’t make ’em like they used to.

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Other Relics

Gold, silver, brass, copper, aluminum, and lead—these are the metals that survive time underground best, so good metal-detecting relics will always have that dark brown or green tinge. A good detectorist might be able to guess the metal content simply by sound or number, but we’re never quite sure what treasures we’re digging up until we’ve actually dug!

You can probably guess my two favorites from this lot. First is the Champion 6-Lever lock that I unearthed not terribly far from the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. If only I could have found a key!

Second, though, was my favorite find and literally the last thing I dug in 2025—the Panama-Pacific International Exposition – San Francisco 1915 medallion. I found this in an old yard at the top of a bluff in Western Wisconsin, in the rain, and after an otherwise slow day. But it was confirmation that persistence pays off. And what a way to end it!

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Conclusion

I genuinely don’t know if my book-review readers enjoy this kind of post yet, but I’m trying to communicate that I do more than read and write! Hobbies like this (and birding, art, etc.) keep me sharp, and I really just want to share.

I’ve been detecting since Father’s Day 2020, and in the coming weeks, I hope to review my previous years’ finds as well. If something here sparks a question or a story, feel free to share!

©2026 E.T.