What are the odds?

[resister]

Fossil digging in the river today I found some copper bullet jackets, not unusual, I found some spent ones almost every day. Here is the kicker, there were two jackets inside each other, the only thing I can think of is one bullet had to impact the other one!

What are the odds? And then of finding them all these years later?

[resister]

Also found a pewter(?) ointment tube top with a black plastic octagon lid, circa ww2 ?. It said Lambert pharmacal Co. A week later I find an identical one about 8 ft away under a ft of sand! What strange things!

[Standing Wolf]

I find that kind of thing fascinating. When I was a kid, living outside Indianapolis, there was a large wooded area behind our house that I used to like to explore, weather permitting. I didn't do much digging - mostly just looking for interesting rocks and such on the surface - but I did dig a smallish animal skull out of a dry creek bed once. My eighth grade Science teacher said he thought it was a possum, but to me it looks identical to detailed anatomical drawings I've seen of a cat's skull. I still have it, sitting on a desk in the kitchen, which gives you some idea of my wife's tolerance level for my somewhat eclectic leanings in collecting and room decoration.

That book I mentioned on another thread, about people whose livelihood is acquiring "found" objects, contained several chapters on people who excavate old wells and the areas beneath where outhouses stood, a hundred-and-fifty years ago and longer. They pay homeowners, mostly in Eastern and New England cities and towns, a fee to dig in their yards - I've forgotten how they determine where the outhouses once stood - and they find jewelry, coins, and lots and lots of old, collectible bottles that either accidentally (in the case of the jewelry and coins) or deliberately ended up down there and were buried beneath many feet of dirt and filth.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_digging

[resister]

Thanks Standing Wolf! Treasure hunting is profitable! I don't dig for $ per se, but it is a motive!
Likely I will die some day and donate my collection to a local institution.

If I could get the prices I see on the web, I bet I dug 20,000$ out of the river this year alone. I am 36 yo, imagine if I dig for just 15 more years!

Life is great!

[resister]

My wife tolerates my collecting, our house looks like a museum. Dead things fill the whole house!

[resister]

Thank you Standing Wolf for the privy digging link, though I dig in a river, I thought dumpster diving was nasty!
Granted, the latrines are old enough to be cleaner!

[resister]

I have found a lot of bottles in the river too!

[donttread]

Fossil digging in the river today I found some copper bullet jackets, not unusual, I found some spent ones almost every day. Here is the kicker, there were two jackets inside each other, the only thing I can think of is one bullet had to impact the other one!

What are the odds? And then of finding them all these years later?

Somebody could flat ass shoot!

[resister]

Somebody could flat ass shoot!

Evidently! I find all kind of bullet jackets, but curiously zero have any lead in them!

Most curious find is 32 cal rimfire case, they largely stopped production around WW2.

[Standing Wolf]

Your avatar photo reminded me - probably twenty-five years ago I was up visiting relatives in Tillamook Oregon, and they had a small museum there, crammed with lots of fascinating historical memorabilia. On one wall they had a large glassed-in display of pistols, mostly very old, and as I recall a sign mentioned that most of them had been dug up in the area...yet they mostly appeared to be in very nice condition, despite their age and the circumstances of their discovery. Why so many firearms ended up in the ground there is anybody's guess.

When I was a newlywed, living and stationed in San Diego in the early '70s, my wife and I were browsing around a small antique shop in Poway, and I spotted an old Mexican-made Bowie knife, with a hawks head design on the butt in a display case. The owner told me that it had been found behind the wall of an old house that was being demolished, and there were some stains on the blade that might have been blood...? They wanted sixteen dollars for it, which was more than I had to spend on myself at the time, but the wife went back later and bought it for my birthday.

Women. As Al Bundy said, "Can't live with 'em, can't herd 'em all into Canada"...but sometimes you get the feeling they almost come close to understanding us.