Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| A Couple Medallions and Other Metal Items for Testing. |
Even though detectorists are sometimes referred to as coin shooters, they hunt and find a lot of types of things besides coins. Yesterday I discovered a good resource on calendar medals, which of course is only one very small and special type of medal.
Above is shown (from left to right) a bronze American Legion School Award Medal, an unidentified item with the image of an Indian Head penny on the front, a World War II medal, a Native American looking pin of unknown metal, an angel pin of unknown metal, and a vermeil pendant with a large stone. I've shown some of those before, but have not shown others.
The big bronze American Legion School Award Medal on the left is a girl's medal from 1945. The medals for girls for some years was somewhat smaller than the ones presented to boys.
I got that useful information on the medal from a good resource I recently found - the Journal of the Orders and Medals Society of America. It is a very good resource for research medals.
Here is a paragraph from an article on the American Legion School Award Medal.
To be considered for the School Award, students were given a point rating up to twenty points for each of the personal qualities inscribed on the medallion. Although there have been changes to the qualities over the years, the selection process has remained the same. The Legion’s Department of Pennsylvania presented the first awards of the Boys’ Medallion in 1922. As the program gamed popularity, the number of awards to boys in Pennsylvania schools steadily increased each year. In 1922, only 145 awards were made; but in 1928, the last year before the program went national, there were 1,804 awards. Award numbers have not yet been established for the Girls’ Medallion.
And here is the link. 17417_JOMSA_Vol51_2_37.pdf
Before going any farther, I thought it might be fun to try to put the Equinox conductivity readouts with the appropriate items. I'll refer to the items by number, going left to right.
Here are the readouts for the six items. I know you don't have a lot of information but take a guess.
Here are the readouts. a. 36 - 39, b. 29 -31, c. 25 -29, d. 33 - 34, e. 13 - 14, and f. 22 - 24.
I doubt I could match them up. In fact that is why I took them out to do some tests.
I like to do tests like that every once in a while, because I like to check out the usefulness of the metal detector readouts.
I'll add a little additional information. I don't know how much it will help you.
The first item, the School Award medal, weights almost 3.5 troy ounces. It is really a whopper.
The second item weighs about 0.7 troy ounces.
The third item, the WWII item, is also bronze, and weights nearly 0.7 ounces.
The fourth item looks like pewter but might not be pewter and has a pin on the back. It also weighs about 0.7 ounces.
The fifth item is unknown but could be gold although I don't think it is. It is much lighter and weighs about .25 ounces. The lightest by far.
Adn the last item is the vermeil item I've posted before, and with the stone and all weighs about 0.4 ounces, about half of which is probably the weight of the stone.
Ok. Which item do you think gave the highest readout, which was 36 - 39?
That was the huge bronze Student Award medal. You might think it would give the greatest depth too, but that was not the case.
So which do you think would give the next highest numbers on the Equinox readout. It might surprise you. It was not the other bronze item. It was not the WWII medal. The Indian Head item gave numbers ranging from 29 - 31, and also very close was the fourth item - the native American silverish item.
So of the highest three numbers were given by the three items having the largest diameters even though the appear to be made of different types of metal.
The smaller diameter bronze military medal gave numbers significantly lower (25 - 29) than the large bronze Student Award medal.
The vermeil item with the stone gave a very coin-like signal and numbers ranging around 22 - 24, pretty similar to some coins.
And the smallest numbers were produced by the smallest item of undetermined metal - the angel pin.
I've noticed before the effect of surface area on the readout numbers, and this test seems to support that observation. The two bronze items produced readout numbers that were about ten points different with the smaller item producing the lower numbers.
There are a lot of variables and unknowns here, but I did confirm some things I believed would be the case.
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You might want to check out the Orders & Medals Society of America (omsa.org) web site. There is a section on publications, a blog, forums and various collector topics.
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We're going to have some small surf, west winds, and an early morning low tide.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net