The Higley Copper

"You wanna do something fun?" Andrew asked his brother Christopher. "Yeah like, what?" Christopher answered back while rifling through a magazine. Christopher and Andrew were brothers 17 and 16 years old. They had no school today due to parent-teacher conferences. Christopher suggested to Andrew that they get their metal detectors and check out some of the old cellar holes that they had plotted out on the old maps they had found online. The brothers agreed on a spot and packed their metal detectors and shovels in the car, and each grabbed a backpack and packed their hand shovels, a couple bottles of water, and their handheld pinpointer metal detectors, along with fresh sets of batteries. They set off in the car and drove to their spot. It was an early fall day in the middle of October, leaves were starting to turn colors in New England, the crisp fall breeze made it cool enough to start off with a sweatshirt, and off they went into the woods. They followed the man-made path into the woods, and after hiking along the path for a half-mile or so, they broke off the path towards the cellar hole. The woods were quiet besides the crunching of leaves under their boots. The trees were tall with the sun barely peeking through, just a sliver of light that highlighted the dirt and dust kicked up by the brothers' boots. "I think I see some rock walls up there," Andrew said as he continued through the woods another 50 feet or so. "Yup, here it is!" He yelled excitedly to Christopher. Christopher quickly caught up to his brother and they stood there looking at the long U-Shaped wall made of stones, as they imagined the colonial workers carrying them stone by stone to build that wall. What work that must have taken they thought. They stood there for a few moments to try and imagine what the landscape looked like back then, where the driveway might have been, and possibly a clothes line that might have been hung up, that was a great place to find old colonial coins. After another minute, the boys got to work with their machines. Christopher turned on his Garret ACE 350 and Andrew turned on his Garret AT MAX. They split up, and Christopher walked toward the north end of the rock wall and started swinging, and it wasn't more than a few seconds he got that nice double ring tone that could indicate silver. He had been metal detecting long enough to not get his hopes up to high before started digging because that very same double tone rings up for old aluminum cans as well, and he had been fooled on more than one occasion. He pulled out his little pocket shovel, diug a plug about 3 inches round and 3 inches deep, and waved his metal detector over it and to his displeasure he could already see the corner of a mangled up old beer can. "Son of a bitch! First signal rings up a solid 85 and" before he could finish Andrew chimed in "let me guess, Coors light can?" "I think it was Budweiser," answered Christopher. The two brothers laughed, and went back to swinging away. Andrew was picking up a lot of iron targets which he though was a good sign that he was in the right spot to what he thought could have been the driveway. After digging up an old axe, a couple of horse shoes, and a shoe horn, he decided to move over to the other side of the wall where Christopher had just dug up what looked like a 1700's dandy button. It was a brass circle and was the size of about a half dollar, with the metal shank still on the back of it. "Great find bro," Andrew congratulated his brother, "All I've got so far is an axe and horse-shoe." "I'm going to check under those trees over there, looks like a good spot to hang a clothes-line," Andrew said and he started to swing his detector. Beep, Beep, Beep...sounds like could be a coin or a button Andrew thought. He swung his AT MAX over the spot and pinpointed the area to dig, and it was giving a small target 6" inches or so down. Andrew grabbed his shovel, stuck the blade into the dirt and jumped on it to start digging his target. He had a hole about 6 inches around and down, and he stuck his Garret Carrot pinpointer in the hole and got the familiar beeping noise that he was close to his target. He dug his hand shovel into the side of the hole and removed a few more inches of dirt, and once again stuck his Garret carrot in the hole, and no more beeping. The target was out of the hole so he poked his pinpointer around the pile of the dirt until the simultaneous beep and vibration let him know he had found his target. After brushing away some dirt he held in his hand a small penny sized coin that he couldn't quite make out what it was. "Hey Christopher!" Andrew yelled, can you bring the water bottle over for me? I found something but can't quite make it out." Christopher, excited for his brothers possible find ran the little spray bottle of water over to him and they sprayed the coin in Andrew's hand, and as the dirt turned to watery mud and cleaned off the coin Andrew spotted what looked to be a roman numeral III. His heart started to race in excitement as he turned it over and washed off the other side to reveal a date that read 1737. "HOLY SHIT!!" yelled Andrew, "I think this a Higley Copper!!" "Bullshit!" Christopher yelled back in confusion and excitement. The first so-called "Higley coppers" from miner Samuel Higley bear the date 1737. Although there is no firm evidence that links Higley to coin minting, since colonial times he has been associated with these Connecticut tokens. Certainly he had the copper necessary, as well as the skill to make them. The 1737 coppers have on one side "THE VALUE OF THREE PENCE" and roman numeral III. Ever since the boys started to metal detect and research Connecticut history, they had read a story about a man named Samuel Higley who lived in Simsbury, Connecticut and owned a copper mine. That had become one of their bucket list items, and it seems they may be able to cross that off the list. "Lets pack up and go get this graded" Andrew suggested. The boy's packed up all their gear, and started the trek back through the woods to the car. They sped home, changed out of their dirty clothes and boots, cleaned up their Higley coin and went to Stacks Rare Coin Gallery. Once in the coin gallery, Stacks himself confirmed that the boys were indeed in possession of a rare Higley copper that is worth an estimated $1,900.00, their best find to date by far! The boys went home and put the Higley copper in their safe with a few other valuables they had found metal detecting and made plans to go back to the cellar hole over the weekend to hopefully find more.