Detecting Wales Rally 95 – The Lost and Found Rally

[Neil]

An early start saw Mike, Nobby, Ken and I zipping through the dark streets of Cardiff on the way to Leominster via a quick pit stop for sandwiches. The journey flew past with Nobby regaling us about his love for Portmeirion Pottery. He’s an avid collector so please feel free to contact him for a guaranteed sale should you have any.

We were bang on time when we left my house, but thanks to a few satnav issues ended up about 3o minutes late, thankfully Alun and Andy had stepped up and met the farmer and arranged parking. Well done chaps – very much appreciated.

We had visited this farm two years previously and were rewarded on that day with 20 odd hammered coins and a smattering of Romans, so as you can imagine hopes were high that after two years and several turns of the plough more finds would emerge.

The day started with the usual go here, go there and a group Santa Hat photo (I missed some of you out I’m afraid). Shortly after this we were into the fields that today were a mixture of pasture and recently ploughed gone back to pasture (if that makes sense). There were quite a few legs of lamb and steaks wandering around that we were assured were friendly but I think most gave them a wide berth.

Our Santa Hats rally always sees a token hunt, but unfortunately the field we had set aside for tokens was too hard to seed them in, so I nonchalantly wandered around the ‘recently ploughed but now showing field’ tossing tokens as far as  I could. Someone suggested a fishing catapult for next year and that’s not a bad idea, plus I might even bag a couple of pheasants!

The first find of note was an unusual pocket spill of six silver three-pences all dated before 1920 in the same hole. They were found by DW newbie Hagrid, who was rightfully pleased as punch finding them.

Another newbie called Wildwoodway who was at the rally with his daughter, turned up a scarce find indeed in the shape of a Queen Anne sixpence that had been bent into a love token. A particularly scarce detecting find but even more so as a love token. Well done that man.

There seemed to be a bit of a early milled theme as I also saw a beauty of a King Billy sixpence 1696 that was very decent found by Adrian, a George III fourpence and perhaps one of the nicest ‘detected’ Georgian Pennies I have ever seem. Honestly the photos do not do it justice.

Lunch time saw the raffle draw with some quality prizes being won by numerous members with Rambo arguable picking up the DAB Radio star prize and Nordine winning the most sort after of all prizes in the shape of a novel centred around Disney’s ‘Frozen’.

All the talk of the day though was regarding the three gold rings that turned up. Astonishing when you think about it that three gents gold rings would turn up particularly after two gold ones were found last time we came here.

A chap called Trefor who had travelled all the way from North Wales found the first one, which followed much back slapping and hearty “Well Dones”. Trefor was delighted to say the least, although that said he didn’t end up owning the ring for too long! It transpired that the farmer mentioned to Andy that he had indeed lost his wedding ring some 13 years ago in the field that this ring was found. A long anticipated wait was on for the farmer and his wife until Trefor got back to his car and it turned out that the ring was indeed the farmers. Trefor did the honourable thing and immediately returned it to its rightful owner commenting that there was “no way he could keep it knowing who the owner was”.

Detectingwales rewarded Trefor with a years FREE DW rallies and the farmer in turn promised to arrange us a return visit to new rally land belonging to another farmer in the area.

As people started to return to the cars numerous farm tokens appeared, I even had one myself. Other finds included an early silver spoon handle with a Z engraved on it and a Victorian silver brooch. There was also a smattering of hammered coinage with a nice Edward being uncovered by Landyman. Nowhere near the quantity we found previously though.

By 4pm the sun was beginning to set and most started to head home. We joined them and the journey back and for the fourth time in recent memory Mike’s car decided to take us through Abergavenny on the way to Cardiff. You need to bin that satnav mate!

That’s it on the Rally Front for this year. Have a great Christmas and Healthy New Year. See you in a field soon.

Keep The Faith

Neil

[Neil]

More finds

[nobby]

Great review as always Neil.
great finds and welldone Trefor
bring on 2017

[Trefor Meirionnydd]

A very nice rally report Neil. Thank you for the mention and thank you all at DW for the very nice reward - I really do appreciate it.

I had an unforgettable day and it was great to meet some of the members - look forward to seeing you all again at the next rally.