ID please

[Andre]

Found this square item with  a 5 and a 8 on the bottom,also found this buckle.
Is it possible to date musket balls by their size or how they were made because I've found loads of musket balls on my permissions and they look different from field to field.

[The Doc]

The square item is a coinweight for a George III guinea from 1771. The letters above are 'D' for pennyweight and 'G' for grains, so therefore 5 pennyweights 8 grains.

See here for some info on coinweights of this era:

http://www.ukdfd.co.uk/ceejays_site/pages/Coinweight2.htm



The other item is known as a breeching dee and is an item of horse harness.

[Andre]

Thanks.so in layman terms what was the purpose of the coinweight and how did it end up in the middle of a field?

[The Doc]

Coinweights were used by merchants, traders etc to check that a gold coin was the correct weight, as the value of a coin at that time was the value of the precious metal in it.

How it got into that field is anyone's guess, but coinweights are not that rare as detecting finds, but I would consider them to be nice items and certainly of interest.

[Andre]

Thank you👍