Tuesday, July 1, 2014

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find....


    Those are the words of Matthew 7:7, although I'm sure his reference wasn't to finding a coin on the foreshore of the Thames.  But hey, St. Pauls is near the Thames, so I'm going to count it as part of 6 degrees of separation!!
    Finally after many trips to the promised land ( the foreshore ), I found a coin ( actually a Jetton ), dating back to around 1660-1685.  It looked like nothing when I spotted it among the rocks, covered in a dark sandy concrete like grit.  But, I knew it was not the common garden variety good luck coin I seem to come across.  Once home, with a little  scrubbing the round copper disk revealed a series of names and images.  Searching the internet I narrowed it down to a time period of around 1700, but I couldn't find an identical match.  Summoning the vast intellect of the London Mudlark facebook page, I posted the below picture of my find.  And in no time at all Karen L. provided me all the info on my find.

                                          Copper alloy jetton,issued by Charles II

The rest of the days finds were the typical pipe and assorted shard and glass fragment pickings. 

I did find the biggest complete wig roller I've come across.

That sums up the last adventure.  My patience of finding a coin like object has finally been rewarded. Others seem to find them on a weekly basis, but they have eluded me like D B  Cooper has eluded the FBI.  Maybe the ice has been broken and I will find more coins.  For now though I am happy with what I have been able to find