Finding Buried Treasure

I was in grade 6, and I was walking to school in the morning. The subdivision where we lived had of course been farmland at one time. My walk took me through a large field, that hadn’t yet been paved over. My foot kicked something that caught my eye. It looked like a coin. I picked it up. Dirt encrusted it, so I started rubbing it off. Mmmhh, the Queen looks odd. I rubbed and rubbed. This dirt is really on there. Victoria. Victoria! What the hell?! I cleaned the other side. 10 cents 1858. 1858! I made it to school with barely a minute to spare. No show and tell was scheduled, but my find prompted an impromptu show and tell.

I stuck it in my dad’s ultra-sonic cleaner and that weekend I took it to the coin and stamp store downtown. The owner told me that it was the first year that dimes had been minted in Canada. Due to the fact that this coin had lain in that field for decades, a century maybe, it wasn’t in the greatest shape. Quite a bit of the relief features on the cameo of Queen Victoria were obscured. Due to that he appraised it at $10. For a young lad in the late 70’s this was a decent amount of money. But I knew instinctively that I didn’t want to sell it. This was such an amazing find, the find being more valuable than any amount I could possibly get for it. That my foot kicked up something that had lain dormant in the soil for many years, quite possibly where the original owner had dropped it all those years ago, was such a once in a lifetime oddity.