Blink now. Because you won’t be able to do this for the next few minutes!
It was early spring back in 2013, I was young and taking my first steps in a hobby that brings me as much joy as Kinder surprises for my children when they open them. It is this feeling of the unknown that keeps me up at 5am on Saturdays to this day. I just sold my Fisher f2 and bought a brand new AT PRO, this feeling of power in your hands, clear coin signals, imperial copper fell out of my pockets along with buttons and weights — the pleasant heaviness of the swag was an addition to the photographs on the forum with the approving and admiring sighs of comrades… Well, what if there were a couple more scales in the photo — you were just a Saturday night star. Then we downloaded maps of Schubert and Mende into our navigators and rushed to meet the rising rays of the sun, and our dreams of pots of gold coins or plowing with scales did not leave us until the evening. That day the weather was so wonderful that it would be better to describe it with a poem by A. Barto —
Spring, spring outside,
Spring days!
Like birds, they fill up
Tram calls….
Not a breath of wind, not a cloud in the sky. We arrived at a field behind the village on the river. Okay. My friend, peering into the field, snapped the rod on the CTX 3030, this device, to be honest, even then filled me with horror, its huge reel, it seemed to me that after it nothing could be found on the field. But I did not lose heart, knowing that if the thing underground belongs to you — that means she will be yours in any case. With these positive thoughts, we moved in different directions from the car. Oh, this Soviet garbage, I’ll tell you, although you already know what penicillin caps and wire scraps sound like. I hear something shouting, my friend. I take off my headphones and make a questioning nod of my head upward in his direction, confirming with a drawn-out: «Whaaaam!?». «Yes, there is some kind of bullshit with patterns, yarn or something» — (his voice is getting quieter; nothing can be heard over the chirping of the grasshoppers). I stick a fiskar into the ground. I walk with confident steps, lighting a cigarette along the way. I can say one thing about the comrade, even though he had ZOZO in his hands, but, as far as I understand, he went with him for the first season and we were about the same level — «Lovers of collecting — poopy losers», this is the exact name of a person who joins the hobby.
And so I approached him by the way, with a suspicious squint peering at what he was rubbing on his glove…
And I screamed that the cigarette fell out of my mouth: «What are you doing? Do you even know what you are holding in your hands!?» «No», says, «look». I explained to him, of course, that this was a demonic serpentine from the 12th-13th centuries, but at that time he had very little understanding of plastic.
Only after a couple of weeks of correspondence with the wonderful professor A.K. Stanyukovich, he realized that in his hands was a priceless specimen of the serpentine subspecies — Besogonov. Of which there are currently only 3 known examples. Later they offered to buy it, the sums were 250,000, then 400,000 and higher. But he remained in reliable hands, which enhance, preserve and glorify history. Blink!
I still don’t understand where the American quarter came from in 1943!