How did this story begin?
A friend sends me a photo on Viber – a report on a morning cop. I look at this photo and see that it has three burnt flakes of the same coinage format. The tsar’s name cannot be made out, but from the silhouette one can guess that it is either Mikhail or Alexei. “Wallet” the thought flashed through my head and, understandably, I wanted to see where exactly my friend could find these same coins. I’ll note right away that I wrote to a friend about my guess about a possible wallet in that place, but why, let him try to dig for it himself. No one has canceled the right of the first night in our business.
And then a couple of days later I see a place in the field trampled down to the level of the sentry’s route. Well, there is no doubt at all that this is exactly what I wanted to think about. So I, with my XP ORX, begin to wander in the tracks. And there were many traces there, from different diggers. It didn’t take long for the first coin (scale) to appear. Indeed, it turned out to have traces of burning, but it clearly read “Alexey Mikhailovich.” I’m making a standard “snail” 6-8 meters in diameter in that place and… and I don’t find anything except the standard garbage for that place.
Okay, as soon as I moved on, there was another signal. I dig and again the scales are burnt. Again I do the “snail” (I carefully move the place where the coin was found in a tight spiral) And, again, there are no noble signals. “Maybe it seemed???” thought. Well. Honestly, it doesn’t happen that the wallet is so wide open.
Okay, I'm making another move. I mentally define the place of the first two finds as a conditional center and begin to walk crosswise. And then nothing. 15-20 meters back and forth and nothing. I give up on this matter and walk to the side. as almost immediately two more coins became burnt scales. Yah!!! It doesn't happen that way. Again “snail” and crosswise. And, again, there is no sign of the core of the wallet plowing open.
Then another comrade came up to introduce himself. A male dentist is on vacation for the third month due to the coronavirus. So I decided to take my son’s grater and try what it is – instrument search. I’ll definitely write about this interesting meeting separately, but for now I’ll continue about the wallet. So, this fellow (dentist) also found one burnt scale and when I saw where he found it. I compared it with where I found the last one, and it turned out something incomprehensible – the diagonal distance between the finds is more than FIFTY meters.
This is accurate, and absolutely not typical for an open wallet of scales. Believe me, I already have six of these wallets in the history of my finds. One purse contained Anna Ioannovna’s copper coins, and the coins there stretched out no more than 20 meters. And here, fifty steps away. Unclear.
Conclusion or assumption.
I still nursed and dug out this wallet for more than a week. Yes, what can I say, and now no, no, I pass by and enter that area with hope. Maybe something to raise. And what? And sometimes it happens, today there was a child’s little boy who picked up a little racer. And yet I can't understand. How could scales, clearly of the same origin, be scattered across the field? Not in the sense of a minted yard, but in the sense of the source of its appearance here. And so far only one thought has come to mind.
For a long time. Even before collectivization, the arable fields here were divided into shares among the peasants. Naturally, each owner tried to cultivate and fertilize his share (strip). So here it is. The main fertilizer in those days was not manure, but ash. Especially if there was a fire. So I assumed that most likely these same scales could have been brought to this section of the field with the ash from a burnt house or barn. At the site of the fire, they shoveled the ash into a cart, and then swept it out onto the field and scattered it over a large area. And so it turned out that this purse and plowing core do not exist and the spread over the area is very impressive.
This is the real story. Traditionally, I wish everyone good luck and good finds.
