Not everything that comes out of the ground is a coin, and the non-coin finds are often the most mysterious. A buckle, a button, a tool, a fragment of something — old, worn, unidentifiable, fascinating. What is it? How old? What was it for? Is it significant? This category is the identification bench for artifacts and relics of every kind: post the strange thing you dug and let the crew figure out what it is.
Artifact identification is a wonderful collective puzzle, because relics span the entire range of human stuff across all of history — and somewhere in a community this size is usually someone who recognizes that exact object, or one like it. The button from a specific era’s uniform. The tool whose purpose is obvious once someone names it. The fragment that turns out to be part of something significant. Pooling that breadth of knowledge is how a baffling lump of corrosion becomes a dated, identified piece of history.
The best part is the history that comes with the ID. Identifying an artifact isn’t just naming it — it’s unlocking its story, the era it came from, the people who used it, the reason it ended up where you found it. A good identification thread doesn’t just tell you what you have; it tells you what it meant, and that’s where the real treasure of this hobby often lives.
So bring your unidentified finds — clear photos, measurements, where and how deep you found them, anything that helps. Buckles and buttons, tools and toys, the weird and the wonderful and the “I have no idea.” The crew loves nothing more than a good mystery object.
So let’s solve one: post the most baffling thing you’ve ever dug that you never managed to identify, and let’s give it a name at last.