At the beginning of April I went with Club Beyond, the ministry to high schoolers on base, to the Czech Republic. We were there for a week working with a school in Ostrava, a city on the far east side of the country. We taught English classes, built a concrete ping pong table, replaced the tops of some benches, and taught the kids baseball. One morning I was digging a small trench for the concrete border of the ping pong area and uncovered a small disc. It kind of looked like a dirty coin, so I took it to the sink and washed it off. It was a coin, but badly corroded and I could only make out a few letters and numbers. The country of origin and date wasn't readily apparent so I stuck it in my pocket to worry about when I got home. I could make out the following text: "CZAR" "69"
This afternoon I picked up the coin and figured I should make an attempt to identify it using google. I couldn't tell whether the "69" was 1969 or 1869, although the font suggested the latter. I scanned both sides at high resolution in preparation to send them to a website that would identify them. Once I did I could read one phrase that I couldn't make out before: "JOSZEF". I googled "coin Joszef czech" and came up with a wikipedia entry for the Austro-Hungarian gulden coins, minted in the 1800s. The coin I had was immediately apparently, a 20 Krajczar minted in 1869.
Crazy. It was most likely sitting in the ground for over 100 years.
that is awesome. much better than some mumbling about mark twain.
ReplyDeleteyou are a guy who does things. i am a girl who likes to think about other people doing things and how they feel about it. my life never yields terrifically corroded coins of former realms.
sigh.
Awesome.
ReplyDeleteCool story. Sounds like you lead a good life, not the coin finding so much as the teaching english, building and being relational w/ folks.
Be blessed.
in my family, you would have been hailed as the "family finder"...at least for a day. and the rest of us would've hailed you as such, but inwardly scowled at you because we ourselves wanted to be the family finder.
ReplyDelete