LEWISTON — Steve Dayton can usually tell when his metal detector finds something good — and “good” is usually defined as gold or silver.

“It’s a long, steady beep,” he said. “When you get that, you know it’s something good.”

He added, “Gold and silver have the steady tone, but it’s choppier when you hit iron. A lot of people just go past all that. They want the gold or the silver, but I tend to dig it all up and if it’s trash, I throw it out.”

What he found last month near a park in Auburn was far from trash: It was a fully intact, roughly 100-year-old sword with a brass hilt and steel blade buried in about 4 inches of soft loam.

Lisbon Falls Antiques Appraiser Daniel Buck Soules said the sword is likely a ceremonial piece that once belonged to member of the fraternal group the Knights of Pythias.

“It’s definitely authentic and it dates to about the 1880s to 1900s,” Buck said Friday. “During the late part of the Civil War, there were hundreds of fraternal groups formed, like the Knights of Pythias. They used to be Civil War soldiers and they wanted that pomp and circumstance.”

As it turns out, it’s not very valuable — but it’s by far the coolest thing Dayton has found.

“What I’ll do is clean it up a bit and put it on my wall,” he said. “It’s a very cool thing to find.”

He got his first metal detector more than two years ago. He was doing some landscaping in his yard when he found a gold ring.

“I wanted to know what else was in my yard, so I got a cheap metal detector and looked,” he said. “I decided to go out and search a park one day, and then I was hooked.”

In his two years of searching around Lewiston-Auburn’s parks and open lots, he’s found coins, rings, jewelry and buttons. The most valuable was a gold ring he found in Lewiston’s Marcotte Park that he had appraised at $1,200.

Mostly, he’s found modern American currency, and plenty of it. He figures he has about $200 in coins.

“I’ve more than paid for my metal detector,” he said. “That’s just the side benefit. It’s a fun hobby, but you can make a little money on the side.”

The stuff he keeps is likely less valuable, but more intriguing. It includes spent cartridge shells, bullets and a few musket balls. He’s found very old fishing reels and some old horse tackle and bridle decorations. He even found a small set of rosary beads in a leather box, fully intact.

He prefers forgotten lots, and he does his research. He pores over old maps of the area he finds online, comparing them to modern maps, looking for old homes that no longer exist.

“I went to Old Orchard Beach one time, and there were six people detecting at the same time,” he said. “You have to be really lucky to find anything there. They don’t like you digging in city parks, so I avoid those. I like places in the woods with hiking trails that get a lot of people passing by.”

That’s what he was expecting in Auburn last month. He’d been exploring the bones of an abandoned home site near the center of the city that had been recommended to him by a friend.

He spent two days exploring the site and was about 100 yards away when his detector began making a sound he hadn’t heard.

He made a video of the find and posted it to YouTube, and posted pictures to a hobby site on Facebook.

The response was huge, with some friends speculating that it dated back hundreds of years.

“Usually, if they find a sword, it’s a blade or a hilt or something in pieces,” Dayton said.

Appraiser Buck Soules said the sword is in decent shape, considering it’s been buried for decades. Although it’s rusted, it’s in one piece from point to hilt.

The best part isn’t the cash value, he said.

“This is one of those things — your metal detector screams,” Buck Soules said. “That had to have been some feeling. You don’t that feeling often. And a lot of people go their whole life never finding something like it.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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