$3.00 bullet bucket finds

[John M. Brooke]

A digger here in the Shenandoah Valley dropped off a bunch of bullets at the local antique shop.
The bucket said your choice $3.00,  found some interesting bullets for the money!



Three Confederate .54 Richmond Laboratory Sharps Carbine Bullets



Confederate Gardner "blow thru" bullet





Four Gardner bullets, one with a large casting sprue on the nose
Two Type III Williams Cleaner bullets
Two Enfields
Two .52 Sharps
Three high impact three ringers

Last but not least I'm not sure about this one, I think its a teat based Gardner.
Don't know a lot about bullets so let me know if I'm wrong about any of them.

[tom buckley]

You never know what you might find.
 I've had good luck at the tourist shops in Gettysburg. My best find was a TT 171B for $2.95 and a couple of Gardner blow-through for $1.95 each.
 Last year I stopped at an antique mall near Harrisonburg, VA and got a few fired bullets from a box marked "Locally Dug". One of them appears to be a fired .69 two-groove "musketoon" (No, it's not carved) which seems to be a bit out of place for Virginia.
 

[relicrunner]

I enjoy going through junk boxes and seeing what can be found or buying a mixed lot and seeing what is there. I had a good experience at the Dalton Ga CW show this past weekend. A guy was offering a mixed bag of dug relics from a campsite in Md.....along with bullets and other items, I saw a very nice Hotchkiss time fuse adapter. I bought the bag to get that item and did not look at anything else until I got home the next day. I am not a true "leadhead" but I do have a small collection of bullets that have some provenance. In the bag I found among others:
(2) dropped "P" marked base Enfields
(2) dropped Gardners
(1) pulled .69 3-ringer
(1) Merrill
(1) "lightly fired" Charleston arsenal hi base 3-ringer
(7) carved bullets
Experience like this keeps me going back for more!...

[John M. Brooke]

It always seems to pay to look through the $2 and $3 bullets at flea markets and antique shops.
I don't think they really take the time to look through them like the Civil War relic shops do.
Tom mentioned his Gardner blow through for $1.95, when I finished paying for my bullets the guy
said "I didn't charge you for the damaged one". 

[tom buckley]

I plan to be in Gettysburg next Thursday and Friday and am already looking forward to digging through bullets in the tourist shops.

[Jim T]

Good luck finding some shops that are open!

[CarlS]

The shops in Gettysburg make so much off the tourists they don't have to be open but a couple days a week and that is normally Tuesday and Wednesday.         

[ETEX]

Here is a couple of shots of a bullet I picked up at the Memphis Show in 2007. I was intrigued with the rock stuck in the cavity and for a $1.00 I couldn't pass it up. It has extremely faint grooves and measures .671 x .968 x  634 with the cavity wall turned into the cavity at the base therefore an accurate length can't be given. Looks like the bullet may have rolled down a river for several years. Don't know what it is but for a buck what the heck.

[relicrunner]

About 10 yrs ago I bought a bag of bullets from a relic shop in Murfreesboro that looked just like this one. They had been recovered from a deep pocket in Stones River. A few had rocks in the base like the one pictured. I thought they were a neat item being that they actually came out of the river.

[Ripcon]

A few years back, I walked into an antique shop in my town and saw a riker case with a Colt Revolving bullet, a Prussian .69 calibre, and a Gardner bullet. The guy said, "$5" for everything. He obviously had no idea of the true market value of the bullets.
Last year, I found a half of a 2 piece belt buckle mixed in with other dug relics in a junk box labeled "Your
Choice 50 cents". I got the buckle for 50 cents!!!