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I have heard tales about great finds being made inside such canisters. Medals hidden in the spare lense compartment, caps-, guns-, personal items, ammo- and even treasures in the form of gold instead of the gasmask. Naturally with such tales floating around digging up a heavy unopened box is very exciting, and opening one even more so.

A signal from the detector had me opening up the vegetation and soil, and I found a small fire pit. It had mostly rubbish of course, but I picked out a couple of Finnish coins, a 10 pfennig coin, a candle holder, a brass ring, a nail file and a compass, so not a bad start.

I got the box to the surface and it was of the type that had held optical sights for machineguns. And it was heavy. I gently used my blade to open it, hoping the sight would have survived, coz the box was pretty rusted and had probably been cooked in the fire.

When we got to the large square pit, I swept the detector around the edge of a corner of it, and got a good signal. It was coins. A relatively large spill with 19 coins. Mostly German 5- and 10 pfennigs, but with a few Finnish coins mixed in. None in very good condition.