Artifact Found When Sluicing.. 1930s Wallace China Shard

[C-17A]

Hey Gold Dredgers,

Often when I am out gold prospecting I "dig up" old time artifacts and remnants and junk of an earlier era gone by...

I found this piece of pottery when diggin' & sluicing for fine flood gold on the Arkansas River a few days back. Most of the time the shard is unidentifiable, well worn, too small to make any ID or draw any conclusions from...

....however, this time I found what appears to me to be the bottom of a heavy tea or coffee cup.

Says "WALLACE CHINA" and has the code "RG" in-between the words.



I did some internet research and Wallace China was a factory that made heavy duty "China" plates, bowls, cups, etc., for hotels and restaurants from 1931 to 1964. Their factory was in a suburb of Los Angeles.

I got this info off the web at a China collector site:

"Wallace China Date Codes: Wallace has a very odd number (dash) letter date code system. The letter represents the year starting with "A" for 1931 and continues until the letter "O" for 1945. Then the letter code begins with "Z" for 1946 and reverses back in an unknown pattern until the letter "R" for 1956. This code may continue for the following two years until 1958 but that code has yet to be cracked. Then starting in 1959 the code starts with the letter "A" again for 1959 and finishes with "F" for 1964. The number code is just as confusing, starting with 2 for January and jumping around until 14 for October. December ends with 10. The number 13 is skipped! Please see the charts below for better clarification. Usually the (dash) is used. Lastly, in the early years an unknown double letter code was used. If you have any information regarding the indecipherable double letter code, we would love to add it to our date code pages!"

So, I am assuming this is from a VERY early piece of their Wallace China. There were a LOT of 1930s Depression Era gold miners up here in High Colorado, and maybe one had a favorite coffee cup he took from a hotel/restaurant and it finally broke, he lost it, threw it into the river... Who knows...

Still, a very cool 1930s ( I am assuming) artifact. I'd like to think it was associated with the miners from that era...

Hope you "dig up" some history too!

Randy "C-17A" www.goldadventures.biz

[russau]

Thanks for the info Randy!

[RD Round]

Be careful at what you say on here, anything found on government land over 50 years old is considered an antique and the rules for found antiques say leave it where you found it, to move it could be a reason to give a tickett

[h20prospector]

That why I no longer keep metal trash in a pouch on my belt. Was in a national forest detecting here in Colorado. I had an old rusty square nail. Forest ranger stopped me and ask me what I was doing. When I showed him the trash I had picked up, he informed me, if he wanted to, he could ticket me, take my detector, and generally make life miserable. He gave me a stern warning, I throw out the trash and left.

[dickb]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't do!

Here in Iowa, to save the state money, they ask us, the public, to adopt a highway and go out and clean up trash left by the oblivious. If you do it in a national park or forest, your desecrating hallowed ground.

DUH?????????????

Anybody see something wrong here?

Dickb

[russau]

Pat you should have give all the trash to that ranger.

[h20prospector]

he wasn't interested in anything that was less than 50 years old. the forest service should adopt cleaning out forests like they do in Germany

[russau]

i agree to that 100%