The story of the dime trifecta. But is it a story? Or is it the tale of a lifetime? On par with Homer's Odyssey? sure. A Jack Reacher novel? Well, let's reel it back a little, nothing is going to be as exciting as a Jack Reacher novel, that's just setting the bar a little too high, there wasn't a fight to the death over these dimes, more like one man's obsessive compulsion to get all three in one day. 

And how does compulsion start? like any other day, wake up around 4:50am even though the alarm is set to 6am. And then sit there like an idiot while you wait for the sun to come up so you don't look like a burglar prowling the streets. You're meeting a friend to hunt, but since you got up so early you might as well poke around some curb strips near the meeting spot, that is why your brain got you up ahead of time, early bird gets the silver worm. 

By 6:15am we had already dug several holes. A couple wheaties in a couple curbstrips in an old part of town. And for those of you that live just about anywhere else, "old" here in Los Angeles is the early nineteen hundreds. We meander the streets, zig zagging back and forth, not every block has a curbstrip. As we pinball around, and if you are wondering why i keep using the word "we" is because you are with me on this. We finally get that beautiful signal, low 80's, consistent, and sharp. Hello Mercury dime. 

Trying to keep an eye on the time, and trying to remember exactly where we parked because every step forward is another step away from the car. We decide that this is the last block if we are going to meet our friend at 7. Now many of you are picturing the curbstrip in front of your house or in your town, but this is LA, curbstrip is another name for public restroom. Notice i didn't say just dogs? yeah, its pretty gross on these streets. How many great signals have been masked by a pile of poo? i'll never know, i do know if you swing through a fresh pile you're going to be smelling that all day. 

We said 1 more block, but this block has an off shoot. We've got the time, sort of. Down one side, up the other, and we have a bouncy signal, not deep, but these are old curbstrips. All dirt, not a blade of grass, and the dirt is a good 4 inches lower than the sidewalk. Even if this signal is 2" down, at one point it was 6", so we dig any signal when the dirt is this good. Didn't even need the big shovel, hand shovel and minimal effort with the hand trowel, out pops a 1907 Indian penny. 

Time check 6:50, meet up is close, but with one more strip to check. Scanning back and forth as we are not entirely sure how far we are from the car. Scanning, beep beep, scanning. Wait, what was that? Back a couple steps, and there's that sweet signal. Again, the hand trowel is all we need. And there we see two of the nicest words, One Dime. Boom! Do we smell a Trifecta in the air?, or did we just swing the coil in some poop?

Now the thing with the dime trifecta is, you really can only chase it once you have a Barber dime, with the Barber all things are possible. My mission now was to find a silver Rosie. We meet up with my friend and do some hunting at the first spot. Move to a second spot, Move to a third spot, granted these "moves" were over the course of a couple hours. The flop sweat was streaming down my face i need this dime. My friend, he found a silver Rosie in no time. In my mind i was already preparing the speech to the wife but in my heart i know she's never going to understand why i need to find 3 dimes, and she's right, it's a fools errand to want something like this. I've been called worse. 

We can wrap this up here i think. i mean you've seen the cover photo, you know i found that Rosie. In the middle of a park, almost 8" down. Once i had it, i finally knew the calming bliss that only monks achieve. I had done it, might do it again, but it's the first time that really means something. Unless...i was to find a seated dime.