While we were visiting Fort Pickens near Pensacola, I found an old brass button in the sand. It was obviously a really old item.
Later while visiting the museum, I saw another button exactly like mine. They said it was from a Civil War union uniform. I kept it around for years but it finally just disappeared. I doubt it was worth anything but it always intrigued me that I had found an artifact which had actually been used in the war.
A few years ago, a team restoring the Mill Springs battlefield here in Kentucky found a flintlock stuck up under a rock ledge. The battle was fought of a cold, snowy, foggy morning and most of the Confederate units had old flintlocks that kept misfiring. The gun’s action had been partially disassembled, so they speculated that a Confederate had been trying to clear a misfire, got fed up, and got rid of the infernal troublemaker.