And still a fine looking little Garnet, too!

Yes, we all had to start sometime. Seeing as how I'm 62 now, I would've been about One, (1), year old when you purchased that garnet.
So that's my excuse for not starting my collection for another 14 years.
We're all the way up to 1972 now. I was 15 and had just met a guy who collected arrowheads. I was impressed and interested and asked him where a spot was that I could go and find one of my own. He told me to go out to Mitchell Mill on the Little River straddling Wake and Franklin counties and look in any of the plowed fields as close to the water as I could get.
Since I wasn't old enough to have a drivers license I had to find a friend with a car to take me out there, but I was out there the next day.
I didn't really know the difference between a flake and an arrowhead at the time, but sure enough, it was good information, there were chips everywhere! It didn't take me long to find the big green crude Guilford still leaching iron oxides. It is at the top middle of my frame of points from that area of the Little River and began 20 years of walking plowed fields.
And I'm glad Memory Lane is still a long walk!

As a relatively newer collector, the earliest specimens in my collection have only really been there for around 2 years.
As for the oldest documented specimen, I think it goes to my big piece from Spruce Ridge, WA that dates back to the 1977 Medici operation.