Sweet Coin Spill

23 May

Maurice (my XP Deus metal detector) and I have done it again at another old park. I began hunting this park a few days ago because it is an old park, it is a trashy park, and it is a mid-sized park. All these things told me there was silver to be had there.

As usual, I took my lunch hour and headed straight to the park. I had found in my previous hunts there a number of early wheats and various and sundry other things. Today I was more determined than ever to find silver. I began at an area that I knew from previous hunts was loaded with pulltabs and was especially loaded with bottle caps. That scenario is a nightmare to hunt but finding keepers in a spot like that is part and parcel for the mighty XP Deus.

Sure enough, after digging a number of deep, flat,and rusted bottle caps, I finally hit upon a sweet tone among the harsher cap tones. The VDI, of course, was nowhere near being accurate. The Deus reported a 98, which is a tell-tale of iron wrap-around.The sweetness of the dim tone could not be denied however so I set upon  the task of digging a hole.

At first, I pulled a 1919 wheat at about 7 inches. I stuck my pinpointer in and got nothing more so I covered the hole but as I always do, I ran the coil over the spot one more time and again I got a deep, dim high tone with no VDI but this signal was just to the side of the now covered hole.  I re-dug the hole and out came this:

coinball1

I cleaned the dirt off the 1936 D Merc and I took a picture of it with the wheat and sent it to Stevouke as proof that I had pulled silver from this park as I promised I would do.

Once the message was sent, I re-scanned the hole with the Deus and I got a sweet signal on the loose dirt I had pulled. It was another wheat. I scanned again and I got a deep, not so sweet high tone in the hole. I pulled yet another wheat. Both wheats were from the 1920′s. I ran the coil over the hole and I got yet another deep signal to the side of the hole. I widened the hole and I was very happy to see this come out:

coinball2

If you look closely, you can see the edge of another silver dime showing! After I broke it out of the dirt ball, I had a 1942D Mercury dime. I very carefully re-scanned the hole and pulled a couple of rusted bottle caps but no more coins. No matter; I had a sweet coin spill to post about.

sweetspill

Thank you for looking!

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How to find cool stuff

20 May

I am asked now and again to share my secret technique or my secret settings, or my secret spots by aspiring metal detecting fans. When this happens I can’t help but chuckle because I think of myself as a green, inexperienced beginner with no secret techniques under my belt.

I discover something new about metal detecting every week and it seems  to me that this will go on until the day I breath my last.  I will share however, some of the things I have learned that I think have netted me the most loot.

SLOW DOWN
This cannot be stressed enough. You have to slow down in order to allow the machine to process the signals AND also to allow YOU to process what the machine is telling you. When I hunted with the AT Pro, I hunted very slowly. I can hunt a bit faster with the Deus now but I still slow down relative to the speed of the machine and relative to my level of skill. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve caught a brief high tone among trash that I would have missed if I was hunting fast.

KEEP YOUR COIL DOWN
This seems obvious and self-explanatory yet, many people I see out there keep their coil about one inch off the ground and sometimes even higher! Wow! Talk about cheating yourself! If at all possible, your coil should be touching the grass or dirt. That’s why we have coil covers. Every millimeter between your coil and the ground is a millimeter LESS of depth you are getting.

DO NOT RELY SO MUCH ON THE VDI
Some day, the detector companies will figure out how to accurately identify a deep target and give you a nice consistent number on you Visual Display Identifier (VDI) screen. Until that day, you can rely on the VDI for the top six inches of dirt only. Everything deeper will give you a VDI, if you get a VDI at all, that won’t accurately reflect what’s under the ground. And even shallow stuff can give the wrong VDI number, depending on many different things such as trash nearby, amount of micro iron bits, ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI), or the price of tea in China. Learn as much as you can from the audio signal. This means you will have to dig a lot of trash but believe me, it will pay off.

DO NOT FEAR DIGGING IRON
I dig iron all the time. I don’t mean I dig the iron grunts. No, I mean, I dig the wrap-around iron signals that give a high tone. I am slowly mastering the difference in sounds between a really deep silver coin and a rusted square nail. This cannot be faked or short-cut. There is no trick. There is only technique that will be refined through many, many holes dug. And guess what, eventually, I plan to hunt iron grunts. It’s a well known fact that once a good target achieves a certain depth, your detector can only see it as iron. It is necessary to acquire more skill to identify a good target that has ‘gone to iron’.

LEARN TO DIG A DEEP HOLE QUICKLY BUT NEATLY
I hear people say that there is still plenty of silver in the first four inches of dirt. Really? Then why aren’t we finding many silvers every time we go out? Well, I happen to believe there is some silver in the first four inches of dirt but most of that easy, shallow silver has long been gone. No my friends, the silver that is left to us is either shallow but helplessly masked or deeper than six inches. Don’t fall prey to the “I don’t want to dig a 10 inch hole” attitude. Nowadays it’s easy to dig a 10 inch hole in a couple of seconds and it’s easy to do it neatly. And if someone tells you to use a probe as it was popular in the old days, please have them demonstrate how to use a probe on an 8-inch-deep coin and then please show ME how to do it so I will know.

RETURN TO THE SAME SITES OVER AND OVER
There are many variables that dictate how a target will appear to your detector and most of those variables change through time. Don’t be afraid to attack the same site multiple times in the year. And then, return to it year after year. Seems like a waste of time? I find silver coins in our city parks and those parks have been hit by thousands of hunters through the decades. Why did they miss the silver I am finding? Refer to the variables. And people in the future will find the silver I missed today. That’s just the way it is.

I hope this helps someone.

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We stepped out and cleaned up

17 May

Reblogged from Wheat State Treasure Hunters:

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Well last night we had 7-8 volunteers that came together and cleaned up Linwood Park. I personally was amazed with how much a few people with gloves and trash bags can accomplish in a short time. I hope that as we progress we can start seeing the fruit of our labor. My hope is that we will see more people picking up trash as they walk their canine friends, play disc golf, or just walk through our city.

Read more… 87 more words

The XP Deus Is King!

14 May

Today for lunch, I returned to the park where yesterday I found a Roosevelt dime. When I got there, I remembered that there was a spot where I found an Indian Head cent almost exactly one year ago.

At that spot, there was a house back in the day and I thought I had the front yard and the back yard all figured out. After I found the Indian Head, I gridded the area carefully with the AT Pro and found nothing else. Later in the year, I returned to the same spot with my White’s V3i and again, found nothing more.

Curious to see if Maurice could do better, I began swinging and in a space of a couple of minutes I had two shallow wheats. Wow! I continued and in less than 10 minutes I found my first silver of the day:

1943-obverse 1943-reverse

A 1943 D war nickel at about 6.5 inches deep. Incredible.

I hunted the same spot carefully although not gridding and bam! I got a very faint whisper that repeated nicely from all sides. I cut the plug and at around 8 inches and on the side of the hole I found a 1928 D Mercury dime:

1928

I just cannot believe it. I missed all these coins (by then I had four wheats in my pocket) with the Pro and the V3i.

But not with the Deus!

Towards the end of my hunt I found what I believed was a token but I was wrong. It was a 1918 10 centimes French coin:

10-centimes

10C-back

This coin was first minted in 1917 and was last minted in 1938. A cool coin of a common date. I always wonder how coins like this come to be in our fair city.

So at the end, I ended up with a number of coins that I COMPLETELY missed with my other detectors. This is why I am having to re-hunt every spot with Maurice.

hunt

Thank you for looking!

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Lunch Time Rosie

13 May

I took my XP Deus metal detector to a park that I have hunted in the past with other detectors with not much luck. The park is over 100 years old but it is small and most of the space is taken up by amenities such as play equipment, bathrooms, fountains, etc. Still, I found an Indian Head there last year so I went looking for my Seated coin.

No seated to be had but at four inches deep I found this 1952 Roosevelt dime:

1952_in_situ

1952

This makes silver coin number 28 for the year. I need to find 12 more this month if I want to stay in pace for 100 in 2013.

Thank you for looking!

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A rewarding hunt

10 May

Met up with friends today to hunt an old park. We hunted for 6 hours and although the morning started cool and cloudy, the sun eventually came out and the day turned into a beautiful Spring day.

For my part, I dug up two silver Roosevelt dimes and two Indian Head cents. The silvers were shallow, both at about 4 inches deep but the Indians were much deeper at around 8 inches. Try as I may, I could not find the Seated coin I went looking for.

Nonetheless, I LOVE seeing the silver coins when they first come out of the ground. I particularly love to see the edge of a silver coin sticking out of a dirt ball.

silver2

silver1

keepers

For now, my first Seated coin is still in the ground; somewhere.

Thank you for looking!

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Old Timey Relics

7 May

I met Stevouke from the Wheat State Treasure Hunter group after lunch work to hunt a lot located in an old part of town. We both experienced heavy EMI so it was tough hunting.

For my part, I ended with three cool relics:

Pella

This is a 1922 commemorative token from Pella Iowa. I saw that one sold online for $18.  They are supposed to be rare.

The interesting thing about this token is the Latin inscription; ‘In Des Spes Nostra et Refugium’ translates to ‘In God our Hope and refuge’. Every where I looked however, the Latin for that phrase was ‘In Deo Est Spes Nostra et Refugium’. I wonder if they really misspelled the Latin word for God. Please if you know Latin, weigh in.

new-method

This tag is from New Method Bood Bindery from Jacksonville Illinois. The company was founded in 1920 and their motto was ‘ These books are bound to stay bound’

sherry

The last relic is definitely local. I couldn’t find any information about it online. I have no idea who Sherry Peter Turley was. Most of the Turleys that came up on my search were from Hutchinson, Ks.  Skateland of course, is a skating rink. I don’t know if they are still open in Wichita.

Besides these cool relics, I found a Bell jar lid with the glass insert still intact plus some clad. No old coins.

Thank you for looking.

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Silver number 25

7 May

Yesterday at lunch, Maurice (aka Zoltar) and I met lawdog1 from the Wheat State Treasure Hunters group at Riverside park. We hunted for an hour with little to show and I had to return to work but lawdog1 stayed to explore the spot a little more.

Later, I got a text from him with the picture of a beautiful 1903 Indian Head. Along with this picture, there was a picture of the exact spot where he found the Indian with the words ‘X marks the spot’ or something like it. I jokingly replied that I would stop after work and find the old silver he missed.

Well, I did stop at the X after work and I pulled this:

1940

 

A nice 1940 Merc at only 4 inches down. The audio signal was as sweet as they come but the VDI was 88, which at 12KHz on the Deus, it usually means a Memorial cent. Let that be a lesson for all of those who don’t dig penny signals!

1940-clean

 

This makes silver number 25 for the year. I am still behind 15 silvers. I need to be at least at 40 by the end of May to catch up. Wish me luck.

Thank you for looking!

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A moment in time

3 May

I stopped by Riverside park on my way to my karate class last night. I was swinging Maurice, my XP Deus metal detector, looking for the very deep stuff that other hunters have left in the ground. At one point I got a deep target that sounded good to me so I dug. This target was particularly deep and at the depth of 11 inches I finally got to feel the target with my fingers. I extracted a round object and for a moment I thought I had a large cent. Ha! keep dreaming!

Instead, I got a shot shell. OK, I don’t get excited about shot shells anymore but still, it was a cool find. I covered the hole, stood up and swung again and bam! another deep target. I dug another deep shot shell of the very same gauge and make as the last one. Repeat and again, pow! another deep target. I pulled yet another shot shell exactly like the other two. All three shot shells were under the same square foot of dirt and all three were UMC Co. gauge 10 Club. **According to Cartridge-Corner, this stamp dates from 1867 to 1911. The neighborhood was already established by the early 1900′s and there was a race track in that area of the park as early as the mid 1880′s so I stick with my drop date of the mid to late 1870′s**

shells

How cool is that!? I was standing approximately in the very same spot where a person stood back in the late 1870′ or early 1880′s (by the mid to late 1880′s, the area was already a city park) and got off three shots with his (or hers) shotgun. The drop happened within feet of the little Arkansas river. I imagine this person was hunting ducks. I picture the flock of ducks taking flight after being surprised by this hunter and then bam! bam! bam! three fatal shots and dinner soon after.

I’ve seen a picture of Wichita at the time of its incorporation; 1870. There was barely a hint of a town there. By the early 1880′s however, the city had paved streets, brick buildings, banks, commerce, and two or three city parks.

Very cool. I dug up a moment in time. Two hunters, 140 years apart, connected by three shot shells. I like it.

Thank you for looking!

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Trash talk and a Merc

29 Apr

I went to a small park for lunch to swing the Deus over dirt from 1920. This is another stamp-size park in my beloved city that has been hunted heavily. In fact, while I was hunting, an old timer came by to chit chat about the good old days. He told me that the park was hit hard back in the day and that the easy silver was long gone by the 1970′s. I was about to tell him that Maurice and I specialize on finding hard silver when he acknowledged that top of the line tech would make a difference on reviving a dead park. My hat was off to the old White’s guy for his keen observation.

Anyway, back to the subject. The situation at this park, at least in the spot where I was digging, was dismal. There was what appeared to be black top detritus, thick and deep under the grass. Lots of coke and I don’t mean the drink. It was almost as if there was a railway there at one time.  Coke, in case you don’t know, is some kind of coal that has been processed and it sets off a metal detector. It was used as fuel in the olden days. So Maurice was chirping like a deranged robot. All the signals I got were wrap-around; that is, high tones with 97-98 VDIs. Lots of iron grunts as well. Not pretty.

But like I said, Maurice and I specialize in hunting this kind of dirt and soon we had a winner:

1939-dirty

A 1939 D Mercury dime at about 4-5 inches. Even at this shallow depth, the Deus reported it as a 97-98 with a high tone in between all the noise.

At the end, this was my hunt:

hunt

When I took this picture, I didn’t know that the small hair clip was silver. It is heavily tarnished but it is marked Sterling on the back with a Jeweler’s mark of a capital letter B inside a circle and a patent number. So make that two silver items out of the coke and iron infested spot. You go Maurice!

***The hair clip –tie clip? Has the words PAT. followed by what appears to be a date : x-7-15 (no patent numbers here or the UK are formatted this way). I cannot see the first number clearly because of a small rusted iron encrustation that is obscuring part of it but it looks to be a 7. Careful research in the U.S. patent website reveals that no patents were applied for nor given on 7-7-1915. It’s an old silver clip either way***

silver

EATING CROW SECTION

My friend lawdog1 from the Friendly Metal Detecting Forum, invited me to hunt this park last year. I smugly scoffed at the suggestion because I had hunted this park with my other detectors and had found nothing. Well, my friend, here’s me eating humble pie. There is silver in them thar grassy areas!

Thank you for looking!

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