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:
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:
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***
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!
The Dirt Is Good To Me 
See any homeless with tattoos on their faces? 🙂
No tattoos but there was some guy high on something acting peculiar. He didn’t bother me though.
City took all the benches out. Surprised they are still hanging out there.