Local park....worldly find

So I braved the elements the past weekend and decided to detect in a park used as a local soccer field in the  midst of mid-90 degree heat (not quite so bad as Montana has low humidity - it's a dry hot, like a dry sauna). In a hour and a half, I was able to snag 85 cents in clad along with some pulltabs (you don't know if they aren't gold rings until you dig them) and some random pieces of metal. After coming home, I noticed one "coin" I had gathered had started to leach out its metal inner core pretty bad. The outer portion of the coin was practically unrecognizable so I decided to bathe it in a bit of household vinegar (I know what some of you are thinking, putting a chemical cleaner on an unknown coin. If I was decipher anything out of that mess of a find, I had to chance it and clean it off for better identification).

After cleaning I was surprised to see the following marks. After some research, I discovered I had unearthed  a 1971 German 2 Pfennig coin. Here is a pic of the coin along with what it probably looked like during its better days.

Between the old and the new

Had an opportunity to check out a new location to possibly hunt in town. It located between a historic building and a part of a city park. What made this stick out in my mind was that it was an unmaintained portion of the park. The size of the hill it contained almost suggested to me that the area was once flat but was built up as a spot to put dirt from projects nearby. These projects were likely done long ago given how much vegetation had come up.

In the 20 short minutes that I detected, I found some modern pennies, a nickel, and a belt buckle that I am not sure on the age of - so I am planning on getting help from my metal detecting forum friends so it can be identified.

Prospecting anyone?

Well, it has been awhile since I have posted something and this time I ventured back into the hills of the Little Belt mountains just outside the old mining town of Neihart. In its heyday, Neihart had booming silver and silver operations that was carried by rail freight into Great Falls to the Anaconda smelter for refining. Gold was a secondary product of their work. When I say secondary I mean the ore was treated with cyanide to extract the precious metal.

Anyway, I tried my hand for the first time to use my XTerra in prospecting mode (audio only - no target ID to help me out). I believe I still have to get used to the sensitivity and threshold settings but during the two hour venture on the mountain side I got a better ear for targets. Some more DEET spray would have been handy, as I was sweating pretty good in the humidity. I recovered some .22 caliber bullets and some old wire. Not bad - I will try my hand around the old mine shafts later and check out some areas where some placer gold is said to be around. Ah yes, it is true what they say. Gold is where you find it. And today I did not find it.

  

Some habits never die

This past week, my dad came over to visit and brought some items from memory lane. As we spent time looking through old photos, one in particular caught my eye. It was a pic was me with my very first metal detector when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I remember the Radioshack purchase had an analog meter on it with a needle that would bounce back and forth. There was a knob for power/ volume control and maybe another for sensitivity but that was it. I ventured out with my dad to one of the local fairgrounds properties used for parking. I got something around a dollar in clad and some misc. metal items. The main thing I do remember was unearthing part of a very large sheet of aluminum. It was too big to even attempt to pull out! That is the one experience that left the biggest impression on me. Interesting to see how things have changed in about 24years. Did not take much to pull me back in and I am glad I did.

Some habits never die, they just hibernate.

A great find and another first - still can't believe it

Over the past several days, I have been taking my little guy with me when I metal detect out at one of the oldest park in town that quite the history. Each time I went, I ventured over to the far end of the park away from all the hustle and bustle to an area I thought would have ground that has been relatively untouched since its inception in the 1890s. The spots where I swung my detector had no rhyme or reason to it because I was at the will of wandering toddler who likes to watch people, geese, planes flying in the air, and every single squirrel within his curious gaze.

With this challenging variable, I decided to be really particular about the signals I chose to retrieve - no iffy ones, just ones that were solid and could easily be some form of coinage. One signal I got was about 2 inches outside the ring you see of a recently planted tree in the park, so it was ground that was undisturbed for quite some time. The target ID I got made me think older penny but it would jump down to pulltab range as well. I took my screwdriver out and took a chance at it. As I pulled up some dirt, waved it over my detector and confirmed it was in my hand. As the dirt fell away, I could see the beginning of a circular pattern and I first thought "pull-tab again" - but then I got a sparkle! My was floored and completely dumbfounded - I had found my first gold ring! I quickly checked the inside of the band to verify and I saw the "10K" marking on it. It was a larger men's ring.

What makes this ring stand out though is not the size of the gold ring, but the size of the stone that it holds, it was huge! I was secretly hoping in the back of my mind that this was a diamond but I did not want to get my hopes up. I got it tested over at a local jeweler (thermal test) and it was negative. Still, the 10K band came in at a decent 5.25 pennyweights. Finds like these definitely get you deeper into the hobby!

Living on the edge

There is this new approach to parks that I have started to take with a few good results. The idea came from an ebook I got free through a Minelab owners forum, called "Understanding your X-TERRA" by Randy Horton. In this book, a friend of Randy's likes to hunt along the edge of a sidewalk, where the park or property grass meets the sidewalk. The theory in this approach is that people drop items from their pockets and if it falls on edge, it could roll to this interface and get stuck in the grass matrix. Take it for whatever you think but I plan on testing this out and see what results I get over time.

For now, an "edge" search that I did at a park on the east end of town yielded me one penny and one flower earring. Not bad. There is potential - even for edges that seem like they would produce nothing. Things have not always been like they are now - conditions change and some spots collect dropped items and then become just a piece of grass at the edge of a park where no detectors have gone before.

First Silver....in my own backyard!

Well the weather was better than predicted and since my 19mo son is a outdoors loving toddler, I figured I would have another go around the backyard. Why would I swing coil around an area I have already detected? Well, for one thing, I am more experienced with the slight differences in tones given off by my detector and I had also changed my threshold and sensitivity settings to something less conservative. In the course of trying to keep an eye on my 19mo son, I discovered about  cents in clad, some pieces of aluminum sheeting that I suspect were cut when the house was constructed in 1979, and a leftover piece of a water sprinkler. The real surprise came when I discovered a sterling silver pendant shaped like a lizard. I don't have a weight on it but it is indeed silver as it had the "925" stamp on the underside I was looking for.