Welcome to the next level

Decided to try my coil around an area of the oldest park in town which does not get any attention. By "attention" I mean a section that virtually never gets any modern human activity and as such there are few changes made to it over the years. So I started off where I left the last time I was there and came across a 1944 wheat penny. About 20 minutes into the hunt, I got a strong signal which was very similar to my Mercery dime discovery - right on the money! This time it was older -- 1923 -- and in fairly good condition.

The next possible signal I got did not even seem like anything special. It was "iffy" at best. For any Xterra owners out there, the best I can describe it is a faint signal (as in, it barely overcame my threshold tone) and had a very narrow window that you hear it. The difference between this possibly good signal and a high VDI (42-46) signal from some aluminum scraps was the fact it was CONSISTENT at all types of angles swinging the coil. Junk will not behave like this, instead giving a much more erratic signal. The difference is subtle hopefully I now have a better feel for this in the field.

Anyway, what happened next can only be described as the greatest set of finds in my detecting career to this point. About 5-6inches down in very compacted and dry soil, my glove revealed the silvery edge of a large coin with stars around the perimeter. Could it be what I thought it was? Oh yes, I laid my eyes on my very own Barber quarter - 1902!!

My oldest coin to date. I swung over the hole again. There was still a signal coming out of there - you have got to be kidding me! My pinpointer guided me to more shiny silver off to the edge of where I made my plug. This time I was rewarded two fold... another Mercury dime - 1918 and sandwiched with it was my very first standing liberty quarter. But as I pulled it out I realized my screwdriver I had used to loosen the compacted dirt had scrapped the 3 o'clock position, taking out the E Plurus unum. The coin had enough wear on it to make the date unreadable but the reverse revealed it to be minted after 1917 (Type II).

Now no more than a foot from this three silvers in one hole was a solid penny signal near a tree that I decided to dig to see if it was a wheatie. At first glance, I knew it was not a wheat penny. The reverse was the back of my first Indian Head Penny! The obverse had some gunk on it so I waited to clean it at home. Imagine my surprise as I revealed the date - 1883! My oldest coin to date. It is going to take some time before I get down from this "cloud nine."

I can only hope that I have finally figured out how to read silver with my machine because now all I can think about is getting my next piece.

Sophomore season yields first silver!

So as a follow up to my set of hunts I made that resulted in the discovery of the old button. That same park that gave me my first gold along with other interesting finds ended up giving me my first "deep" signal. I can understand now what the veterans speak of when they refer to "deep" signal. Some people refer to deep targets as giving a "narrow" signal - I guess this is one way to describe it. The signal is narrow in that it barely exceeds the threshold limit set by your machine and its detection area is rather "narrow" or "smaller" than compared to a target that is shallower. (Not sure if any of this made sense, as I have been frustrated myself with trying to understand what others have used to describe how deep targets are picked up). If anything, the only way someone can understand how a deep target is picked up by their machine is purely a matter of experience with detector and knowing what it is trying to tell you.

Anyway, back to the point here - my XTerra gave a consistent 38-40 signal and I immediately thought "here's another dime." After I extracted it from about 6-7inches down, I was surprised on how clean it looked fresh out of the ground. Well, to my surprise I read a "1947" on my very first silver coin. It certainly highlighted the hunt and just like finding my first gold, it made me want to find more of these awesome coins.

Glad to have another first checked off my list of finds - not a bad start to my sophomore season of detecting. Hopefully a sign of things to come.

2012 Finds Total

As the year of 2012 comes to a close, with all its ups and downs, I decided to take my treasure finds and total them up for the year. Here is a compilation of all clad, gold, and silver finds along with their approximate value.

Clad:
Coin           Quantity         Value 
Dollar             1                $1.00
Quarter       125              $31.25
Dime           108             $10.80
Nickel           83               $4.15
Penny          395               $3.95

Clad Total:                    $51.15

Precious Metals:
Gold: 1 Ring at 10K puirty: Amount: 8.175g - Spot price on 12/31/2012 was $1663.57/toz

Silver: 1 Lizard pendant at 92.5% purity (sterling): Amount: 7.260g - Spot price on 12/31/2012 was $30.14/toz

Precious Metal Total: $188.84

Grand Total value of 2012 Finds: $239.99

Not bad for my rookie year! Can't wait to get back out there. In fact, if the temperature just a little over freezing, I WILL be back out there. Until then, have a great new year!

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.