Unexpected break in the weather so up to the MiddleSchool

Tuesday December 30^th

Today I wasn't planning on detecting. It was colder (only a high in the upper 30's) but sunny with little wind. So when I made up my mind at 3:10 to go for an hour I was unprepared – My Minelab and stuff were in the trunk of the Taurus which Marilyn had. As luck would have it she picked up her cell phone when I called her and found out she was at Drug Mart - right on the way to the site I wanted to detect.

The site is an old school site that has a new school built on it. The ballfields you can find a zinc penny at 8 inches and a wheat penny at 2 inches.

Since there was some guys playing tennis (yes in 37 degree weather) I decided to start in the main field. I passed on digging some shallow penny type signals. Then I get a very sweet sounding signal that was deep. I am thinking silver all the way but it turns out to be one of those good luck tokens. Oh well, still kinda cool. It does have some funny writing on it. So I hunted the area more but wasn’t getting many good signals. By now the guys playing tennis must have gotten cold because they were gone. So I make my way over to the only part of this site that has original ground:

This is where I get a crappy deeper signal. I dig the plug, stick the probe down and nothing. Get up and recheck with the detector and the signal is there but off about 4 inches. Dig again and out pops a Merc! Very nice. Not more than 5 feet from it I get another iffy signal that I dig only because I found the Merc nearby. Sure enough – another silver coin that turned out to be a rosie.

The total for the hunt:

Some silver and an old Canadian coin

With Nate off of school and me off work for the holidays we both were itching to get out detecting. However we have been at the mercy of the weather and fortunately the weather warmed up just enough to get out detecting for a few days.

Saturday, Dec 27th
Nate and I were planning on going detecting today. There was no set schedule/plan and I knew he had been up late the night before. So not wanting to wait until his anticipated waking time (noonish) I set off to the local park where I had found the SLQ about a month ago.

I began by worked an area between the pavilion and the first line of trees. Not a lot of targets but I get one of those deep broken up signals that I suspected would be a coin. I dig down only to find the first 3 inches of soil were soft and then the ground was semi-frozen. Fortunately I could break through the frozen dirt below and obtain the target – a 1920 Wheat penny. I continue to search the area and found one more 1924 Wheat penny. About 10 minutes later I get another really deep coin that turns out to be a 1934 Canadian penny. “Cool,” I am thinking. That's only the second “King George” Canadian penny I have found.

Well while I still have the Canadian Penny in my hands Nate calls me on my cell phone: “Yo, what's up”, he asks. “I just got a 1934 Canadian Penny up here at the Park. You want to meet me up here?” I replied. He declines and informs me that he will be ready to go to the elementary school on the east side in about 15 minutes. So I detect for another 10 minutes, pick up another 1940 Wheat penny and head home to pick up Nate.

On the way to the school we get a call from Dan. Another “Hey, what's up?” type conversation ensued and he told us he was within minutes of the site and he would meet us there. The temperature had warmed up nicely by the time we get to the school – it was around 60 and sunny. Too bad the ground conditions were so sloppy. Mucky on top and frozen below 3 inches. Dan isn't prepared for the hunt (tennis shoes) and after about 25 minutes of hunting he comes over and informs me that it's so unpleasant for him that even if he found a silver half it wouldn't be worth it.

So Nate and I hunt about an hour and a half. Nate finds about 7 wheat pennies and the usual clad. I was able to muster up a silver rosie and some “bling” (jeweled heart necklace). We drove to another site that I had been meaning to check out. It was another school in the area. It looked promising but it didn't yeild much – one wheat penny and a little clad. So after hunting half an hour we packed it up and called it a day.

Saturday.

On my way home from another site I drove right by an old Quarry/Swimming hole that for others has produced many awesome finds (silver dollars, gold, etc). I saw someone detecting with a cheap bounty hunter on the beach. I went over, introduced myself and we chatted for a while. Nice guy who just wanted to be out in the nice weather. Now this site has been hunted so much that to make any good finds you have to go where there are lot's of pull tabs or in the obscure places. I found a thicket and got my coil in the brush. I hear the usual pull tab sounds but then I get the sweet silver tone. Sure enough out pops a small sterling silver ring. Didn't find much else for the 35 minutes I was at this site but was satisfied with silver.

Iceberg wheats with a Motorcycle

December 13th
This was a hunt that we had some time but we were somewhat rushed. I worked the old wheat field almost the whole time. I concentrated on areas we have not worked as hard. As we were about to leave we worked an area out toward where we park the car and I found a neat old motorcycle.



No really exciting wheats but there were some older ones:




Overall a pretty decent take on wheat pennies but I was a little disappointed that I didn't find any silver since the last trip I did. The Merc shown in the picture was found in with my 2008 clad stash. Who know where I found that one.

Hitchcock site produces another 1/2 cent token

December 12th
I got into work early so I was out by 3:45 pm. This left me with almost an hour of daylight at this site. I started working behind where the foundation use to be but wasn't really finding much. So I started working west toward where the other home foundation use to be. I got into the junky area and started getting pretty many iron signals. I got a solid aluminum type signal and dug out this token. I have found the exact same token before so I knew exactly what it was.





This token is in much nicer shape than the other one I found.

So, the rest of my time I spent more toward the river where I picked up a little clad. The rest of the finds for the 45 minutes or so I hunted the site:

Expanding the Hitchcock area

Hope Everyone had a good Holiday. I did. Saw some cousins we have not seen in quite a while. Our weather has not been the best but the snow has melted. I haven’t been too motivated to do much in the way of detecting – just get out for an hour every week just to dig something up. Each hunt I manage to get lucky despite hunting these sites so hard.

November 21st
I started off in the main area close to the foundation. The one item that had me going for a minute was a play dime. When I first dug it it was all dirty but you could see a silvery edge. At first I thought it might be a three cent piece. As soon as I started rubbing it I could tell it was aluminum. After not finding much I started to think where the activity on this site use to be. I couldn't help thinking that a natural area for people to hang out would be along the ridge by the river. Sure enough my hunch turned into silver. In a small area along the ridge I found the pocket knife and right next to it the 1945 Merc.

One other cool object is the old Sawblade collar "Warranted Superior". I guess the company made hand saws from the 1800's to the early 1900's.


November 26th
So 5 days later I revisited the site. This time I start wandering around the areas we haven’t hunted much but came back to the most heavily hunted spot and again found a merc. I was very surpised to find this being it was near the old well (very obvious heavily hunted spot). Upon rechecking the hole I pulled out a rusty bolt & nut (item just above merc in the picture). I think having the 7.5” coil on helped me pick up the merc.

10/4/08

Woodmen of the World, IH….Iceberg, 1890’s Schoolhouse Finds

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,187622.0.html