Another SLQ from the same park

Well even though it has only been 6 or 7 weeks since I last swung a detector, with the weather being so cold and snowy it has seemed a lot longer. Our “January” thaw didn't come this winter until the second week of February. By Thursday of this week all the snow had melted. Only piles from where the biggest heaps had been remained and the ground was soft. Perfect detecting weather. Today they called for a high in the lower 30's. Since it was a Friday I packed all my gear the night before and got into work early. This along with an hour of AL allowed me to get out and hunting by 3:15pm. I really just wanted to dig anything and it really did feel nice to be out detecting again. The spot I hit is really getting played out but I did manage to find a neat little old play coin.






It was now 4:15 and I thought I better get Marilyn's Roses before everyone gets off work and the flowers get picked over. I still had to wait in line for my flowers but by 5ish I had the flowers and a card.



Since it doesn't get dark until 6 I figured why not hit the nearby park for a half hour. It was a great choice.




I hunted for about 20 minutes or so and got some coins and such. Then I moved into an area where the detector was nulling a lot. Within the nulls I got a solid coin tone. Dig it and it's a 1935 wheat penny. A good sign I am thinking. Then I get one of those “falsing but I better dig to make sure” type signals. It turns out to be a wild goose chase and I give up on it. About a foot away I get a similar sounding signal but this sounds more like a solid silver coin sound. Skeptical but hopeful I dig. I pull up some dirt, stick the wand in the hole and get a solid silver tone again. Now I am thinking I better be more careful cause this could be silver. A little more loosing of some soil and sure enough I see the silver edge of a quarter. When I pulled it out of the hole I was like ooooh yeaaahhh!






What is remarkable is that I found one almost exactly like it about 30 feet from this one back in November. Same date and condition too. Pretty sweet.




2/14/09
Today Nate and I had made plans to do an all day hunt. It's too bad the weather couldn't have held out for one more day. As it turned out by the time we had gotten up and on the road there was a nice coating of snow on the ground. Not to be thwarted by some snow we still decided to give it a try.




Well, the next picture sums it up pretty good:



Ugh. Every other swing your coil would get so loaded with snow you had to kick it off. To make matters worse it caused my detector to false more frequently.



After an hour or so and not finding more than a few coins and some bottle caps I started thinking about all the better things I could be doing at home.... I guess Nate felt the same way and we basically decided to abort the mission.

My sad finds below. Notice not even a single Quarter or wheat penny. Nate at least found six quarters, a wheat penny and numerous other clad.

2008 Old Coin Totals

Overall 2008 was a decent year. Total silver count was down from last year as was my IH penny count. However, the longer you hunt the local areas the more your overall totals are bound to fall unless you really start branching out to more distant sites (or secure permission at private homes).





Nate and I have been keeping separate totals for our old coins the last couple years but combining them gives a better statistics. What is interesting is how the graph is proportionate in each category for each year.

Counting the 2008 Clad - a nice little surprise

Well since the weather has been so cold and since I haven't counted my clad for the year I started the counting.

As I'm sorting it Nate comes down and I told him I found a couple wheat pennies in my clad. He tells me he is not surprised and comments about how there probably is a silver dime in with my clad. He tells me this because we have been fooled before – a “black” or “red” dime turns out to be silver. Well he starts poking through my clad when he spots something fishy. He rubs some of the red off and sure enough a 1917S Merc!

You can see from the back why I probably thought it was a clad dime by the color of it:

Clad totals for the year were down slightly but still were close to last years. I came close to $70 this year whereas last year I got around $77.

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: