The Month of May

May has been a busy month for me and time out with the detector limited. All the additional yardwork, graduation stuff, fishing, etc. have taken precedence over detecting. I did have some good luck fishing. First bite of the year, first fish, first 20 minutes of fishing and I get a nice 29" Walleye.




Hunts have been limited to very close by spots for an hour or so. Nothing spectacular for finds although I did manage to find a Walker. It was right next to the large nail shown in the picture. I was using the small coil and going very slow.

Nate on the other had has been tearing it up with the DFX. I found a school that started in 1957. A couple trips to this new spot has produced 7 silver already.

Some of Nates finds:



Nate scored another first this year – decides to dig what he said sounded like a nickel:


Nice solid 14K mens wedding band. Very Sweet. Found down in the metroparks.

And lastly for Nate was another surprise – a barber quarter.


The site where Nate found his Barber Quarter:

The DFXonly Hunt in Owasippe, Michigan

Nate and I both broke almost all our clad records. Nate found 449 coins for a total of $36.36! Plus we both got some nice silver coins. For more pictures and the story click here

1863 Civil War Token & a silver Half

Old Schoolhouse site:
Fridays I usually take off work a little early and get in an hour or two of detecting. Well today was so nice (sunny and 60’s) that I had to take off extra early. So where to go… During lunch I was browsing through a just bought history book when I came across an older map of an area I am very familiar with. I was surprised I hadn’t seen this map yet and I was even more surprised when I saw an old school (1874) on the map. I checked windows live local for an overhead view and determined the school would have been just about under the power lines. Usually when you hunt around power lines the detector gets too much interference and it’s useless. Not so with this site. However, conditions were challenging with all the prickers, saplings and bushes.


After about a half hour I get a nice signal. Dig it up and I thought it was an IH. I suspected that it was going to be older since it had a hole in it. When I brought it home and showed Nate he immediately said “That’s a Civil War Token!”. Sure enough 1863:



I found some other stuff but the pickens were slim. I think the lead ball is a musketball. The key handle looks cool and seems old.


I did find a large well that had been filled in.


Nate came back with me for about an hour and found a neat decorative piece with 1876 printed on it. Might be from some suspenders?



The Civil War Token is pretty beat up. I was able to identify it as coming from a merchant in Cincinnati, OH. "Dealer of Rags and Metals". Very cool.




Well after an hour of fighting torns and bushes we decided it was time to relax and do the grassy park thing.

Cleveland Park:We hadn’t been to this park since last fall. The graffiti painters had added to their artwork:


I found a couple mercs and was going to call it a day as I was working my way over to Nate.


I got a decent sounding signal. Dug and pulled out a war nickel from the hole. Strange I thought, that didn’t sound like a nickel. I rescanned the hole and there was more – out popped a silver Quarter and two wheat pennies. Waved the probe in the hole and determined that was it. That is until I stood up and got another good signal about 5 inches from the original hole. Dug and found a Walking Liberty Half Dollar. Very Sweet. It’s in nice shape too. Nice drop of 82 cents that was dropped in 1957 (my guess but had to be later than 55).



Some nice finds for a couple short hunts:

13 more Silver from the Berg

Saturday Nate and I spent about 4 hours at the Berg. It had rained good a couple days ago which made the ground almost perfect for detecting. We were digging up some really deep coins and you had to go slow to pick some of them up.
It took a bit getting going but Nate found the first silver coin of the day with a SLQ. He was very happy. A little while later I had a silver rosie. After that the silver coins were popping up regularly every 20 minutes or so. Ended up with a good take:





I also found a cool token and a key to a ford Mustang.






Nate made some nice finds:



Near the end of our detecting time Nate came over to me asking if he could borrow the skinny digger I was using because there was a “good sounding target” underneath a big root. He came back 10 minutes later with the barber dime.




Of all the finds my favorite for the day was the Save-4-Store token. The silver is nice but after the 3rd silver rosie you really want older stuff. I tried to look up some info on the token but didn’t find anything immediately so I’ll have to search some more.

Return to Tuscazoar

Last spring Nate and I attended the Tuscazoar DFX only hunt in Dover, Ohio. It was a cool place to hunt and a lot of good finds were made. There were at least 50 people in the hunt yet most people got at least one silver. Anyway, Don lured me back to this site with talks of old silver back by the mines “where no one hit”. It seemed reasonable and we always had the fallback places. We met Don and Brian at the Bob Evans in Dover.
From left to right – Don, Nate, Beefcake (Brian), Bob (Mirage)


We noted that the mines were right along Icky’s trail so if we stayed on the trail we would be fine.
The trail:



Well, the trail was marked well until near the end. That’s when we got a little lost.




An hour and a half later we found the mine area:

Also found this pitiful Geocache:


I expected to find some kind of log in the box with some goodies. No paper, no pencils, no goodies. Junk!
Well, we tried detecting the area but the detectors were not behaving with all the iron. We still gave it a try but after not finding anything moved on. Nate and I pretty much headed back to where we knew we could find coins. It was the same spot we pulled numerous silver coins from last year. Don and Beefcake took there time and detected a few spots on the way back to the main camp area.

Within a few minutes of getting back to our “honey hole” Nate and I both had wheat pennies. Within a half hour we also each had silver.
A little while longer Don and Brian show up and Don shows me his nice find:

My finds for the trip:

Nates Finds:

It was fun being out and getting some exercise. I know I’ll sleep good tonight.

Sunday's Hunt turned up some keepers

Nate had some luck at the site we call the Iceberg last weekend when I was in North Carolina. So we went back there today. It was warm and we didn’t bring enough water but the silver was popping up regularly so we were happy.



Also found a 1903 Indian Head in with my wheat pennies when I started cleaning them.



Nate found some nice coins as well:



Barber Quarter is a little beat up but those are not easy to come by.

North Carolina Hunt

Last winter another Treasure forum member from North Carolina invited me down to hunt with him. I accepted and had a great time with him. So this year the invitation was open and my wife came down with me as well.

So Saturday ModernMiner, DDD-777 and hooked up for a Saturday hunt in North Carolina. We didn’t find anything that spectacular but it was a lot of fun. It’s always a treat to go to new parts of the country and hunt.



Left to Right – Andy, Doug, Me

A few highlights of the trip:

The properties were awesome. You felt that you could pull anything from colonial to civil war to modern era stuff.




Yes, that’s Doug(on the far right) in his fruity looking hat.


Doug found a Caped Bust halfdime in this pasture a few months ago.



A house from the 1920s



At the first site Doug went behind me and starts digging in an area I had just covered. At first I was apprehensive thinking “wow, did I miss something?”. Then I was reassured when he dug a big piece of iron.

At the 1920’s house there were not a lot of targets other than under the magnolia tree. I dug some pennies and moved on (didn’t want to waste time on shallow clad). Andy eventually made his way over and started digging the area. A while goes by and Doug and I inquire as to what he is finding. He informs us of how much clad was in the area. Confirming what we already basically knew we continued hunting. Another 15 minutes or so later Andy yells over to Doug “I knew it! Persistence paided off working this area. I got some wheat pennies and an Indian Head.” Now I was thinking, what?! So I asked him “really”? “No, not really” he replies, “I was just trying to get Doug”. Well he got me.

Here is one I really did find:



The last site was fun because the owner of the home – an elderly man in his 60’s was showing Doug his fencing sword. He wanted Doug to use it as a probe. Well somehow he steered the guy over to me. Seeing that the guy was not to be turned down I took the sword and demonstrated the use of it as a probe. Then I politely set it down against a tree and started detecting. So I “shook” the old guy and he went back to Doug. He then followed Doug all over – talking his ear off while Doug was trying to detect.