Haven’t gotten out much lately due to the recent holiday and its commitments, recent family commitments, and the weather.  But I made up for it today.  And here comes one of my stories.

First was a goal to get to 200 YTD silver coins before my son’s school was out, which happens next week, cause I didn’t expect to spend much time detecting when I could spend the summer with him, and while milestones are only a function of the base we happen to count on (aliens with 4 fingers on each hand, of course, would count in base 8), they are still fun to make, and I wanted to make it for that content feeling.  Problem was, the site was thinning (as all both of you who read my blog know), and I figured I had about 4 or 5 hunting days before school was out, and budgeted one more silvers for this site, and figured I’d go at it today.

Gridding low and slow in an unpromising zone, I eventually got a beautiful silver quarter signal, and opened the thing up, and saw the shine in the dirt, and it turned out to be a silver-quarter-sized religious pendant.  Same weight and value as a silver quarter, but I had that sense of disappointment.  Yes, its irrational, but silver bling at the same weight rates lower than a silver quarter.  Maybe its about the stats (where only silver coins count (of course its about the stats; duh; I’d be a lame economist to lie about this)), maybe its about the reluctance (despite me not being very religious), of melting religious silver.  Whatever, not the same thrill.

But, despite the disappointment, the pendant was constructive, cause it gives me the zone.  It says the competition hasn’t hunted this zone hard.  So, press on aggressively and with hope, and that is exactly what we did, and eventually we got a sort of affected silver signal. Could be ferrous, could be silver, many would ignore, buy my model and machine suggested digging, and good thing I did, as it was an SLQ at just 3 inches.  Are you kidding me? (I love writing that, cause it always means something good just happened).  I love digging SLQs pretty much above any other modern silver.  Too bad its worn down to nothing, its still an SLQ at 3 inches.  It was totally affected; machine nulled on a rescan. Note to newbies: learn something here, sorry I’m not more cogent.

Well, to make a long story much longer (for those who don’t know what one of my stories means, you are learning!), I continued to press on (wouldn’t you, after digging an SLQ at 3 inches), and pulled a slam dunk merc about an hour later.  The sort of merc that screams at you as 12-46: today is your day; you will have something to blog about tonite.

At that point, I was at 199 silver coins YTD, and was temped to walk off and try to get another one later so I could blog tonite with some silver, and blog later with a title of YTD Silver 200, but that would be irrational, and while my motto will always be Chance Favors the Ready Mind, my secondary motto is Always Act Rationally, and, well, if I was born with 13 fingers on each hand, 200 would mean nothing, so press on I did,  Wouldn’t you?

And pressing on netted me some gold.  (Are you kidding me?). And its some sweet looking gold too.  Its 8.72 gr @ 14K of a chain with some religious charms. How sweet is that?  (At this point, time to insert a pic, after so much dense text). so here is a pic of the gold —

Ah, that’s pretty. isn’t it?  It is. But I’ll always be a silver guy, so press on I did for more of the shiny, with 2 silvers and a silver pendant already in hand.

Eventually I got my 15th or so iffy could be silver, could be ferrous sort of signal, and we don’t dig em all (that would be irrational), but we dig these, and I jumped for joy when I saw the silver rimmed edge of a merc in the tailings.  My 200th silver coin of the year.  Would have been nice to have a blog entry just for this coin, but we’ll take it.  Three silver coins for the day, as well as the religious pendant, for my 200th YTD silver coin —

But, there’s more.  Sometimes I write about the affected silvers I pull from the ferrous.  Sometimes I write about the 35-50 silvers that seem to sound like ferrous,  Today, I even wrote about a silver that could be silver, could be ferrous,  But one thing I never do is write about the ferrous that comes out when I’m wrong, and the massive ferrous that plagues me in general (and which, is good, overall, cause I know how to deal with it, and it scares others away).

Well, I don’t really like looking at other people’s ferrous, and I don’t imagine too many like looking at mine, but I wanted to post it today, cause 2 of the 3 silvers I pulled were clearly ferrous affected — missed by the competition due to iron, so I figured it would be constructive to post the ferrous I dug in quest of of those silvers.  I also thought it would be cool to post this ferrous knife as part of the collection —

And, of course, there’s more. Its one of my stories, after all.  This is kinda short, and we’ll file it under double whammy. Got a beautiful silver dime signal, opened it up, and pulled what appeared to be a beautiful gold ring (figured the silver sound was another target).  Turns out the gold ring rang as a silver, meaning there was no silver target, and the gold ring is actually base metal.  D’oh!.  Give me a break.  But, still an exciting day with alot going on nonetheless.

So, that’s that.  200 silvers YTD.  Not on last years pace, but not bad.  The rest of the summer will likely be more time with my son, and less time detecting, so the entries, going forward, may be few and far between.  At least I got one of my old-fashioned stories done.