Well, the season ended a bit early this year,  with 4 inches of snow on Saturday.  I was able to get out for a few hours on Friday, to a site that I thought could be quite good, a park behind an old office building that was a high school in the 1920s (a similar site gave me 65 silvers last year, one of my better sites), but it was totally cleaned out, filled/graded, or both.  All I found was a handful of wheats right along the road.

Anyway, 380 silvers for the year, which is down from 516 from last year, but still not bad.  14 of them were silver half dollars, which is pretty good.  3 of them were Barber halves, the oldest being a 1894S.  4 of them were reales, 2 2 reales, 1 1 reale, and 1 half reale.  I had 4 double digit silver days this year.

I did set personal record on coppers, digging 29.  My old record was 19.  All other totals were down from last years blowout year: clad, wheaties, silver blings, and so forth.  I did dig 2 gold blings, which was the same as last year.  My efficiency ratios were up tho: 6.86% of coins dug where silver, and wheaties to silvers was 2.13 (both personal records).  Maybe that is a result of using the Ultimate 13 coil, which I really like.

Well, economists love numbers and stats, but that’s enough of that I guess.  I did find four new types this year for me: liberty capped half cent, draped bust half cent, draped bust large cent, and a franklin half.  I now have 34 old coin types out of 58 (ok, I lied, one more number).

My biggest disappointment was finding only one seated coin, and no bust silver.  That stuff is hard to find, tho, at least for me.

As for goals for next year, kinda a stupid idea.  You can’t control how many sites are left, how many have been filled, graded, or hunted out.  All you can do is try to get out as much as you can to high potential sites, and attempt good research, so that what I’ll try.  The nominal goal is always 30 silvers a year, cause they are hard to find, and get harder each year.  I do know I will certainly have to do more door knocking.

So, here are some of my better finds of 2013 —