Its nice to have a presumed honeyhole in your back pocket, as this month, while there have been quite a few silvers, has seemed slow, and a proven honeyhole is a nice slump breaker and morale booster.

But the site gave up only two dimes, which certainly isn’t bad; we’ll take ’em, but all things must pass.

Gets me thinking about the non-sustainability of this hobby again.  With hunting and fishing, it always regenerates.  People are always planting letterboxes.  Even orienteering people are always setting new courses (but rarely coming up with new, interesting venues, and letting quality decline while charging more for the lessened experience).

But silvers don’t regenerate.  Hunted to extinction is hunted to extinction.  Will bigger, deeper machines come along and save the day?  Won’t help much in this area, as mineralization and bedrock limit the effective depth coins can be found. Does the “freeze/thaw” cycle push coins around as some claim?  I don’t think so; sounds pretty wacky, but even so, there can’t be a huge source of sustainability from that.  Feeling a bit sad about it today.

(Also yesterday pulled a dime from an urban site that I never thought had much potential, but wanted to check it out. Looks like someone beat me to the site by a day; saw their plugs everywhere.  Wonder what they found?).

Just a couple of rosies today (no pics, just rosies), but the second marks my career silver 700. I had only 2 in 2008, and 19 in 2009, so almost all have been in the past couple of years.  (I’m a stats freak, as will most likely become apparent).

I’ve found nearly 700 silvers, most in the past couple of years, but only 5 from this huge, old site that should have more.  Its also the site where I found my second ever silver, back in 2008.  I spent alot of time here as a newbie.

For some reason, I never spend much time here since (prolly cause I ain’t got much silver from it), sort of written off, but I’ve never been there with the skill level I have now, so back I went today to see if I could turn this into a honeyhole.

It went well, as pulled 3 dimes, but I was working the very edge of the site, and in heavy trash.  The targets were actually few and far between.  I’ll definitely have to work this site more, but there is no urgency; I’ve let it sit since 2008 after all, with the occasional random visit and the occasional random silver.

Have been swamped lately, but have been getting out a bit.  Nothing interesting to write about, just 4 silver dimes (only two pictured), an abused IH, and a religious pendant over 4 hunts, which includes a skunked day.  Like everyone, I have my share of skunked days; I just don’t like logging them. (I did tho, last year, have a streak of 52 hunts with at least one silver coin — I’ll never forget that, and its nice to think about it when things are slow and don’t seem sustainable).

Trying to revive life into sites I had written off under inferior conditions, an inferior machine, and inferior talent isn’t going as well as I had hoped, but I still think the exercise is valuable.  It is giving me a really good sense of how to analyze sites and make the best of my time.

One thing my honeyhole of last week, and grassy site of this week got me thinking about, is hit some sites now that were written off, while the ground is wet, the grass is as short as it will ever be, and before the snow hits (which hasn’t really, yet this winter).  As much as I’d like to get back to my honeyhole, it seems safe, as it is a bit out of the box, and it certainly seems no one has hit it in the past two years.

I’ll take my chances now on hitting other sites I had given up on with the V3, while the detecting conditions are ideal. This intel will be valuable while I can get it; if I wait ’til summer, I may give up on them again.

To that end, today I hit a site I had written off with the V3, and pulled a pair of deep silver dimes (no pics today).  This site is no honeyhole; the targets are few and far between, but there is no doubt more silver there for the patient. Its huge, and has been logged for future reference.

My yearly silver goal is 30 for the year, and I reached that today, at yesterday’s grassy site.  Another long hunt pulled just one silver, but it was a 1924 SLQ.  These are so fun to find, especially when they have a date (which is barely readable in this case).

The site also surrendered a silver spoon, which was quite twisted when it came out of the ground.  This is the way you usually seem them posted, which makes the one I found last month so special.

While this site has surrendered a walker and an SLQ, it took many, many hours to get those 2 silvers.  This site needs to be tabled until I get an even better opportunity, with freshly-mowed grass, if that ever happens.

Maybe I should talk to the powers that be.  Hey, can you mow that grass down real low, just for me?  We haven’t had much snow this winter; if we get some real snow, maybe it will get matted down more.

This was a site I had known about for a long while and had been dying to hit, but the grass was always very tall, giving no real opportunity to detect it.  This being winter tho, it didn’t seem so bad today, so I gave it a try.

It was tough working around tufts of grass, but I did manage one silver coin, and it was a big one, a walker, which appears to have been abused by a lawnmower or some other machine (ironically, as they don’t seem to mow this site now).  This is my fourth silver half dollar of the calendar year.

I imagine there might be smaller silver here, but difficult to reach due to the grass.  I also imagine it has been hunted pretty hard; the walker, as they usually are, was at the edge of the site, and there wasn’t too much in the middle, tho it is hard to guess how much use the site got back in the day.

Had some business in Maryland today, and decided to make a day of it, and check out a few sites I had researched that would be on the way.  All were duds; either failed to get permission, the evil fill and grade twins had been there, you get the drill, you can just tell when a site is a dud.

Then decided to press on and hit a site I knew about in Maryland, but had never hit before, and right off the bat, got two dimes within 15 minutes of each other.  Was sort of an out of the box site, so I thought I had a good shot at a monster site, but nothing after the dimes except an occasional wheatie.

How can you get two dimes within ten feet of parking, and 15 minutes of each other, and then nothing for three hours?  Oh well, I will try the site again sometime.

I don’t know if I’m ready to call this site a honeyhole yet, but it is certainly feeling that way.  Pulled 5 more silver coins from it today, for a total of 12 in the last three hunts.  Most were what I would call “E-Trac silvers”, deep, in the trash, or both.

Itching to get back to the yesterday’s site where I pulled a barber half and a couple of dimes; I was not disappointed, as a pulled a fourspot of rosies.  All were very deep, in trash, or both.

This site certainly appears to be one to get excited about.

Met up with an acquaintance who wanted my killer E-Trac program (which I gave him), for some door knocking.  We were 0 for 3 on the door knocking (I wonder about these folks who claim an 80% success rate; I certainly don’t doubt those claims — I guess it means I should have gone to finishing school or something (I certainly dress well, try to look well-groomed, and all that stuff)).

Anyway, we decided to hit a site that we’ve both pounded in the past, but I told him that I’d pulled alot of barbers out of there with the E-Trac, so lets see if there’s one more.  We both did pull a barber dime, and he pulled a silver quarter and some bling as well. I also pulled a pair of IH’s.

He had to go, and I decided to do the same, but there was still some daylight left, and I passed by a site on the way home that I had hit with a V3 a couple of years ago, and came up totally empty, so I had written it off then.

Good thing I decided to give the E-Trac a go at this site, as I pulled a 1894S barber half, and a couple of dimes to complete the dime trifecta.

This is my oldest barber half, and my third in less than twelve months, all on public property.  This one is certainly one of my best coin finds ever.

This site is now “opened up”; we’ll see what the E-Trac can do here that the V3 couldn’t. (In all fairness, while I think the E-Trac is in a different league than the V3 when it comes to silver (having tested both side by side on the same targets), the V3 came up empty here when the ground was drier, and the grass was taller, so not a fair comparison).

Got an invite from a friend out in York County to hunt some private property.  That’s a long drive for me, but I’m always up for new places.

Before heading out, I did some research on an old town near the meet up site, which happened to have an old park, so I got out really early to hit that site.  Site was pretty dead, surrendering just one crusty wheat penny, but the town looked like it had other potential.

Onto the first site, which didn’t seem to have a ton of promise, but a fellow detectorist pulled a barber quarter out of some roadside gravel.

The second site was a private yard of an old home, which the owner said had been hit pretty well before, but I managed to find a few silver objects — a silver Canadian dime dated 1920, and a broach and pendant.

Pulled quite a few wheaties; I usually pull one silver coin for every 2.5 wheaties, so I was prolly owed another dime or two, but we take what the dirt is gracious enough to give us, and it was quite a fun hunt in any case.

Guys, if you want to come to Chester County, anytime.

Another hunt at this nice woman’s house, and I managed to pull a walker and a quarter today. In one of our conversations, she had told me that her late husband used to own a metal detector.  Good thing for me that he missed that walker, tho in all fairness, she said he mostly used his MD on the beach.

I’m gonna start doing some of the pics with dirt on them ’cause there’s this asshole on one of the forums who likes to doubt my finds and otherwise get it my face for no reason.  I don’t even know this ‘hole or what is problem is, never met him.  Oh well, there’s always people like that out there.

I’m an economist, so I look at things from the point of view of incentives.  What incentive to I have to make this stuff up and go thru all this trouble?  It is a ton of work.  My guess is that he just has silver envy (and prolly other envy as well).

Well, I doubt he (or much of anyone), read this blog, so it doesn’t much matter, but I kinda like them with the dirt on, so we’ll see going forward.

Finally got to hunt the property of the woman I met the other day.  I had quite a good day, pulling a pair of silver dimes and a beautiful antique sterling thimble.  The beat merc is a 1916S (missed it by that much, tho if it were a D, I’d feel snakebit that it was so abused).

I offered the thimble to the owner, but she could not have cared less about it.  This becomes another one of my favorite silver relics.

Back to the site that surrendered a beautiful silver spoon yesterday, to the same trashy section of it.

I didn’t hold out much hope, as the site seemed pretty hunted out, and the spoon was likely ignored by many as trash, but I was fortunate enough to pull three silver coins out of the trash, a 1926 merc, a 1907O barber dime, and a barely legal silver quarter.  Had the quarter been a rosie, it would have been a trifecta, something I rarely get.  I also pulled a 5 gram sterling ring (not pictured).  All of the silvers were quite difficult, and I was thrilled to have sniffed them out.

But the best part of the hunt was meeting an old lady who came up to chat with me. One of my favorite parts of this hobby is interacting with the locals.

We talked about what I find and was finding, and we talked about the silver spoon.  Turns out she knew “Regina 07”, who grew up on the same  block as her.  How cool is that?  When you find a relic, its cool to think about the people who once owned it, even cooler to meet someone who knew them, and knew where they lived.  I inquired about returning the spoon to the family, but she said there was no surviving family left.

I also inquired about permission to hunt her property, which dates to the 1800s.  Sure, no problem.  An adventure for a future day.

Can you believe this January weather?

After finishing off my recent site, I was starting to get stressed out about finding new sites (and the unsustainability of this hobby will likely be a recurring theme of this blog).  But, I came up with a piece of public property that seemed completely out of the box, and decided to hit it.

The site was pretty dead, just an abused wheatie, and not much clad, which tells me it has been hit hard.  In these cases, I go for the trashiest section I can find, and hope to get stuff from the areas others were afraid to hit.

I got what I thought was a piece of trash, but when I pulled it out and cleaned the dirt off, I discovered it was an absolutely beautiful antique sterling silver spoon.  It is engraved “Regina 07” on the handle, and aside from one dimple in the bowl, it is in perfect condition.

This is one of my best relic finds (really one of my best finds ever), and the best silver spoon (or maybe even silver relic) I’ve seen posted on any of the forums (tho I’ve only been reading them since 2008).  [EDIT: I’ll admit I was very disappointed when American Detectorist (the forum where I am most active, and where I am a moderator), didn’t even post it on their banner.  I guess I have a higher opinion of it than others.    Oh well, I still like it, was thrilled to find it, and am proud of it].

Back to the site I hit on 1/10 to finish it up.  There was a decent section of promising terrain that I had not yet hit, which I figured would yield a few silvers.

But it was not to be, hour after hour of frustration lead to to not much.  It was literally the last section of the last rank of the grid, right on the edge of the site, that lead to a silver quarter, and only at one inch.  It had “that sound”, so I knew it was a silver, but surprising after hours of nothing to get a silver at 1 inch.  Just proves you have to hit the edge of sites.  (Although the site is private property, it is obvious this section had been hit before, unlike the section that yielded a double digit day).

Well, this was the farewell hunt at this site; I will remember it fondly.

Drove by an old-looking site that was being demolished to make way for some condos.  I asked the workers if they minded if I swung my detector around so long as I stayed out of the way — sure, no problem.

Hit wheatie after wheatie, but no silver.  Where was the silver?  Was getting frustrated, then decided to hit a pile of dirt that had been excavated, and got a clad quarter signal at one inch, but it turned out to be a 1798 draped bust large cent instead!  I wasn’t sure about it at first; I figured it was a junk token til I got it home and cleaned the dirt off of it.  From the looks of the excavation, it may have been a good foot or deeper before being excavated.

As it turned out, the site looked old, but it dated from the late 60s, which explains the wheats without the silver (the copper was obviously from prior use).  Better to be lucky than good, but when you get a good-looking drive by opportunity, you take it and ask questions later.

Went back to a site that had been very good to me, in fact, it is one of my double digit sites, that is, a site that gave up 10 or more silvers in one hunt.  This site is on private property (for which I have permission to hunt, of course).

But the site was rather stingy, giving up just two dimes.  Not bad, of course, but this was a section of the site that I’d never hunted, and I hoped it would put out as the rest of the site had.  Silver coins are hard to find, tho, so we’ll certainly take it.

First hunt of the year.  Amazing that it is possible to hunt around here this time of year.  I decided to hit the site where I found my 500th silver of the year last year.  How can you not?

This site will always hold a special place in my mind, as, last year when I was at about 450, very near the end of the year, and thinking about the impossible task of getting to 500, I was trying to budget out which sites would deliver the goods.  This site was an unknown, as it has been hunted hard, but occasional silver is there for the patient.  Problem is, when you are trying to reach a goal in this game by a certain time, patience is tough.  But, when I headed out to the site, at 499 that morning, I hit a beautiful sweet silver sound in the first 5 minutes of detecting.  It is a magical moment that I will never forget, and so, the site will always be a shrine for me.

Anyway, it was 62 degrees and sunny here in Chester County on Jan 7th, and my wife decided to tag along to my shrine.  I warned here that the good targets would be few and far between.

About a half hour in, I hit a big silver sound, which is almost always a canslaw or pipe fitting, and I told my wife that, but it turned out to be a walker.  First silver of the year was a walker, how sweet is that!  It was only 3 inches deep, but in a very out of the box section of the site.

Later, hit sweet sound of silver signal, and I said to my wife, that’s a silver dime, and sure enough, it was worn ’17 merc.  Nice way to start the year.

I’ve decided to start yet another blog.  This one will mostly feature my metal detecting finds, but will occasionally wander into just about anything, especially when the finds are running thin.

Last year I found 516 silver coins metal detecting.  For those who don’t follow the hobby, that’s alot — in my mind, 30 silvers is a good year.  Too bad I wasn’t blogging last year, tho I hope to someday write some articles about that amazing year.  For now, lets hope I get to 30 between now and the end of the year.  We’ll see.

[Note: if you continue reading this archive below this entry, you will see the entries for the Best Finds and Double Digit Days blog categories.  This is just a trick to make it really easy for me to leverage the blog software into multiple blogs quickly and without a hassle, cause I ain’t likin’ hassles, who is?]