For those who just looked at the pics and didn’t read yesterday’s post (and who can blame them), I make my milestone post today.  Too much going on yesterday, and 203 is just as round a number as 200 anyway.

Back to the same site I’ve been working off and on for the past month or so; it has now given up 32 silvers.  I keep thinking the remaining sections are less promising, due to the layout, and what was where historically, but I keep being amazed that there still seem to be a handful of silvers to be found as I press on.

It is interesting, the first half of the site was really clean, very few coins, and very little non-ferrous, modern trash.  Tells me it has been hit hard.  As I work towards the less promising sections, I am getting much more modern trash.  Remember, newbies, trash is your friend. It gives you both the fact that people really have been in that zone, and it scares the competition away.  The trash is what is telling me to press on, and what I have surmised, is that the competition also decided this zone was not worthwhile, or was scared away by the trash, and the density of coins, historically, is much lower, but cause it has been hit less hard, it is all working out to be a push.

Well, just one day of terrain left here; the least promising edge; finish it off with farewell, farewell tomorrow.

Now, that religious pendant seems interesting.  It seems to be both silver and gold.  It is stamped “1/20 12K ON STERLING”. Never seen anything like it before, the gold seems real, not plated. As near as I can tell from googling, I guess that means it is 1/20th gold by weight.

It weighs 4.23gr, meaning the gold is worth about $5.30, and the silver about $3.30.  Interesting.  Were I to send it in with a batch of silver or gold, tho, I would not get the other half, I suspect.  Interesting in any case.

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.

Been a while since I dropped a hat trick.  Same site I’ve been working over the past whenever, not the sort of site that gives up the double digit days, but patience and meticulous attention to detail reward the persistent with the shiny, and there is always the chance, tho I haven’t nailed it yet (outside of an abused copper posted recently), of nailing a real oldie.  Its a sparse target, out of the box sort of site, with 1700s usage, which all sounds good; the brutal mineralization tamping expectations, and perhaps finds.

All the silvers were hard.  The first was ferrous affected, sort of like a 35-50 silver, and I was surprised when the merc was in the tailings after digging.  The Q was deep and on its side, but, after 39 minutes of hunting, I had 2 silvers. OMG!  I love gettin’ em early cause it seems the rest of the day is on the house.

Those who read my MD writings, and I think that set amounts to one person, know that Friday is Farewell Farewell day, we detect in the morning, spend all the clad at a local restaurant on beer, beer, and more beer, then do more detecting after lunch (and try to compose the story we will blog when we get home).  My wife joined me today, which made it even more special (despite the fact that she hates beer, we all have our faults, don’t we?).

Its nice on Farewell Farewell day to get some silver before lunch, and even more fun to get some after.  The third silver was also hard. it was the barely legal 64 rosie, just on the edge of the site.  So many silvers are found on the edge of sites; why don’t detectorists go there?

Unfortunately, I failed to compose a story.  Its not that sort of site, as wasn’t that sort of day.  Oh well.  But, the derivation of the term “hat trick” turned out to be interesting; if you want a story tonite, wiki it.

Got out today to the site I’ve been working recently.  Blew it off yesterday cause it was grass mowing day (note to newbies — get friendly with the maintenance people and learn the grass mowing schedule (the detecting is always better the day after, for obvious reasons), and if you can get in a rhythm of cycling sites based on grass mowing day (and yes, it takes some luck, but it is possible), you will find more silver).

Today started out dead, dead, dead, dead, and, then, did I mention catastrophically dead?  My arm hurt from the lack of targets.  I even dig clad when in this state to rest my arm, and could not even find that.  But, that section of the site ended (which, BTW, was 2 feet at one edge from a silver from the other day, so it wasn’t totally irrational), and I moved on to another, less promising section.

But, first hit was an 11-47 on the E-Trac, which is always a clad quarter, and I dig ’em cause they become beer money, but I was shocked to see the shiny disk not 3 inches deep.  Thought it was a bottlecap at first.  Why 11-47, I dunno, must have been affected.

Next target was a deep, iffy signal, sort of like a 35-50 silver, but with more bounce, and more of a sweet sound, and it was a 1913 barber dime.  Nice.  This silver was definitely affected, as there was a marble-sized blob of iron in the hole with it..  Also pulled 6 wheaties from this section, the oldest being a 1930.

But, there’s more.  Check out this ring I dug.  The f’ing thing is the size of a quarter.  Who has fingers this big?  Too bad it was base metal; had it been gold, I could retire now.  Geez.  Also dug this cool looking 6gr silver ring, which I forgot to post with the above silver coins.  This ring marks my 100th career silver bling/relic (as opposed to coins, which is in a completely different ballpark, of course).

Got out to a site I hit a bit last week, to a section I thought was promising, as I hit 3 silvers just milling around rather than gridding last time, but today it was quite dead.  Did pull a couple of wheaties, a dateless buff, and a 7 gram silver ring that sounded like a walker.  I was hoping for my 10th silver half of the season, but was not to be.

Then, just literally with 10 minutes left before I had to get back to work, I pulled a hunt-saving rosie.  Was only at 3 inches as well.

I have a suspicion that there is plenty of deep silver at this site, and that I am just not seeing it.  The mineralization is just too brutal.  I love the E-Trac, and it has pulled 21 silvers out of this site, but I’m wondering if different technology, like a TDI, might be the way to go.  Not sure, really, and certainly cannot justify either the expense or the learning hassle of that experiment, but the scientist in me wants to know what technology cuts thru brutal mineralization (and can still discriminate iron trash).  I wonder if the new 3030’s software is better able to deal with mineralization.  This site would be the perfect one for head to head tests.

As I wrote yesterday, the group hunt site is “beyond hunted out”, and I was not disappointed in that analysis.  While I did pull 6 wheaties (and chose not to dig several others), which seems good for this site (and, actually, it is rather good, if you like wheaties (I don’t, FWIW)), I only pulled 1 deep clad, and deep clad is much more constructive than wheaties (someday, maybe I’ll write up why, tho this paragraph should have already given it away).

After about 4 hours, 25 guys had found 2 silvers, for a run rate of about 1 per 50 hours.  I try to avoid sites when that rate is worse than 1 per 2 hours or so.  But it was a nice day, a nice place, and it was great to hang out with other folks for a change.  Hard to believe, tho, that I found a walker at that site last time.

I rarely get to hunt on Saturdays, but the weather was beautiful, and I had a couple of hours to get out before my son’s soccer game.

Hit the same site I’d been hitting off and on recently, and managed to score a silver quarter.  This is from the “obvious” section to hit, and I rarely hit those, but figured I would, just to see.  The quarter was well-masked by iron, otherwise this zone was completely dead, as is typical of the “obvious” sections.

Tomorrow is the group hunt.  I don’t expect to find anything, as the place is beyond hunted out, but I did get a walker (deep and on its side), last time.  So, you never know.  I like alot of the people who will be there, so that is always fun.

(man, this is a crappier than usual pic)

Made it back to the site of a couple days ago where I pulled a copper.  I was excited about this section cause coppers are generally constructive, and it is also a section that seems like it is never mowed, yet is was this week, meaning the tall grass could have kept other folks out in the past.

But, it took over an hour before I got my first coin of any kind.  I will tell you, that is frustrating. And after about 2.5 hours of not much, only a wheatie and a couple clads, (but some encouraging high-tone junk), I decided the zone was a dud after all and wandered around a bit.  Nothing happening doing that either.

So I started gridding onto the edge of a previously productive section, but that dudded as well.

With an hour left before I had to get back to work, I started wandering again and hit a rosie, what we call the hunt saver.  At that point, decided to hit some really old stonework in the woods, and the path that lead from it, but that turned up empty.

Decided to focus, then, on the area near the rosie, and pulled a quarter and dime just before I had to leave.  Very sweet.  Both were deep, but the quarter sang out sweet, and I knew it was a silver before I dug it.  I guess I’ll be trying to focus more on that section going forward.

Back to my newbie site, this is actually a very difficult site to detect, but I did manage to squeeze one silver coin out of it today.

And it was quite a difficult pull.  The strategy with working most public property sites, and especially this one, is to stick to the edges and the trashy areas.  Turns out, that at this site, the edges happen to be the trashiest, which allows us to pull some silver, cause you have 2 factors going for you.

There wasn’t much going on in the small zone I worked today, but I did hear a silver amongst the din of various low and high sounding trash.  These are usually fairly easy to extract, as the din of the trash bounds the good target, and the E-Trac’s absolutely worthless pinpointing function is not a factor (hopefully the new machine’s pinpointing will be as good as a Radioshack detector’s, hopefully, tho I’m not optimistic, it will be better).

But, I could not find the silver.  I opened her up, and found this trash and that, spent about 10 minutes in the rocky soil, and decided to cut my losses.  One of the trashes (that I didn’t pull, I only do bottles) was a canslaw, and they can sound like silver, so I figured that was that.

But, after finishing out the grid, and finding nothing, it kept gnawing at me, so I went back, still heard it in there, worked on it for a good time more, and finally got it out of there.  I was actually shocked when I saw it. It was in the rocks, so all the pounding on it scratched it, fortunately its just a bulk silver (a 1918 tho, kinda old). This is the first time I’ve ever given up on a target, gone back, and found it was a silver.  Not one of my better days, but we’ll take it.  Finding silvers in canslaw trash is hard.

It is interesting to note that I also found a wheatie directly below a piece of canslaw in this zone.  Are you kidding me?  How does the E-Trac hear both targets (which do sound different), and present them?  (They sort of oscillate). Also. this is the third silver I’ve found within 10 feet of a tot lot at this site; and I’ve seen other detectorists in here, in and around that tot lot.  No doubt scared off by the trash. Sometimes better to be good than lucky.

Got out today for the first time, I think, since last Thursday or Friday.  I had a nice silver streak going, but today it was snapped at 11.  Oh well, all things must pass.  Hopefully the ensuing slump will do the same, and rather quickly.  I’ve only had one stretch of 2 days without silver since April of last year.  That’s good, as these things go (or so I think, anyway).

I did, however, pull a copper (a large cent, dated anywhere from 1817 to 1857), which is quite abused, as you can see (well, “quite abused” is kind; its garbage, as you can see).  This is the sort of thing they say on the forums: “only a detectorist could love it”.

Well, I’m a detectorist, and I hate it.  Who could love it?.  I’d much rather pull the proverbial 64 rosie with a hole in it, or a clad quarter, which is worth 6 times as much (never let an economist write MD blogs, or especially never let a cynic, who supposedly knows the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. But, is there a difference between the two?).

The coin does have a value, tho, and that is what we call “validating the zone”.  (It also has a value in allowing me to blog tonite; who would blog a clad quarter?). Says the zone has old coins.  Problem is that I covered the zone pretty good (or “well”, as my wife would say, and she’s always right), and this was the only old coin.  Maybe there are more, we’ll see, but I’m not too optimistic.

Same site, different day.  Had trouble with the ring, it was only at 4 inches, but it was tough to hear at first.  The auto rec was only 10 in that section.  I gave up on that section and moved onto others, and found a couple of dimes.  I’m losing hope of finding a real old one here due to the mineralization.

Went back to the same site as the last few days, and pulled 3 more silvers, two quarters and a dime. It  was a beautiful day, and I wanted to hunt all day, but my pinpointer battery died.  Of course I had a spare, and of course it was dead.  This is the 2nd or 3rd time this has happened with this cheap generic brand; I never thought battery brand matters, but apparently so.

After yesterday’s post, today’s hunt gives an inverted ratio at this site, 7 quarters, 6 dimes, and a war nickel.  This has never even come close to happening before.  While the sample size is a little small, it is fine, especially as the clad is showing the same inversion.

So, probably not been hunted too hard (at least with any skill or with a machine that can deal with the mineralization), probably a low density site, but most of all, the mineralization is brutal.  Auto rec in the 13-17 range. Yikes.  I feel lucky I’ve pulled what I have from this site.

Today marked my ninth straight hunt of pulling at least one silver coin.  A far cry from my record of 52 straight, but we’ll take it.  Silver coins are still hard to find, and every one is a gift, especially as me and my competition continue to hunt the area out.

On the subject of stats, economists like to look at data, and look for explanations of that data.  That can even have relevance to metal detecting.  For example, my current site has given up 11 silver coins: 5 quarters, 5 dimes, and 1 war nickel.  This ratio is consistent with modern change (and while I don’t track pennies cause they ain’t silver, the quantity I am finding is consistent with modern change as well).

Normally, at a silver site, the ratio of dimes to quarters will range from 3:1 (good), to 10:1 (normal), or even worse.  These ratios, skewed well off the modern change ratio, suggest the site was hunted, especially in the 80s (cause quarters are easier to find than dimes). The worse the ratio, the harder it has been hunted.

Judging how hard a site has been hunted is important.  You don’t want to waste your time at a hard-hunted site while the competition is picking low-hanging fruit elsewhere; you need to be the one picking that low-hanging fruit, and come back to the hard-hunted site later.

But this one is hard.  The ratio suggests that it has not been hunted (and given that it is a permission site, that is possible).  OTOH, the quantity suggests that it may have been (its not alot of quantity per square area).  OTOH, the research suggests the site may have had a low density usage during the silver era, meaning the quantity and ratio of finds are consistent with a low usage, never been hunted site.  OTOH, the mineralization is god-awful; I can’t get an auto rec above 19, and even some of the quarters have iffy signals, suggesting many deep dimes may be being masked by mineralization, skewing the data!

Are you kidding me?  These are the things an economist thinks about while metal detecting, all in the name of optimization.  My guess is that there are not many economists who metal detect.  My guess is that there are even less that blog.  And, after that, even fewer readers. You (if you are not a searchbot), are likely unique.  Cheers!

But, the question remains, why hunt such as site?  Cause its damn old, and there could be a big one here, but with the crappy dirt, it may be tough to hear it.  The hope is it has not been detected before (giving you a shot at a shallow big one), but the evidence is inconclusive.  At least the Dismal Science gives you a way to think about the problem, and that’s what I’m trying to do.  Cut and run, or press on?  Tough call.

Got out late, due to work issues, then it started to rain, and while the rain doesn’t bother me, it totally hoses out the E-Trac.  I want that new waterproof one.

In the meantime, I pulled a pair of quarters, 3 wheaties, and only 5 clads,  That’s some nice efficiency.  One of the wheaties is a 1923.  I don’t get ’em out of the 40s and 50s too often, so that’s cool.  Its also one I’ve never gotten before.  Not counting mintmarks, I need a 1912, 1922, and 1932.  Have a 1943, which is probably the hardest one I have.

So, check this out.  The above pic is all the targets that came out of one hole.  Those chicken nugget like things are actually blobs of iron.  You can see how big they are relative to the Q.

So, I hit the target, and it sounds like silver, but not the cleanest signal.  Open it up and pull out one of those big chunks.  Ok, probably what I call “bulbous ferrous”, those big hunks of iron that can sometimes give a silver-like signal.

So, I rescan (as always), and still hear the damn silver in there.  Open her up again, and pull out another chunk.  At this point, I figure I better poke the pinpointer around in there, and see if there is silver in there or not.  Of course there is, and I get a hit on the pinpointer, but its not silver, its yet another iron turd.  D’oh!

So, I close her up again and rescan, and damn thing still sounds like silver.  This time, I get the goods, and find the quarter.

The E-Trac never gave up on that silver tone, and glad I didn’t either.  I just love the E-Trac’s ability to pull silver out of the iron.

As for the rest of the hunt, started out slow — this site is thin on targets, and today was no exception, working and working and working, got one rosie, but not much else.  Decided to bail on that section of the site and work another, which gave up a couple of quick wheats, which is always constructive, but then not a single target of any kind (including conductive trash), which is a bad sign.

Back to the original section, which had given up a few coins, and more dead, and I was about to call it a day, but hit another rosie.  Kept going for a while, then the war nik, and a pair of Qs in quick succession (including the one above), for a fivespot on the day.  Had to go to work at that point, so that was that.

Oh my, that’s an ugly sight, isn’t it?  $5.15 worth of the dull stuff.  Maybe I can get a bag of chips and a soda, or something.

I shouldn’t be so derisive, cause this is my all time favorite site, haven given up 140 silvers, including today’s hunt.

The interesting thing about all that clad, tho, is that it is from a section that I have previously worked 3 times before!  This is my quadruple dip.  First, I hit the site normally, pulling mountains of silver, and ignoring the clad.  Then, they stripped some dirt off (which, of course, had all the ignored clad), piled it in huge piles, and I hit the underlying layer, pulling more silver that was pretty much exposed.  Then, they pushed that dirt around, revealing more silver.

Then, just recently, they took those old dirt piles from step two, and pushed them back over the site (with all that clad I ignored).  This created an inversion situation where you can have modern clad at 4-6 inches, and silvers at 1 inch, and that’s what I was seeing.  (Of course, there was clad at 1 inch also). Not only that, for some reason, TID on the E-Trac breaks down in this situation; pretty much every silver dime I found at one inch or less in the pushed around dirt and disturbed dirt after they first started construction rang at 12-44.  Quarters were a little better, but not conclusive.  Ergo, you had to dig all that 12-44 clad to make sure you got the shiny. Yikes.

I did get some more shiny today, tho, a Q and a rosie, as well as an ugly ring, and an old charm.  I also pulled 14 wheats, which is a total ripoff; generally my ratio is 2.5:1 wheats to silver, meaning I should have pulled about 5 silvers.  Of course, on my first pass thru here, I ignored some wheaties as well, so those got revenge today also.

Thanks to minelabforums.com for voting my 1777 Spanish 2 reale as coin find of the month for April.  Thanks to my facebook MD friends for also recognizing it as an awesome find.  This is a hard coin to find, and you don’t see all that many of them posted.

And, this stuff actually matters (and its not about me an my finds).  Too bad not everyone understands this.

Today’s plan was to attempt to get permission at a site I’ve been looking at for a while, and stop off at a park on the way that I’ve never hunted before.

The park was a bit of a dud.  I got some deep clad, which is usually constructive, but no wheaties, and no silver.  The ground was pretty bad, auto rec in the 16-19 range, which no doubt was a part of the problem.

I also had the cops called on me while at this park.  This is the first time this has happened to me.  The cop told me that someone was complaining that I was “digging holes and not filling them in”.  This was odd, since no one else was in the park.  The cop said they probably called from one of the nearby houses.

He asked if I was digging holes and not filling them in.  I said no, and described how I cut a plug, and how there was no evidence of my presence.  He looked at the grass, said no problem, carry on, which I did for about a half hour.  I guess whatever asshole called had to claim that I was not filling in the holes, otherwise the cops wound not have bothered to come out at all.  At least I know there is a asshole in that neighborhood now, tho if there was actually evidence of silver in this park, I’d spend more time there, just to give them something to stew about.

Onto the site I wanted permission at, and it took a bit of time to get to the right person, but once I did, they said sure, but there’s nothing here, it would all be in that field over there.  Well, the field dates to the silver era, which is fine, but I was hoping for permission for the whole site, as there is certainly probably something “here” (which happens to be some of the older sections).  This individual was very difficult to talk to, as he would just keep saying — there is nothing anywhere but in the field.

So, its not clear what my permission includes except the field, so I decided I’d at least start there, and once comfortable at the site, work towards affirmative permission for other parts of the site some other time.

But the field had been hunted hard, very hard.  Which was surprising.  There is public property about a mile down the road that had given me 47 silvers, barbers, walkers, SLQs; how could this site, on private property, with poorer prospects, be hunted hard?  I’ll never figure this game out.

The targets were very sparse, but in 3 hours, I got 2 dimes and 4 wheaties, and 2 or 3 pieces of deep clad.  There just wasn’t much, even trash.  The auto rec was, like at the last site, still 16 to 19, again telling me that the dirt was really bad, and that deep targets would tough.  I cranked the sens to man 30 anyway and put up with it.  The silvers were deep, iffy signals.  Type of site where you had to go slow, and be willing to dig alot of ferrous.

The merc, tho, is a 1916.  My heart always pumps when I find one of those, but it was not to be.

Today I was fortunate enough to hunt the private yard I mentioned yesterday.  The home was built in the 1920s, and, I was told, had never been hunted.

I managed to pull 4 silvers in a 4.5 hour hunt, as well as 5 wheaties and some sort of Chinese coin.  The mercs are dated 1919 and 1920, while the wheaties are on the old side as well, 1911, 1918, 1920, 1926, 1938.  Interesting that there were not 40s and  50s wheaties.  All the coins were shallow, due to very rocky soil.  The Chinese coin was in a spill with 2 of the wheaties, (seems odd), so I guess its from the 20s as well.

On one of the forums, there was a debate as to whether the front yard, back yard, or side yard of private property was the best for finding old coins.  Sounds like a stupid debate to me — IMHO, it depends where people hung out, and that depends on solar exposure in the afternoon, and where the clothesline was (which also, of course, depends on solar exposure), and where shade trees were (which sometimes indicates where the clothesline was).  All perhaps can be figured out by careful research and observation of the site.

In this case, tho, its a fairly small yard, so I figured I’d grid the thing out, and see where things fell.  As it turned out, all 5 wheaties and the 2 mercs were in the front yard, the rosie was in the side yard, and the Q in the back yard.  That said, I only did about 5% of the back yard, while the other yards are finished.  So we’ll see if the backyard gives up anything else when I go back.

One other point, (and, as expected), 3 of the wheaties and both of the mercs were in the path from the front door to the mailbox.  Of course I focused on this the hardest.  That, of course, is usually in the front yard, but that does not make the front yard necessarily better.  The path to the mailbox is a specific and distinct paradigm that should always be focused on.

Today’s plan was to hunt a private property site, but my permission allows such only if the owner is home.  I of course had a backup plan, and of course the owner was not home.  Not only that, the backup site was taken over; it had become a temporary parking lot for construction equipment.

The backup site, in reality, is a small section of a larger site I’ve been working on and off the whole year, so I headed off to a less promising section of that site.  It was a weird hunt — memorial at 3 inches, memorial at 3 inches, memorial at 3 inches, memorial at 3 inches, memorial at 3 inches, walker at 3 inches, memorial at 3 inches, memorial at 3 inches, and so on.  Just weird.

There was lots of big canslaw, and what I think was happening was this.  The competition thought the walker was just another canslaw.  But, on the E-Trac, it has “that sound”.  I knew it was a walker before I dug it.  Cherrypickers be damned, score one here for the good guys.

I would have liked to hunt the area around the walker the rest of the day, but I imagine the cherrypicker got the dimes and quarters (tho of course I’ll be back someday), I mean, I couldn’t even muster a wheatie in this zone.  But, it was raining, and I had to do other errands.  If I can’t get on the private property tomorrow, I’ll work around this zone.

This is my 9th silver half dollar (7th walker), of the year.  Hard to believe.