Oh my, here comes a story like no other I’ve done.  We’ll see how it goes.  JK Rowling suggests that the wand finds the wizard (forget the fact that everything she has done is so obviously derivative that crediting her seems silly).  Neuropsychologists suggests that the words find the tongue (cf, Dennett, Daniel, for the best work on this subject).  Lets hope the story finds the writer, but I’m zero optimistic that that has happened (but at least it may provide some much needed humor).  So, here goes.

But, as much as I love the opening paragraph, it just ain’t gonna happen today, and that’s too bad, cause it was good.  I was gonna talk about dreams within dreams, and even use the word oneironaut for possibly the first time in a metal detecting blog.

But, today was just rough in the end, so I’ll just post the finds and go to bed.

Didn’t get out much past Monday’s 11 silver blowout, mostly cause its the last week before school.  Got out yesterday, to clean up the 20% of the pond dredge I’d written about in past entries (and was skunked), then went to a new site for some soundings (and was skunked); site has some potential, but is low on the list.

Got out today and did a bit better.  Day didn’t start out well — the site I wanted to hit was an old honeyhole that had given up 127 silvers, and I wanted to give my 13 inch unit a spin on the site to see what I missed in the past, but the site was in use in one hot section, and overgrown in the other (tho the good news is that they were mowing).  It did leave me to believe why I had such success at that site tho, perhaps it is overgrown most of the time, and I hit it when it was not.

So, onto the backup site, which is one of my shrines, the site I got my 500th silver at last year.  Was giving up less than bupkis, but eventually I hit a deep 12-30 on the E-Trac, and at a site with no targets, you dig everything.  All I could think of while I was digging was what silver could be at 12-30, and the only possibility (in US money), is a trime, but it seemed too deep for that.  What other coins?  Only a $5 gold at that number.  Good luck with that. We hoped.  We prayed to all the gods we can count, and it did turn out to be gold, an 18K wedding band at 8 inches.  We’ll take it.  No question in my mind that it is old (I’ve dug IHs and coppers shallower at this site, and besides, 18K for a wedding band went out a long time ago, tho I don’t know when).

Gold is awesome, but those who read my blog know its about only three things, the shiny, the AG, and the silver (notice the order of the title words of this entry).  And it wasn’t happening at this site, so I moved on. (gold is circumstantial; silver is systemic).

Moved on to perhaps the most difficult site to pull silver in Chester County; it frustrates me time and time again, but it was there, and on the way to the supermarket.  And besides, I wanted to test my big 13 inch unit at this site.  And I did pull a silver dime, and I was pretty excited about that, cause it was the clearest silver signal I’ve ever gotten at this site.  Not sure if it was the new coil or not (we can only hope), but will take that 54 rosie.

Will this new coil open up hard, hunted out sites?  I hope so, but I’m not terribly optimistic.  Despite the hunted out nature of Chester County’s hardest silver site, that rosie was not particularly deep.  So who knows?

Scored my 3rd double digit day of the year, and 13th of my career.  Double digit days are better than s^H, well, better than a good day at work.

This is a new site, a large door knocking site.  The good news is that I got permission.  The bad news is that I got it for only today.  Are you kidding me?  I’m no Goes4Ever sort of door knocking god, but I’ve done a fair bit of it, and the experience is either, “get lost”, or “no problem, come whenever you want”.  Who says “yes, but only for today”?

My guess is that it is someone who wants to say no, but doesn’t want to to your face, so they say no in general, but yes to your face.  Who knows?  Said the land had other users, and it would not be appropriate for me to be there when they were there.  What? So I says what about other days when said users are not there?  He didn’t want to deal with it, and I felt even my day was at risk at that point, so I thanked him and moved on.

And I went as long as could on the day, and dropped 11 silvers.  Site looks good.  Too bad only the nighthawks and others of questionable ethics will get the rest of the shiny.  Knowing me, I’ll grow a beard and be back in a month.  We’ll see.  But you take what you can get in this world, and double digit days are sweet indeed.  All the silvers are bulk; the oldest is a 1923 merc.

Also scored a pair of silver blings, a sterling heart charm and an abused ring.

I managed to score a merc during this morning’s three hour hunt.  Also scored a sterling religious charm.  Both were in the dredgings of the swimming hole I wrote about in the past, and both are therefore a bit tarnished from sitting at the bottom of a pond for 80 years.  The merc is a 1926.

Only 3 silver coins from this zone, I expected more.  There is still about 20% to go; I’m not sure if I will ever get to it or not.  We’ll see.

Friday is farewell, farewell day, and I am pretty much farewelling my latest site.  Not a bad site, but I actually found a bit less than I expected there.

The hunt did not start off well.  I started by finishing off a zone in the woods near an old swimming hole, where I had found some wheats and a buff, but outside of a couple more wheats, all I found was a yellow jacket nest.  Ouch!

I was stung 6 times, and yeah, I ran out of there, almost jumping in the pond.  They sting for a few hours, then they start to itch. And they still itch (I’m actually writing this Sun AM).

And the hunt didn’t get much better.  No silver, just one more wheat.  Farewell farewell day is often like that — you obviously hit the most promising locations first. Many zones left unexplored at the site, but there is so much fill and grade, that it didn’t seem worth it.  I did pass thru these here and there tho, just to be sure.

The site gave up 36 silvers, which is a bit less than I expected.  There was an old ballfield that I expected 15 or 20 from alone, based on past experience and the clad and wheaties it was giving up, but it only gave up 1.  This was the zone of “Reason X” from previous entries.

The site had about 30 zones or so, but only one of them gave it up in bulk, giving up 19.  No other zone gave up more than three.  Go figure.  The site has been hit hard (probably without permission, as 2 detectorists without permission showed up while I was there), but why didn’t they hit this one zone?  It was a rather obvious potential hot spot.  Who knows?

Were it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality, giving up 2 barber halves, a walker, and a 2 reale.  These are all tough coins, unless your honeyhole is Ebay 🙂  It also gave up 11 coppers, which is alot for a site, including an 1808 half cent, and 1800 large cent.  The latter two are abused, but still made my top 30 finds list, as did the 2 reale of course.  It was a very nice site in the end.

The one thing I will say, tho, is that I spent way too much time in this large, non-descript field.  That field gave up both a barber half and a 2 reale in the same hunt, in a fairly quick span of time.  I figured the odds were good that some more old coins would pop out, but hour after hour of gridding this huge field produced nothing but some wheaties and a buff.  But I think you have to try.

In retrospect, I think I was in a bit of denial.  The barber half was ferrous affected, and by the location of an old road thru the field that I figured out the location of from old maps, and the 2 reale was deep and on its side.  Both are tough technical finds, and the one is a circumstantial find, thus leading me to over estimate the potential of the field.  It had been pounded hard in retrospect (the lack of coppers, buttons, and buckles in this zone gave this fact away), but after 2 killer finds, you feel the need to press on despite this evidence.  Not a great decision in retrospect, but it was fun nonetheless.

Well, I have 3 free hours this Sun AM, and I am going to take one more pass thru a zone that I failed to complete.  Hopefully one more silver will pop out, but I am not optimistic.

I fought my back issue Tuesday and Wednesday to detect a bit.  Was skunked on Tue, but it was an old field, an all or nothing site.  Wed was closer to a zone that had given up the goods in the past, and closer to an old building.  I did not recover many targets in this zone, but got a deep silver quarter (it was in a wet zone, and you can see later in the post how years of mush and standing water have abused it), and a rather nice copper for Chester County in a drier section, an 1800 draped bust large cent.

It is still abused, of course, but does have full liberty and some hair detail.  If you can believe it, it is one of the best coppers I have ever dug, and will likely earn a low spot on my best finds list.  It is also my 20th copper of year, a personal record.  It came in at 11-45 on the E-Trac, and was only 4 inches deep.   It was right on the edge of the site, near a road.  Often you can get coins others have missed near the edge of zones.  (This is a private property site which I have permission to detect, but during my time here, two other detectorists have come on the property without permission.  I may blog about that someday, and the lack of ethics in the hobby in general.  We’ll see).

Speaking of which: Last Sunday’s hunt, mentioned Monday, was a scam.  I wrote a long story Tuesday about it on how I used economics to work it out about an hour in, and then was lucky enough to see three pieces of physical evidence to confirm it.  I pulled the story, cause a), it sucked, b) it was was too long, and c) the whole thing really isn’t worth ink or server space.  I guess I’ll leave Monday’s stub up, which was put up instead of a story to see if others would work it out as well.  I’m happy to report that at least 2 others did.  The coolest thing about this, tho, was it was really cool to get a real life puzzle to work out.  I guess that was the find of the day for me.

Went to a group hunt with some other SE PA folks yesterday.  The site was some old fields and woods.  I did not expect to find much at such a site, and was not disappointed on that score, finding only an abused Indian head and a 1917 wheatie.  I think about 4 or 5 silver coins were found by 20 guys over 4 or 5 hours, so I should not feel disappointed on that score. Had a good time anyway tho, and it was nice to meet up with some old friends.

Sadly, however, I strained a muscle in my back, and it is pretty bad, so I may be grounded at home for a while, with minimal detecting, at least for the near term.  We’ll see, and lets hope not.

Not much detecting this week, but got out a couple of times.  Pulled a barely legal rosie the other day from the site of the pond dredging I wrote about last time, and today pulled 3 silvers, the quarter from the pond dredging dirt and two dimes from another zone, as the dredge dirt, while it gave up a few silvers, was slow going, and I needed a change.

You can see how sitting in the water all those years affected the two from the pond dirt.  The one other rosie is pretty beat as well, tho.

One other hunt was an excavated site that I had never been to before; I wasn’t sure what to expect, but in the past I have done very well at an excavated site.  This site was a skunk, tho, as the excavation was too deep (about 12 inches, and I didn’t find a single coin that deep).  I hit the tailing piles for a bit, and did find a few coins, including a wheatie, but no silver.  Site seemed pretty hunted out, tho I did get some very deep clad in the non-excavated section, so perhaps there is hope.

Also today dug a 1915D wheatie, which fills a hole in my dug wheatie album.

After that amazing midweek hunt of a barber half, 2 reale, large copper and about 10 wheaties, I expected a letdown, but it was more like a crash.

I obviously went back to that site, looking for more.  Wouldn’t you?  I didn’t have time to write about it at the time, but the site is a huge field, the sort of site you can detect for 6 hours, and not dig a single coin.  Well. that’s what happened, pretty much, over the next couple of days (actually I dug a half-decent buff, and a 1920 wheatie.  That’s it).  Amazing I dug those two big silvers before (it wasn’t total luck as one was beside where an old road was that I managed to figure out based on an old map and the noise — obvious tip: if you are field hunting, and get alot of noise all of the sudden, work that area harder; but the 2 reale was total random luck).

I also spent some time in the woods when it got really hot.  The woods are near an old swimming hole that gave up all those wheaties and a merc on that day, and they were not woods back in the day — so sometimes you can get some out of the box stuff in these situations.  Moreover, coins tend to not sink in the woods, so I pulled 2 wheaties, the earliest being a 1913, and another buff (dateless and abused; not shown).  No silver from this site tho.  The woods are a bit thorny, but I want to try to squeeze a silver out of them some other time.

Back in the field, I also dug this thing.  I thought it was going to be an old coin when it rang up, cause it was deep and had a nice sound.  But, it was this thing — I have no clue what it is, and to add insult to injury, it is not even silver.

So, two days without a silver, snapping my streak at 14.  Not bad, as these things go, but its rare that I have 2 skunks in a row.

Yesterday I had to take my son somewhere, and this is to a town that I swear the whole town is hunted out.  I have never pulled a single silver from several promising sites in this town.  But since I had to be there for several hours, I decided to hit a site I had hit once before, that I was sure was hunted out.  If I had a silver streak going, I prolly would not count this hunt.

But, I was surprised to find 3 wheaties over a 4 hour hunt.  Still hunted out, tho.  I will get a silver out of this town someday.  So, 3 hunts in a row without silver.  That hasn’t happened to me since March or April of 2011, I think. At least the hunts were all known low probability going in.

This morning I needed a fix, so back to a site that had been quite good, and I was hoping it had a bit more juice in it.  It was really too hot, and the ground too hard to be hunting, but it is so addicting.  I was skunked there too; all I could say is give me one damn rosie and I’ll go home.

So I went to the location of where there is all this dirt from dredging an old swimming hole; I had found some old coins near the swimming hole, and had high hopes for this dirt, and I had already found a couple of wheaties in it.  The problem with this sort of site is that it is even more rock hard than normal field or park grass/dirt, so I was saving it for after some good rain.

But, I needed a fix, so I hit it.  One thing that is interesting about hunting these sorts of tailings/scrapings/dredgings is that TID on the E-Trac doesn’t really work for some reason.  You can get a 12-44 an inch deep, and it be a silver.  That is always a clad dime in natural settings, and can safely be ignored.  And other TIDs tend to be wonky, and of course you can’t go by depth either.

Which means you have to dig all that clad cause you can’t tell, and there was tons of it.  All I could say was gimme a damn rosie and I’ll get out of this heat and rock hard dirt, and play board games with my family, or go play pinball or something.

I had high hopes for this dredging zone given how old the place it came from was, but it was just clad city.  I expected one silver for every 6 clads, based on a couple of assumptions (including the fact that I doubt it was ever detected), but it simply wasn’t to be.  Eventually I pulled the damn rosie and was out of there.

Well, that’s 4 hunts in one story.  A few wheaties, a couple of buffs, a rosie, and a whatchamacallit.  Due to the heat and the rock hard dirt, I don’t know how much digging I’ll be doing going forward, but fields and woods have some appeal, as the misery is mitigated somewhat.  We’ll see.

As much as today’s hunt deserves a story, it is way past my bedtime, so it will have to be brief (which, of course the way I blog, is relative).

First part of the hunt I dug 17 straight pennies. Nothing else. Unreal.  11 wheaties, 1 abused large cent, and 5 memorials.  Most of the wheaties were old; 6 of them were 1920 or before, one was 1923, and one was dateless, but I believe in the teens.  Where’s the old silver?  Where’s any silver? By my ratio of about 2.5×1, I should have had 4 silvers by now. (The copper is my 19th of the year, which ties a personal record).

Eventually I got a 1929 merc, and started to feel better about getting some silver.

And then I got not one, but two big ol’ silvers.  First was a 1902 barber half that rang really weird, bouncing between iron and a silver quarter; I can see how this may have been passed over.  When I first saw it in the hole, the way it was covered and angled, it looked like a Morgan dollar.  For a moment I though I had my first Morgan, but it wasn’t to be.  This is my 5th career barber half, and 12th silver half of the year.

Shortly after that, I got a deep dime signal, I’m thinking maybe seated, but it turned out to be a 1807 Spanish 2 reale on its side.  Sweet!  My 5th career Spanish silver, and my 2nd 2 reale.

I’m not a big relic hunter.  In fact, I’m pretty disappointed when I dig a relic unless three things are true: it is in good shape, its general age can be determined, and its general purpose can be determined.  I rarely find anything that meets those criteria, but it was a slow day today, so we have relics to blog about.

Today started out finishing off a small section of a zone that had given up some old coins recently (and I always save the least promising sections for last), and then wandering around a site from zone to zone looking for hotspots.  I hate these sorts of days, cause they offer little promise (I’m much prefer the certainly of working a hot zone (who doesn’t?)), but sometimes these days work out.

First target of the day was a big old buckle. I don’t even know if it is a shoe or belt buckle, but I do think it is kinda old, as it is copper, and its depth and location are consistent with some large coppers.  These are always a disappointment for me, as they sound so good in the ground, like a big ol’ silver half dollar. (If you know how old it is, e-mail me (comments are still a hassle)).

Onto a zone that seemed like it could be promising, like hold some really old stuff, and there was good news, and bad news.  The good news was that it appears it had never been detected.  The bad news was also that it appears it had never been detected.  I surmise that perhaps it had been detected lightly or not at all by the number of deep, high tone objects I was digging.  Tons of stuff like this —

Detecting these sorts of sites is really hard, especially when the ground is rock hard, cause you get your hopes up on every high tone, and there are tons of them, only to dig junk (which some people, of course, call relics). My skill is more along the lines of working sites where alot of this stuff has been cleaned out by others, cause, as those who read my blog know, I don’t really like to dig all that much, cause it is so costly.

Anyway, this relic at least can be approximately dated, which is kinda cool.  Looks like the late 1800s. In addition to the “PATENTED” and the dates, it also says MANUFACTURED BY BERGMA?N & CO NY:  I have no idea what it is and it appears that it is smashed.  I imagine it was part of a larger machine of some sort.

Assuming the unidentifiable letter is an “N”, which seems reasonable, brings up something interesting. Apparently, Bergmann & Co was a company organized in 1876  by Bergmann and Thomas Edison for the manufacture of telegraph, telephone and other electrical apparatus.  Another quote from the article:

Early in 1881 Sigmund Bergmann … went into equal partnership with Edison and Edward Johnson and opened a shop in New York which was to supply lamp sockets, switches, fuses, light fixtures, chemical meters, and other instruments, all devised by Edison. Bergmann, who proved to be an able manufacturer, had to expand his quarters within a year and employ three hundred men.

So, maybe it is part of a really old light bulb from the Edison era.  Who knows?

In any case, this means the zone is promising at least, and deserves a good going over.  I only found one old coin here, tho, a 1920 wheatie.

I decided to move on, partly cause the dirt was so rock hard, and my purpose today was to sort of to catalog zones anyway.  Ended up in a shadier, moister zone where the digging was easier, and managed to pull a barely legal hunt-saving quarter.

Made it out this morning with my wife to the same site as recent hunts, but into a different zone.  I expected this zone to be trashier, so I started with the stock coil.  Targets were much thinner than the previous zone, but we managed to get a silver Q in the first hour.  It was only 3 inches deep, on its side and in a tangle of roots.  It seemed clear that this zone had been detected pretty heavily before, as there were fewer targets than in recent sections.

Got a deep, iffy signal in trash, and figured it was a silver, and I wanted to see if the Ultimate 13 could separate like the stock coil, so, as my first test, I changed coils.  Could not hear the target as well with the Ultimate 13 unit, but the whole test was a failure, as I did not even manage to recover the target, so it was likely a false or iron; it usually is, but who knows?  Given the hassle of changing coils, I don’t know how much science I’ll be able to do on comparing the coils.

My wife had to leave, and I kept the Ultimate 13 on for the rest of the hunt, even tho the area was pretty trashy; prolly too trashy for this coil, but I did manage to squeak out a couple more silvers — another Q and a badly tarnished 1917 merc.   Both were relatively shallow.

So, coil works in a trashy zone, but is very noisy, and there was no evidence it can separate deep targets, tho it did the other day in a less noisy zone.  Of course, the stock coil found nothing deep in the trash today either.

Here comes another story.  Lets do this baby.

(First, its seems likely that all my readers either live in Chester County, or one that borders it (except, perhaps, circumstantial AD spillovers today), and they know how I adore the beautiful winding roads, tucked in scenery, awesome historical sites and buildings, VFNP, and of course the best beer in the country (and if you haven’t heard of Victory Beer, you will)).

(Totally going like a Friday afternoon story so far, isn’t it?  So, where’s the Farewell Farewell?  Problem is that I did Farewell Farewell when I got permission to do the site (cause I gave myself a 1% chance at the permission — and then got it), so its just a lame story today).

So, where’s the metal detecting? OK, check this out.  What is this rare and beautiful object that I dug today at 7 inches? —

Without scale (except for the fingerprints), of course, it is impossible to guess in a reasonable way.  Anything from a large copper to an abused Indian or wheatie seems like a reasonable guess.  Maybe even a George II or a half cent sitting in the ground for over 200 years.

But, since this a blog (and, at it turns out, my blog), we know that it is something else, and it turns out that that beautiful copper is a 1960 clad memorial penny (don’t ask me how long it took me to figure that out; both the date and back are clear with a lot of effort).  Are you kidding me?  It took me a good 15 minutes to dig thru rocky ground to get that baby,

And no, its not the time that bothers me.  And no, its not the confusion as to how a 1960 memorial penny could sink 7 inches in rocky ground that bothers me.  Its the abuse.  Are you kidding me?  A 1960 memorial penny looking like that?

I hate Chester County cause of the pathologically acidic soil.  Cause of what it does to perfectly good coppers.  The pH of Chester County soil ranges from 6.2 to 6.8, and you don’t need a pHD in chemistry to know that that can’t be good for copper, tho if you are gonna get an education and live around here — my tip is that the plumbers (and there are tons of them), make a living replacing and repairing copper pipe that is destroyed by our beautiful and scenic and low pH soil.

Now, as to the coppers, had a record day today, dug 4 of ’em, all abused by the aforementioned low pH.

Are you kidding me?  Some folks die for 4 coppers in a career, much less one hunt.  Just give me something that’s not totally abused that I can work with.  I’d rather dig the proverbial 64 rosie with a hole in it than that garbage.  (As an aside, those elsewhere parading their beautiful coppers around, in high pH, high drainage soil, don’t know what it is like elsewhere.  The same can be said for people like me parading massive silver counts around, can’t it?  Of course its all relative (duh), and obviously that’s why I’m stalled on Philosophy Gym for the past several years (anyone with the actual book can look up the next question), but its coming, and it ends badly, I’m afraid).

So, back to the metal detecting, and trying to parse this train wreck.  One of them, the one in the lower right, is totally useless, and was scored as an unidentifiable copper. There is simply no hope on this one — nothing identifiable.

The one one the lower left was scored as an 1829 LC, cause that’s what it is.  Its hard to see that, and I’m not gonna show the close up pics, cause its too much work and it doesn’t matter.  Its so abused — its like, who cares?  The one in the upper right is a badly worn liberty cap large cent; you can only see that with lots of water and lots of imagination, and lots of positive scores on Rorschach tests, so I’ve scored it as an unidentifiable copper as well.

But the one in the upper left is an 1808 draped bust half cent.  If you use your imagination, you can see the 1/200 on the reverse, and the 1808 on the obverse.  This coin is worth $40 in AG3.  I’ve heard of P2 (tho never seen prices listed), but have never seen a grade of  CCPH6.5FU0, making a beautiful find worthless.  Well, at least I can mark a type off my bucket list.  And, this coin  was only at 4 inches.  Compare to the ’60 memorial at 7 inches that started this story.

(you may have to click the image to enlarge).

Well, the day wasn’t a total loss.  Dug a silver dime as well as the 4 coppers, a 1916 barber.  We’ll take it.

Yeah, a bit out of focus, but we’ve all seen barber dimes before.  Besides that dreadful pic, nailed this entry, baby!

Third hunt with the Ultimate 13 unit, and again it did not disappoint.  Had the 1896 Indian head and the silver Q within the first 15 minutes.  But then things slowed down, nothing else to show for the day except a couple more unidentifiable coppers.  I can make out a “CH” or “CP” on the larger one (as if it matters).

It seems we are finally getting to the edge of the zone I’ve been working where the finds start to thin out, tho the pair of coppers, while worthless in their own right, give us the hope to continue.  (And, while there is plenty of space left at this site, there are no remaining proven zones (a couple of unproven ones that I am cautiously optimistic about), and then the stress of finding a new site.  All things must pass).

Also dug a wheatie today, so its my 2nd penny tri-fecta in as many days.  And, my silver streak stretches to 10 hunts.  Just 42 hunts to go tie my record.

I’m liking this new Detech Ultimate 13 unit.  Pulled 4 silvers today, including a half dime.  The half dime, an 1899 Canadian coin (too bad, a US half dime would have been cooler), was the second silver of the day, and the 900th of my career.  The half dime rang at CO 39; I figured it was a wheatie.

Also pulled a 1900 Indian and an abused copper.  As near as I can tell, the copper is an 1816 LC, tho it is so abused it has to be scored as an unidentifiable.  Since I also pulled a wheatie today, I get the penny trifecta (missed the dime trifecta yesterday cause I could not pull a rosie instead of 3 mercs — of course I’ll take the latter, but got the rosie today.).

The copper really showed off the Detech Ultimate 13’s depth for the first time.  It was at 11 inches (measured with a tape measure), in dry dirt.  The signal was solid and repeatable, tho bouncing between a conductive and ferrous target.  I gave it a 50/50 chance of either; but it was clearly a dig me signal.  Too bad I didn’t have the time to test the stock coil on this one for comparison. 11 inches for a repeatable dig me signal is good around here, in our mineralized dirt, especially when it is dry.

But, the biggest win was the Detch 13’s pinpointing.  As I mentioned yesterday, it actually works, and works well.  I’m surprised it works so much better than the stock coil (to be frank, pinpointing with the stock coil simply doesn’t really work.  Maybe I have a bad coil, I dunno). So, that’s a win.

I really like this coil so far.  I’d like to try it in heavy trash in the near future, when I’m done working this section of this site.

Added some size to my unit today, taking it from 11 to 13 inches, with the Detech Ultimate 13 coil.

I’ve never bought an aftermarket coil before, and I was a bit worried, as the reviews are sparse and conflicted (translation: I spent alot of money on this coil; if I post a bad review, I look like a chump, and I ain’t wanting that, am I?  (Never doubt the application of economics to everything)).

But, I bought the coil cause it was on sale (translation: the only US distributor (who I would otherwise not do business with, but Detech (the manufacturer) is in Bulgaria and ordering direct is hard) dropped their prices from gouge levels to reasonable levels), and cause word on the street was that it gave an inch more on silver dimes in hunted out parks.  We all could use another inch, couldn’t we?  I know I can; in particular, I’m anxious to try to see what is at inch lower at some of my massive honey holes of the past that I’ve carefully gridded out.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to provide a review today, as much as I’d like to, cause I can’t do so scientifically.  The only way to do that is to compare targets using the Ultimate 13 vs the stock coil, or gridding out previously gridded and hunted out parks, neither of which I was willing or able to do today (let’s face it, changing coils is hard, I do work mornings and evenings, I spend time with my son, and was working a mild honey hole (which seems a better idea than hunted out parks), as those who have been reading the past entries are aware), so time is a bit tight to do science now).  But, what I will do, is detail today’s experience, FWIW.

This time, I’ll get to the silver first, cause who wants to read more bullshit to get to it?  Here it is, 3 mercs, 1 barber, and half a copper (are you kidding me?), over 4.5 hours.

Now, onto the Detech Ultimate 13 experience.  First, I started in a big open field, where I didn’t expect to find much, just to get a feel for the machine with the coil, the sounds, the pinpointing, and so forth.  Its a low trash, low target field.  My goal was to find one coin in this field — pinpoint, recover, and move on to more promising zones (I didn’t want to be a pinpointing moron with this new coil in the hotter, manicured lawn zone; pinpointing with large coils can be hard, and its nice to not be surprised).

My first observation was the the machine did not swing heavier, despite the 30% larger coil.  That’s a win in my book.  I found a memorial penny at 3 inches, and pinpointing was easy, another win in my book (those who actually read my blog know I think the E-Trac pinpointing is absolute garbage; the larger coil wasn’t harder to pinpoint with — in fact I think it was easier, tho there may be sample bias here, perhaps I was being more careful, who knows?  Remember, I wasn’t doing science, but it was actually a joy to recover the target more or less under the center of the coil, unlike with the stock coil, where the pinpointing experience can more or less be described as — it beeps, the target is more or less in this universe, bring in a backhoe and hope for the best, and hope the groundskeeper is on vacation).

So, pinpointing was a big win.  It actually worked, unlike the random experience with the stock coil.  I decided to head over to the zone of the past few days which as produced the finds recently blogged, and, on the way, got that half of a copper.  WTF?  Where’s the other half?  How do I score that? (cause we all know dectorists, and especially economists, are about counting and scoring things). I gridded around (losing precious time), and couldn’t find it.  This is another win — I was already in normal detecting mindset with this coil.

Into the hot zone, which had grown cold on the last hunt with the stock coil on the past couple ranks of the grid, and I was moving farther away from where logic would expect old coins to be found.  I didn’t expect much, and didn’t find much at first, but at least the coil worked.  The experience seemed the same, and given the larger size of the coil, I could move thru the dead faster, hoping to find a hot zone.  It added efficiency, with no apparent loss of performance (but, of course, there is no way to be sure, without going over the same zone with the stock coil (and I ain’t about to do that, I’m afraid)).  This was a win in my book.

Eventually I found I silver.  Woohoo!  It was the ’43 merc.  It was on its side, at 5 inches.  Pinpointing was bitch, but it always is with coins on their side.  This is a big win — one of the nice things about the E-Trac is its ability to find silvers on their side.   Didn’t lose that with this coil.  Interesting to note that the pinpoint projected out 7 inches from the coin on its side.  That’s good (hard to pinpoint, but shows the range of the coil.  Never saw that with the stock coil on a 5 inch deep silver on its side).

I pressed on without finding much except a couple of wheats, and nothing really deep.  I did, however, find some affected clad.  Clad in the trash.  No one likes finding clad, but in this case, it demonstrated that this coil has good separation.  Another win.  The experience remained the same w.r.t to high conductive targets in low conductive trash.  Now, did I miss some that the stock coil would have found?  Who knows?  That’s the problem with not doing things scientifically.  Who knows?  But the experience (and run rate of clad, even in trash, but not heavy trash), felt the same.

I did notice that the coil was noisier. With the stock coil, I just put it on man 30 and go at most sites,  This coil was a bit too noisy to do that.  That’s a loss in my book.  I dropped to man 26, and it quieted down quite a bit (I was surprised by how much actually, cause this doesn’t have much effect with the stock coil).  Shortly thereafter, I nailed 2 silvers, the ’17 merc, then the ’20 merc.  On both targets, before digging (I knew they were silvers beforehand — those who love the E-Trac know what I’m talking about), I jacked to man 30 to test, and while I could still hear them fine (of course, I knew they were there), there was much more chatter, and one wonders whether I would have heard them above the chatter if I didn’t know they were there?  Who knows?  The point is I had to be more careful adjusting the sens as I moved about the site.  That’s a loss in my book.

Both silvers were at about 6-7 inches, and rang clear.

Then I got lucky.  I got a ferrous affected silver.  That was the barber dime.  See-thru with conductive trash had already been proven with clad; I had yet to prove see-thru still worked with ferrous trash.  But it did.  Whohoo.  That’s a win in my book, pulling the barber out of a ferrous affected hole.  (I rescanned the hole, and it nulled on the ferrous trash — I even spent a couple of seconds trying to recover the ferrous target to prove its existence, but could not find it, and I ain’t interested in wasting too much time digging ferrous junk, even in the name of blogging, so I let it go).

Summary:  This coil is a keeper.  While I could not prove a performance improvement over the stock coil, at least, (based on run rate of 4 silvers per 4.5 hours, in the least promising section of the zone where the better section had a 1 silver per hour run rate, and not accounting for the time lost testing the coil in the field), no performance appeared to be lost.  If we can ever get a really deep one that the stock coil cannot see, it will be a win.  Hopefully I’ll do that science someday, but at least it doesn’t seem like I’ll be losing anything while hoping to run into that really deep silver.  The downside is that you have to keep adjusting sens to use this coil.  Time will tell if that will be too much of a hassle for me.  I will say, given how dead I expected this section to be, the fact that the coil was larger and allowed me to cover ground faster may have increased the run rate over what was possible with the stock coil.

So, after yesterday’s entry, I think we can all agree that keeping it brief is a good idea.  Got a barber half and a pair of silver dimes today over 2 hunts.  Barber halves are cool cause they are pretty hard to find (this is my 4th ever, and I think that is alot for someone who started in the past couple of years).

This barber half was cool cause there was a 1912 wheatie in the hole with it.  It gave a weird signal, sort of bouncing between a silver quarter and a wheatie.  I imagine alot of machines have passed over that, and been confused, but before I dug, I said “wheatie + silver quarter”.  The E-Trac is really good at that sort of thing. Got the wheatie first, then rescanned with the pinpointer, and sure enough it was there, just under a thin layer of dirt.  It is so sweet seeing the rim of a big silver in the hole as you scrape away the dirt.

Along with the silver dimes, also pulled a 1919D wheatie — that, along with the 1912, fill 2 holes in my dug wheatie album. Woohoo.

10 Silver halves in a year is alot.  Its hard to describe how much an “alot” it is, but it is (suffice it to say that one silver half in a year is alot).  Will never happen again, at least not to me.  Anyway, managed to cross that milestone today, and what a weird day it was.

Went back to the site of the past couple days, and started off in the older zone (after a couple days of rain and a couple days of frustration in a not as old zone), which was the spot of yesterday’s entry where I found a pair of mercs in the same hole.  Wouldn’t you?

First swing of the day, a foot away from yesterday’s double merc hole was a slam dunk rosie. 3 silvers in a row.  Are you kidding me? I said to myself — this will be a double digit day, as I had just begun to scratch the surface of this zone, and had 3 found silvers already in it.

But it was not to be.  This zone was much like the zone of the past 2 days.  Evidence that it had not been hunted, evidence that it should be a 20 silver zone based on the deep clad count and dates, but “Reason X” (qv yesterday’s entry) seemed to apply to this older zone as well — everything good except the silver, but this this zone was 35 years older than the zone of the last 2 days.  WTF? (I did do more research on the site last nite, and came up with a hypothesis for “Reason X”, and the possibility that ‘Reason X” applied to the whole site, not just the zone of the past 2 days — not sure if it meets the Occam’s Razor test (and of course since this is an MD blog we can’t spill the beans and give more details, as interesting as the philosophy would be, or 20 clowns who can’t do their own research would be swinging there when I showed up next (assuming, of course, I have 22 readers, and likely I have about 10% of that))).

Anyway, people read these blogs cause they want to read about finding silver, so lets try to get there.  And it was hard.  I moved from zone to zone looking not for the factors that usually indicate silver (since “Reason X” seemed to suggest that they do not apply), but for random actual silver (sort of in “eat fish” rather than “learn to fish” mode, if that makes sense).  The site can probably be divided into about 20 or so distinct zones (all of which, realistically, should be treated as a new site, even if “Reason X” has pan effect), and I went from zone to zone, more of the same, until into the least promising zone of the batch, in my judgement, I pulled a merc, then a copper (1845 large cent; just like the other day, tho in worse condition), and then a rosie.  I wasn’t gridding, but was doing cross transits, and marked the zone as promising.  Three silvers and a copper now, after about 5 hours of hunting.

But there were more promising zones to try, and try we did. and it was like entering the 4th dimension.  More and more deep clad that sounded like deep silver.  Like most silver guys, I don’t dig clad except for the intel on the site, but this deep clad was different.  It sounded like silver, and you had no choice but to dig it all.  TIDs were whacked. Everything was deep, and everything sounded like silver.  I dug deep clad after deep clad, and usually deep clad is constructive (it gives you the zone as non-hunted in the 80s), but when I dug a 1985 Q at 8 inches, after digging about 40 quarters already, and a mountain of 7 inch 70s memorial pennies, and only 1 silver outside the one zone, I said enough is enough.

81 deep clads that sounded like silver, and 1 silver, in this zone and those that are congruent.  I guess I should have cut my losses sooner.  At least that’s about $12, or a couple of Golden Monkeys.

Ok, so the detecting was bad, and the writing worse, as I failed to articulate the experience. That’s how it goes, sometimes.  But, all I could do, failing to understand what was going on, other than “Reason X” and the possibility that the evil Fill and Grade twins had been all over the site (despite the lack of evidence of that), was to go back to the section of the site that had given up the pair of dimes and the copper earlier on the day.

And that turned out to be a good call.  Pretty soon on, got me a merc. then on the same rank of the grid, got be a deep SLQ.  The nice thing about these 2 coins in that they sounded like deep silver, and turned out to be deep silver.  Its a fun experience; contrast to the previous 80 coins of the day.  Maybe it is something in the dirt in the other zones.  Who knows?

The rank I did left a gap between the transits I had done in this zone earlier, and sometimes being anal pays off. I said I have to close those gaps, and good thing I did, as I found a 1918S walker in there, for my 10th silver half of the year.  Scratched the thing pretty bad, as it took me about 20 minutes to recover it — it was deep, in a maze of roots, and it was not a slam dunk silver signal.  That’s how it goes sometimes.

Finished off one more rank of this zone and found a Washington Q for my 7th silver of the day, 6 in this most unpromising zone.  Sometimes better to be lucky that smart.  What a day — total hunt time 8hrs, 7 silvers, 5 wheats, 81 clads.  And there’s more to write. much more, but I’m more burnt out than you, assuming you read this far. (Oh, it does feel good to write one of my MD stories again).

Back to yesterday’s site, just trying to find a hot zone that is not littered with clad and no silver.  First hacked at yesterday’s zone which by all indications should be a 20 silver section, but it was even worse today — just deep clad (and less of it), and no silver.  Not sure why, and I have not solved this section, but sometimes the reason for failure is “Reason X” — you don’t know, but there is some reason, and you just have to cut your losses and move on.

Hit 3 other sections trying to find a hit of the shiny, and could not get anything going till it was time to go home, 2 silvers in one hole.  They were deep and in trash.  A pair of mercs, prolly 7 or 8 inches deep, in trash.  Hard to hear, but we got em.  I did not expect it to be silver when I opened the hole, cause so many other promising signals had dudded into clad or trash, but this one was deep, and it worked out.  Wonder if I would have heard it if it were just one in there? After I pulled the first one out, rubbed the pinpointer around and got the second.  Woo Hoo!  Nice ending for a very tough day.

Been squeaking by with rosies lately, but also pulled a large silver religious pendant, and a small sterling charm.  I thought the pendant was a silver quarter, and the charm a silver dime.  Still silver, but they don’t count in terms of “silvers” cause they ain’t old coins.  The rosie, tho, does extend a modest silver streak to 4.

The hunt was at a new site I was quite optimistic about (and still am, I guess), but it was a bit frustrating, if any hunt with silver can be frustrating.  I pulled about 60 coins — 9 wheaties, the rosie, and about 50 clads.  Almost all of the clad was deep 60s and 70s clad, and the wheaties were deep as well.  These are all signs that the site was not hunted hard, there are no grade and fill issues, and it should have yielded more silver.

I look at 2 ratios — wheats to silvers and overall silver percentage.  Wheats to silvers is the most important, and mine is at 2.41 to 1.  Should have pulled 3-4 silvers by that count.  My overall silver percentage is a bit north of 5%, meaning about 1 of 20 coins I pull is a silver.  Should have had 3 by that metric as well.

So, the site owes me a couple.  Hopefully I’ll get some payback some day.  Its a huge site, with many sections and lots of fill and grade here and there, so it will require quite a bit of figuring, watching the ratios, and just plain luck to coax the silver out of it.  It also has an older section than what I was working today — waiting for rain on that so I get that extra depth.

It was a long hunt in the heat today.  I went back to a site that had given up 2 mercs and an Indian head, but I never felt it had all that much promise.  Decided to give it a go anyway to be sure, and sure enough, the first 2 hours turned up bupkis, not even a wheatie.

That was an out of the box section of the site; decided to try an even more out of the box section, and this worked out a bit better, 3 wheaties and a rosie, all very shallow, as was the clad, suggesting this section had not been hunted much, but there wasn’t much density either.  Certainly there will be more there I figure, but if it hasn’t been hunted in the last 30 years, it can wait a bit longer.  This was just a data gathering run anyway, and the site is large. I wanted to explore other sections.

Decided to hit the section again closest to where the mercs were found the last time; I had been over it a couple of times in the past with not much more to show for it, but I did get one nice deep 01-44 on the E-Trac today; figured it could be a big silver, but it wasn’t to be; it was an 1845 large cent at 8-9 inches.  Like most coppers around here, its plenty abused from the acidic soil and poor drainage, but at least it has plenty of detail.  Might even grade XF were it not for the damage and patina.

Surprisingly, this is one of the nicest coppers I’ve ever dug. It is my 9th of the year, and 54th of my career.

Just sort of hanging in here, sneaking the silver in one by one while spending alot of time with my son, researching prospective sites, and trying to stay cool.

This was from the same place I went last Sunday; the site has given me 55 silvers, which is fantastic, but it is pretty played and it is hard to squeeze them out of there now, but as long as there are unhunted sections, I’ll keep trying.

Too bad the ring is fake.  It sounded like silver, looked like silver, but was not stamped, and the test was negative.  Oh well. I had already took the pic, and as much as I hate posting junk, I’m too lazy to do another pic, especially of a lone 64 rosie.

Got out for a bit to one of the first sites I used the E-Trac at.  I had high hopes, as I had no idea back then how to use the machine, or how to work a site, and the last time I was here I pulled a random merc and a clad half dollar, both extremely constructive signs (as I learned later), that the site has (perhaps honeyhole) potential.

But it was not to be today.  The site doesn’t appear to have been hunted too hard, but probably didn’t have the density to support massive silver drops.  Oh well, write it off.

Did get a war nickel today, tho, and another clad half dollar.  Are you kidding me? Clad half dollars are rare (rarer than silver half dollars, actually, at least in my experience (and they are really rare also)), and always suggest an under hunted site, and this is the first site I’ve ever pulled two from, but the site just not would give up much shiny.

As for the war nickel, CO of 12 (for you non-E-Trac’ers, is always a normal nickel, if not trash or gold).  Rare to find a war nickel there (they usually live at CO 15-16). I once found a war nickel at CO 22, which is also bizarre.  This tells me war nickels have extreme variability in the CO number (despite the E-Trac being otherwise legendary in target ID).  Why is that?  Who knows?  BTW, these coins air tested at CO 12 and CO 22, respectively, so its not cause they were affected.

So, the scientist in me wants to know why this is.  There is no such variability in other coins (for the clueless, CO numbers are influenced by the conductivity of the metal, the thickness of the coin, and in the case of copper coins, the corrosion/patina).

Corrosion and thickness with war nickels is not an issue, it is a constant.  So, it has to come down to composition. Regular nickels, surprise, are mostly copper (75%), and 25% nickel.  Copper is a high metal, but nickel is a very low metal (almost like iron), so it makes sense that an alloy of copper and nickel could ring quite low.

However, war nickels are 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese.  That’s 91% high tone metal — it makes sense that they ring, normally, a bit higher than normal nickels, but they should ring much much higher, especially given their size and thickness.  I can’t image the 9% manganese having a material effect (the nickel in clad dimes and quarters does not have much of a material effect on those), regardless of how low a metal manganese is.

So, the answer is that I have no clue why war nickels ring so low, given all the high tone metal they contain, and, more importantly, for those wishing to dig war nickels, and to avoid modern nickels, why the CO, in an air test, varies between 12 and 22.  That’s a huge range.  I guess the bottom line is, that if you are fishing for war nickels, dig em all.  Too bad, cause dig em all is almost always a bad idea, especially in this rock hard dirt.

Today was a day of scouting out prospective sites; which seem to get thinner by the day, and with no powers that be available for permissions, I headed back to my shrine of a couple days ago, where the high tones are frequent, but the coins are rare.

No different today, dug a ton of high tones, but not a single silver.  Did manage to squeak out a copper, tho, a totally abused, ugly George II (trust me, I’m an expert on these things :); that’s what it be).

This coin is over 250 years old, pushing 300, not bad.  Most detectorists go gaga over these things.  I’m not one of them.  But here it is, FWIW.

The day did not start off well — headed off to a 50-150 silver site to ask permission, and got the “nyet”, as they say in Kazakhstan.  Hate it when that happens.  100 silvers down the drain, tho we will try again in a couple of years.  Wouldn’t you?

Off to the backup site, which is the site where I pulled my 500th silver last year, so it is a personal shrine, but it is a very frustrating site.  Its a frustrating site cause there are so many high tones and so few coins — most detectorists don’t complain about high tones, but they have never been here. I think someone once held a contest here — see how many pieces of copper pipe you can cut into small pieces and throw around — 10 points for each piece that hits the ground.

The site is just littered with copper pipe fragments. pipe fittings. and other high tone trash, and you have to dig it all.  And in this rock hard dirt, that is work. Eventually one of the high tones turned out to be silver — a pair of rosies in a hole with other trash, meaning even these weren’t a slam dunk.  The sort of hole you don’t want to dig when the last 20 have been trash, but when it works out, you are glad you toughed it out.

Didn’t expect to get out this weekend, but had a couple of free hours today, and hit a site I hadn’t hit in quite some time.  Its been one of my best sites, giving up over 50 silvers, including a seated quarter, a couple of gold rings, and a handful of coppers, including a Woods Hibernia, but I had figured it was played out.

But its always nice to go back to these sites, especially when short on time, and I did manage to squeeze a 1951 rosie and a beat up wheatie out of it.  Maybe there is a bit more there, we’ll see someday.

Back from a month long road trip, from Chester County PA, to Yellowstone, down to Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, and Sedona.  My family joined me for those parts, as they don’t have my love for tedious long drives.  Almost all of it was done on rural highways, except a good bit of the part coming home from St. Louis.

Anyway, I did some detecting on the trip, but not much, all of which I think I posted, so this is a bit of double dipping; here’s the take —

Six silvers, a buffalo nickel, a silver ring, and about 20 wheaties.  I didn’t detect all that much, especially on the way back, and not at all when my family was with me.  It was also brutally hot for the most part (hitting 110 in Arizona when I was there, and consistently over 100 everywhere else, except Yellowstone, where it ranged from 39 to 70).

And, I added 4 states to states I’ve found at least one silver coin in: IN, IA, NE, and WY.  I now have 10 states I’ve found a silver coin in (us geography geeks track everything).  I will say one thing (and this is something I already knew); finding silver in places you just drive to, and have never been, is hard.  Its much harder than finding silver in your home turf where you sort of know what is where, always are seeing prospective places, and have time to do research.  I did do a bit of research on some random towns on the way out, but the way I travel, I never really have a clue where I’ll be next, and then you have to do it on the fly, and you don’t have much time, so it can be hard.  That’s why I was quite pleased to find a barber quarter, as they are quite hard to find anywhere.

Anyway, despite the fact that I didn’t do alot of detecting, having detected in so many places now, I continue to build up more of a feel for the local challenges and advantages detectorists face due to where they happen to live.  Too bad “that forum” isn’t so enlightened.  It would be fun to slap ’em around a bit more, but just forget them better still.

Now that I have a bit more time, I hope to update the stories where I did find silver (and maybe where I didn’t), over the next week or so.  Its hot here, and the ground is rock hard, so I don’t know when I’ll be detecting here again, hopefully next week; we’ll see.

(Oh, and one more thing, it is a real hassle to leave comments now.  I had to make that change since after I posted a link to the blog to my facebook friends, I just got slammed with spam.  Too bad this blog software is so stupid that it can’t deal with it in a reasonable and easy way.  So, I made a bad choice on that score, but that is life.  There was no way I could fix the problem on the road (you have to muck with these goofy plug-ins rather than it simply being a built in solution, as it should be), but now that I’m home, I may look into it.  Until then, comments are a hassle.  Not that there are many readers or many comments, so maybe I won’t bother at all.  Certainly a low priority in my life right now).

A couple of finds from last weekend, including a Barber quarter, which doesn’t come up too often for me.  These are from short hunts last Fri and Sat, and I have not detected since, and, due to the heat, I don’t expect to for a while.

A few silvers from a couple of recent hunts.  I’ll have more to write later when I have more time.

On Friday, the rain cut my hunt short, and I speculated about a big day had I been able to complete the hunt.  Today, I mostly finished that hunt, and pulled 4 more silver coins, meaning Friday’s hunt was really a sixspot.  I know it don’t work that way, but we’ll take the fourspot today anyway. who wouldn’t? But its been a while since I’ve dropped  a fivespot plus — Milli Vanilli sayz blame it on the rain, and that’s what I’m gonna do (that’s my nod to one of my fav bands — Barenaked Ladies, not the named fake singing haircuts).

Speaking of rain, I got rained on again today; had to take a long break in the middle of the hunt, and another shower forced me to bag it and head back to work, leaving about an hour of the site left.  Too bad.  Based on silvers per unit area, that section has, as most, one more silver to give.  I’m not too optimistic, but we’ll see.

School’s out in 4 days, and this may be the last dirt fishing entry of the summer, unless I pull one from that small section tomorrow.

I don’t detect much on weekends, but I spotted a sort of out the box site the other day, and got out after dinner to check it out.  Site turned out to be a dud — looks like it has been picked over pretty good.

The backup plan was a park in the area that is totally hunted out, it is pretty old, but extremely stingy.  I never go there unless I’m desperate for a place, and am in the area, but, I figure as I get better, I have a chance.

And this evening I did manage to squeak out a thin silver dime at this park, a 1916 merc.  Too bad, no D.  It was a classic 35-50 silver, wish I had a video camera, so I could demonstrate these.  I think this is about my 10th hunt at this park, and only the 4th silver I’ve squeezed out of it, and all have been tough.  A thin 35-50 silver, a deep one its side, and 2 in heavy trash in an out of the box section.  Sheesh.  Also dug a 1914 wheatie tonite, and a couple of newer ones.  Any old coins are a victory at this site.

Farewell, farewell day turned into rainout, rainout day.  Too bad, cause I pulled 2 silver coins before lunch, which is a pretty good rate, and I was hoping it would continue to a 4 or 5 spot. But the rain cut it short.

Both were hard, the first was sitting over a large piece of iron; I couldn’t pinpoint it, nor tell if it was really a silver or an iron false, so I opened up a huge plug hoping to find it, and nothing.  These are almost iron falses, so I decided to move on, but scanned again and I could swear I heard a silver down there.  Opened up again, a little to the left, and there she was.  I’ve prolly left alot of these in the ground.  All silver coins are hard, but these are really hard. The hardest problem, at least for me, is telling ferrous affected deep silver from a ferrous false.  People who think this hobby is — you swing, it beeps, you dig, are clueless.  This hobby is intricate, intense, and detail-oriented, and while this example doesn’t really capture it, this hobby pulls in all the disciplines I hold dear.

The second silver was on its side.  This actually wasn’t hard for me, but was hard for the competition.  The skill here is to simply to own an E-Trac.  It is awesome at silvers on their side.  Many competing machines are not.  If you are a newbie, and want silver, buy an E-Trac.  All the blather, bluster, and bullshit in the world will not change the fact that it is the machine, not the man.

Back to the rain.  It rained for about a half hour.  As much as I love the E-Trac, it simply fails in the rain.  So I called it a day, and I write a blog entry now while I look out at sunlight under which I could be trying to find more silver.  Oh well.

It occurs to me I should use the spare time to write a Friday Afternoon Album entry, but I don’t feel like it, and I have way too much to do (like clean up those silvers, one of which I have a hunch is a key date). Today’s album is: Bob Mould: Workbook.  I’ll never get tired of this album (and I think it is 90s, not 80s, nice change, huh?).  Download and enjoy.

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.