My view on urban prospecting.

machineman

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I haven't figured it out yet
These are some of my views on finding jewelry with a metal detector, when not at the beach. (Urban Prospecting) I am not a pro if such a thing exists. I have not found mountains of jewelry. I have found some jewelry and my finds are increasing.

Some observations: Why do beach hunters find so much jewelry? They find a lot for these reasons.
1. They are looking for it almost exclusively.
2. They use powerful detectors with big coils. Covering huge amounts of ground.
3. They use low or no Disc and dig almost everything. The sand is soft, why not.
4. People lose a lot more jewelry swimming than any other activity that I know of.
5. The salt water tends to destroy most lighter metals. I.E. less trash.
6. A lot of Beach hunters hunt all or every day.

So how do we translate these observations to inland hunting?

1. Have jewelry in mind when you hunt. If you go out looking for coins you will be less likely to find jewelry. Jewelry is lost mostly during or around high energy activity areas. Sports fields, tot lots, basketball and volleyball courts, are my prefered areas to hunt in parks. Fresh water swim areas are probably best over all.
2. Use detectors that work well for gold. Higher frequencies are better for gold. Most detectors will detect a shallow gold ring but most wont give a good enough signal or VID on a chain or frilly piece.
3. Its a numbers game. In trashy areas this means you must dig a lot of targets. In fields it means you must cover lots of ground.
4. Learn your machine. This is probably the #1 best thing I can tell you. I am a detector jukey. I love trying new detectors always hoping to gain an edge. I have bought many over the years. The one I do best with is my Compadre. Its the first one I bought and the one I know best. It has no VID so I dig a lot. If in doubt I dig. I have recently been hunting with my Gold bug pro. When I first got it I couldn't make heads nor tails of what it was telling me. Now I regularly dig jewelry. The longer I have a detector the better I do with it.
5. This goes with #4. Try to guess what your about to dig. The longer you have the detector the better you will be at this. This way every target will be a learning experience.
6. Also goes with #4 practice and test. The best practice is field use as listed above. However I learned a lot doing air and in ground test at home. Mask targets and check how they sound, change settings and try again, ect. Make a test garden. Not with coins but with jewelery. :shock: You can get it back later.
Im sure there is more but I have other stuff to do, like go practice. Good luck happy hunting.
 
I would agree with much of what you say. Urban Prospectors have to run with a higher frequency machine. I would never recommend an urban prospector running at with a detector less than 12 kHz.

The bigger coil can work in areas like the beach, but be warned, bigger coils tend to lose sensitivity to small targets. They will hutn deeper overall, but small coils will hit on tinier targets better at more shallow depths. So if you're hunting for fine trace gold chains, a small coil will be a better friend to you.

People see the beach and automatically think "big coil" because it is so vast. Forget it. You'll never cover the whole beach in one outing. Take a small section that looks promising to you for whatever reason. Grid it out and then hunt the living daylights out of it. If you still have time afterwards, grid another area.

To be honest, I have found more gold (and other kind of jewelry) in parks than I have ever found at the beach. Of course, because of grass, roots, etc., the park can be a much more treacherous place to hunt. Here, I tend to focus on shallower targets that are easier to retrieve without destroying the ground.
 
That is true. I have found more at parks as well. But I dont live near the beach. I had an Outlaw with the Clean sweep coil. For some reason I sold it. It was the best field hunter I have had. I plan on getting a Vaq, Tejon, or Lobo ST with a Clean Sweep. When I ran the Outlaw in a field I would run Sens as high as possible Disc just to kill a nail and dig everything. I found more earrings with that setup than any other rig. Some of the earrings were just barely detected. I am planning on getting a NEL hunter coil for my Gold Bug pro. I like hunting fields and thats the best I can do with the pro. Nugget detectors are good choices for Urban prospecting because they can detect the chains. When hunting park sports fields for me coverage is king not depth. If the target is more than 4"-5" down odds are its big trash. Out here fields and lots get disced and all the cans and trash get mixed into the soil. When they make a park on one of these spots there is a layer of cans and big iron trash starting around 6" down.
 
Great points.
A couple of things.
All the locations you mentioned plus one more...parking lot dividers.
I have found a bunch of silver rings and chains and several gold rings in these things, especially at high school and college parking lots.

Smudge, that frequency thing is something I don't really subscribe to and still don't.
Finding jewelry, especially shallow stuff at 6" or less which is where I have found most of my silver jewelry and all of my gold, 31 gold targets to date, is more a result of where you hunt and understanding your detector well and also understanding how gold and silver and especially chains, act in the wild, I believe.
Frequency could come into play on the deeper gold stuff...and the lower frequencies are known to be a bit better if you are going after deep silver.

I believe many hunters find gold but they never dig it because it is usually disguised as trash and they are so sure of that fact they pass it by.

Using the right coil definitely helps.
On land the best jewelry sites for me are usually the trashiest so the sniper coils are my choice in those situations because it just makes it easier, but I have found gold in trashy sites with larger coils, too.

Here are some of my gold finds from Jan-Nov of 2013.
2 others were found last year, one each with the Vaq and the F70 which hover around the 14KHz area, but I believe any detector at any frequency could have hit on them easily.
All these in the pic were found with the 5.9Khz F2 in urban parks and that small one with the pearl in a college parking lot divider.
5 were found around the perimeters of a few basketball courts, my #1 site to look for the best silver and gold jewelry.
All were between 2 and 5" deep, all were very solid non jumping signals with good and accurate VID numbers too, which is why I dug them and not many other very similar but way more jumpy and iffy trash signals in the same areas.
Found pretty darn easily I might add, but as was mentioned I believe this is because I do know my detectors well and for me the learning never ends.
 

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Tabman is correct, Rings can generally be detected by any detector, reguardless of freq. In fact lower frqs, may be better on rings. They dont see every little piece of foil as well. They also supposidly have better discrimination and vid, but i dont know the sience of that. I like the high frqs for small stuff. My GBP sees everything, its my job to decide to dig. If I am feeling lazy I take out my sov. I never dig foil with it.
 
Great information guys lots to think about. Jewelry big enough to be worth finding usually gives a pretty good signal in the matter what it's made out of. The big foot coil for whites DFX and MXT machines has gotten so expensive that it's hardly worth trying to find one anymore unless you have $4-500 to part with. The bigfoot for the older 6.59 machines however is still available used for about $200 when you can find one.

The big advantage of the Bigfoot is not only does it have that beautiful 18 inch sweep but it pinpoints sharp as a needle by using just the tip of the coil.
 
I will have to try the dividers. Thanks Digger. I have thought about it but the field always looks so tempting. I detected a curb strip the other day that would be a similar location. I suppose anywhere that people reach into their pockets is a good spot. Some times more than your keys come out.
 
Hi Digger!

Thanks for your contribution and I completely agree with you that if you are hunting rings frequency is not much of an issue.

However, we are talking about urban prospecting, which goes well beyond rings. Urban prospectors are looking for fine trace gold chains, often missing the clasp as well as earrings.

At that level, frequency does matter. Some lower frequency detectors can pick them up barely at the surface, but only if you run in all metal. Others will not hear them at all even if you scrub the chain on the coil.

And always remember, it's not the the gold earring you are after. It's the stone the earring has that you are after!
 
Hi Digger!



At that level, frequency does matter. Some lower frequency detectors can pick them up barely at the surface, but only if you run in all metal. Others will not hear them at all even if you scrub the chain on the coil.

And always remember, it's not the the gold earring you are after. It's the stone the earring has that you are after!


Uh, yea.
That's why I also use a Compadre.
Picks up mostly everything.
Some gold chains not real deep, but most jewelry I find is usually pretty shallow.

I hunted with RyanChappell once and his E Trac would hardly pick up a thin silver chain when he rubbed it on the bottom of the coil.
The Compadre found it easily a few inches deep.
 
Exactly right Digger.

I swung a Compadre for quite a long time and it will pick up those fine trace chains provided they are right near the surface.

If you use a higher frequency detector with a small coil, you can find those trace chains a bit deeper (1" - 2"). It can make a big difference. No way I would want to do deeper than that for a trace chain. All the trash signals would kill me.

Others won't pick them up at all, like the E-Trac or even the Tesoro Silver umax (yes, it tested it).
 
I have been hitting my local park pretty hard to try to find where the jewelry falls. With multiple detectors. So far I have found 4 chains 3 925 and one 14k. 1 22k pendant. 1 925 ring. 1 925 bracelet part. 1 925 cross. About 10 earrings mostly junk. Lots of junk jewelry. Most of this was found in open fields and around the basket ball court. I use a small coil and scan the gap between the grass and the cement court. I found most of the ear rings this way. The 5" dd on my GBP seems to work the best for this. I have seen other hunters in this park. What this tells me is that jewelry is every where you just have to look in the prime spots and be thurow. Good luck.
 
I went by a local park on the way home the other day and noticed that they were having a soccer meet there. I decided to stop and look at where all the people were and where they were putting their things. I went back the next day I only had 45min to hunt but turned up 2 rings in one of the spots that I scouted. They were both junk but the good stuff should be there also. I didnt do any kind of thurow hunt just a quick look. If you see a party or a sporting event at a park or school stop and take a look it pays off.
 
I went by a local park on the way home the other day and noticed that they were having a soccer meet there. I decided to stop and look at where all the people were and where they were putting their things. I went back the next day I only had 45min to hunt but turned up 2 rings in one of the spots that I scouted. They were both junk but the good stuff should be there also. I didnt do any kind of thurow hunt just a quick look. If you see a party or a sporting event at a park or school stop and take a look it pays off.

That's the way to do it!! I have been known to walk along the Boardwalk and spot where large groups are gathered in the sand and then go back in the evening! ;):D:cool:
 
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