Silver...Where Are You???

The road to silver is lined with wheat's! theres bound to be more silver hiding in there waiting to be found.

wadepliskin said:

I keep pulling wheaties from all different years from my regular spot but can't seem to pull any silver for the life of me anymore.
Funny thing is, all the silver I did pull from this site (not a lot) came before I ever found a wheatie there. Now other than clad (some older) and an occasional wheatie (plus the trash it seems like it's about dead here for me.
I've gone back over some areas I had hit hard before with my new "DD" but only find the occasional modern clad pennies I must have missed.
I'm hoping the fall rains will give me a little more depth but who knows.
How many of you would keep hitting this site regularly? I've been expanding where I go but haven't had much luck finding anything older to give me reason to hit the new places hard yet. I know wheaties are a good sign but man a rosie would feel good about now

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Definitely explore new areas, but keep your Wheatie area as a backup. If you're still finding Wheats and other stuff, then there are probably few silver coins around that are probably being masked by something else or are just well hidden. I find those deep coins have a very small signal footprint and it's easy to miss even if you've hunted the area a lot. However, you'll be spending a lot of time on the off chance you might find a silver coin. By going somewhere else you increase your chances of finding good targets, but silver is still questionable. I have a couple similar areas that I know have some silver still in them, but I've hunted them so hard that when I go back now I pull very few good targets, so will spend a couple hours for maybe a few clad coins and a bunch of trash.

Sounds to me like you've fallen victim to a cherry picked Park.. But even the cherry pickers of detecting past missed some keep at it..

BentRod said:

Definitely explore new areas, but keep your Wheatie area as a backup. If you're still finding Wheats and other stuff, then there are probably few silver coins around that are probably being masked by something else or are just well hidden. I find those deep coins have a very small signal footprint and it's easy to miss even if you've hunted the area a lot. However, you'll be spending a lot of time on the off chance you might find a silver coin. By going somewhere else you increase your chances of finding good targets, but silver is still questionable. I have a couple similar areas that I know have some silver still in them, but I've hunted them so hard that when I go back now I pull very few good targets, so will spend a couple hours for maybe a few clad coins and a bunch of trash.

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I have defineately been trying some new areas but so far they haven't shown much promise. I base that on the fact that it's all been 70's or newer clad from older areas that should have older coins. Must be some heavy layers of topsoil added over the years as a lot of the clad is 5-6 inches. I've been checking into curbstrips lately but haven't hit it a lot yet. Hell, I've been hitting the tot lots lately too just to change things up a bit. Now if I could just find a place with some shade on the sunny days... for a state known for it's trees there sure aren't a lot of them at the parks in my area LOL.

Wade

I find that I have success in finding silver coins more often than not when I hunt in places that are what I consider the "least hunted" place such as steep hills, deep in the outfield on a baseball field, about 20 feet away from the big oak trees.

Everyone has hit that big oak tree a million times over the past 40 years. Try hunting a little farther away from the tree. Football fields, everyone heads towards the sidelines and end zones, try hunting around the 20 yard line. I find when I hunt areas that are attracting to detectorist, I might/might I say find 1 silver coin, but if I hunt these types of areas listed above, I generally never get skunked. Hope this helps

wadepliskin said:

I have defineately been trying some new areas but so far they haven't shown much promise. I base that on the fact that it's all been 70's or newer clad from older areas that should have older coins. Must be some heavy layers of topsoil added over the years as a lot of the clad is 5-6 inches. I've been checking into curbstrips lately but haven't hit it a lot yet. Hell, I've been hitting the tot lots lately too just to change things up a bit. Now if I could just find a place with some shade on the sunny days... for a state known for it's trees there sure aren't a lot of them at the parks in my area LOL.

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I know what you mean about the shade. That's why it's been so great getting in the water with the ATP. Beat the heck out of sweating in the dirt while the sun is beating down.
Have you used the historicaerials.com site to look for potential spots in your area?

BentRod said:

Definitely explore new areas, but keep your Wheatie area as a backup. If you're still finding Wheats and other stuff, then there are probably few silver coins around that are probably being masked by something else or are just well hidden. I find those deep coins have a very small signal footprint and it's easy to miss even if you've hunted the area a lot. However, you'll be spending a lot of time on the off chance you might find a silver coin. By going somewhere else you increase your chances of finding good targets, but silver is still questionable. I have a couple similar areas that I know have some silver still in them, but I've hunted them so hard that when I go back now I pull very few good targets, so will spend a couple hours for maybe a few clad coins and a bunch of trash.

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Bingo! Move on, keep it as a backup, especially if it's close to home. Always good to have one of those "I don't feel like driving far, only have an hour to hunt" type places. No sense spending too much time trying to squeak out one silver here or there if there's better options out there. Hitting the same pounded spots gets old real fast.

BentRod said:

I know what you mean about the shade. That's why it's been so great getting in the water with the ATP. Beat the heck out of sweating in the dirt while the sun is beating down.
Have you used the historicaerials.com site to look for potential spots in your area?

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BR...
Yup, still use it when I need to go back to the drawing board. Problem in my Area is that so much of the good stuff has been paved over or ripped up & replaced with fill dirt.
I have an older spot I'm gonna focus more on soon, it's just gonna be such a pain as it is covered with modern pennies at the surface to 2" down masking everything. It's a beeping nightmare hopefully I'll be rewarded.

I have a park just like that,I've found about a dozen wheats there,that I know are period drops because of depth and the signs of aging underground...but not one silver coin...2 silver rings ...but not one silver coin. I've tried the edges of the fields....in thick areas where you'd think most detectors would bother....away from the trees.

It's close by so when the kids want to go to a park I take them there and hunt for nickels/gold now....but I have to dig 50 targets that are trash to every one nickel or other coin.

In my area I find my silver to everything else ratio odd as well. Not only that but the silver I do find is pre 1920. In 5 months of metal detecting I have not found one 1921-1964 quarter or dime. I have found around 30 or more wheaties in this time frame..... but not 1 silver.

I have concluded that there are several factors at play. First, I think my area has been cherry picked, don't know how or when...... but something happened to the silver. Second, Not many silvers where dropped. I look at my clad and my ration of quarters and dimes to pennies is like 80 to 1........ so what would the ratio be 30 years earlier when .10 cents was worth more? 100 to 1? 200 to 1? Third, I don't have hours and hours and hours to just search. A lot of the guys on YouTube and on here search all day. You don't see or hear about the amount of search time it takes to find the silver they find.

and fourth and probably the most important is location. The town schools and parks I search at have been renovated and re landscaped so many times..... that the early stuff is deep or gone. You know when you did down 8 " and hit old landscape fabric.. that your skunked. Small towns don't landscape and renovate as much......... and that's where I'm headed next.