Before and after pics of dirty and cleaned coins from my hunt today.

KingTotsalot

Official Tot Lot King
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Mar 18, 2011
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Mabelvale, south of Little Rock, Arkansas
It was hot today again. Promised my wife I would not go hunt unless it was below 100 degrees. On the way home from church it was 101 and got up by 2 pm to 103. Then came some thunder! Several rounds of it and we finally got a bit of rain. By 4 pm it was down to 90 so told my wife I was going to the local park. A small park in the country near the firehouse close to where I live...about 1 mile from home.

Anywho I got there and in an hour searching and dirt digging...I had recovered 8 coins (I hoped! They were so dirty could not tell for certain if they were coins or tokens). Got them to the house and decided to take a couple of pictures ...kinda a before and after using a dremel wheel on them.

Total was only 77 cents but at least I got a hunt in and it was fun. I did dig a crushed aluminum can from 6 inches, several poptops and some aluminium coke screw caps and one screw beer cap with the glass neck of the bottle still on it! :lol: By the time I got home my truck thermometer showed 83 so I am hoping for a nice cool morning tomorrow for my before work hunt!
 

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What dremel attachment you use ? wire brush ? Really shiny ! :blink::coolman:

I've started cleaning my clad with Sno-Bowl toilet cleaner.A little in a jar and shake it around then rinse really well with water and a light brushing. I'll post some before and afters some time. I almost did yesterday, but after cleaning went right into clad Jar. (don't use on good coins)

You must be running low on totlots about now. What you gonna hunt when totlots depleted ?
 
What dremel attachment you use ? wire brush ? Really shiny ! :blink::coolman:

I've started cleaning my clad with Sno-Bowl toilet cleaner.A little in a jar and shake it around then rinse really well with water and a light brushing. I'll post some before and afters some time. I almost did yesterday, but after cleaning went right into clad Jar. (don't use on good coins)

You must be running low on totlots about now. What you gonna hunt when totlots depleted ?

:lol::lol: That is one bad penny, y'all are correct. This park is straight dirt diggin, that's why every coin is so sorry looking when I find them. I use the lowest speed and a small steel wire brush...If you buy dremel brushes you will get like 2 for 5.00 but I bought like 100 of them Chinese made for 12.00 on ebay...and am still on the first one so they are as good as stock dremel brushes. Don't buy from Harbor Freight because you get a set of useless tools and brushes just to get two of what I use! The brush is like a wheel with fine steel wire and about 5/8th inch diameter. If you use high speed, the brush will throw wires more often!...wear glasses you don't want to get a wire in the eye! I don't do this on any good coins either but on these really dirty ones, after washing I could still not read the dates.

Well, concerning totlots....I still have around 6 parks in town and 4 or 5 elementary schools to check out...was looking over my list this afternoon. But this is the 3rd hunt for this little used park near my house so that shows me I got a lot of potential still left out there. Concerning elementary schools, next week they will start to replenish and by Christmas break, I will have them all to hunt over again! In the mean time, I have not yet even looked up parks and elementary schools north of me across the Arkansas River in North Little Rock!
 
I just don't get the whole school hunting bit. If it's working for you - awesome. I just hate digging up modern stuff all day long. No history to any of it. "Oh wow, a quarter from the 1970s! I wonder if that was dropped last week or 10 years ago. The possibilities! The potential history of a zincoln!"

:lol: Just messing with ya newbie. I got tired of hunting schools about 6 months ago. Once you find a nice old home-site or other old site and start pulling silver and wheats and buckles, etc you'll start to not like your schools as much I think. Unless of course you're like my mding buddy, Ray, who has been hunting for 40+ years and schools are a magnet for him. I guess he's looking for gold jewelry though. :?:

Do you want to find anything unique or old? You may be one of the few that is only interested in clad and jewelry. Anyone else like that? Do you all hunt exclusively schools?
 
I just don't get the whole school hunting bit. If it's working for you - awesome. I just hate digging up modern stuff all day long. No history to any of it. "Oh wow, a quarter from the 1970s! I wonder if that was dropped last week or 10 years ago. The possibilities! The potential history of a zincoln!"

:lol: Just messing with ya newbie. I got tired of hunting schools about 6 months ago. Once you find a nice old home-site or other old site and start pulling silver and wheats and buckles, etc you'll start to not like your schools as much I think. Unless of course you're like my mding buddy, Ray, who has been hunting for 40+ years and schools are a magnet for him. I guess he's looking for gold jewelry though. :?:

Do you want to find anything unique or old? You may be one of the few that is only interested in clad and jewelry. Anyone else like that? Do you all hunt exclusively schools?

I agree with ya Rick. Thats why my clad totals are low. I really don't care to dig it. I even ignore some penny and dime signals at 2" cause I get tired of digging them. I love hunting old sites. It is just the one I am hunting right now frustrating the crap outta me. 12 wheats a buff and NO silver...:mad:
 
Since you ask....here's my deal.....

I took the research idea to heart....but I researched what I could readily find around me that would be quick to hunt and that I don't need to go through the permission routine. I wanted to learn my machine and could not think of a quicker way to do it.

For my efforts for a bit over 5 months, I have come close now to exhausting the local totlots and city parks. Just a few more to hunt. I like finding coins....I don't care if they are old or new. I am not into history. I don't hunt relics. I do find some occassionally ...like a breaking plow I dug up in the front yard of a local school! I gave it to their history teacher to show the kids that the site was once a farmer's field.

Civil war relics don't excite me, unless I could get some coins from that era. In hunting local parks, sure I have not found any silver coins, but I have had a barrel of fun and found a 1903 IH, several wheats, and a gold necklace which got sold immediately. Various silver rings and so forth. I am always amused at what I find on totlots....kids have the darnest things...including gold 1 dollar coins and even an occassional Ike!

I don't worry about anyone's hunting pecularities and I would be happy that no one be concerned about mine. I ain't mad, I just, as Ricky Ricardo said, "doin some splaining!" :lol::lol:

There is plenty enough room in this hobby for all of us! Just think, if there was another one like me in my city, I would not be having all this fun! While whoever is out in the woods gettin poison ivy, ticks, chigers, and rip briars for their effort to find one coin or a miniball, I am hunting in relative comfort and ease. And at my age, just taking up this hobby, I appreciate that!
 
Like they say, "different strokes for different folks", lol. Me personally; I love old sites and old coins. I try not to dig anything that reads under six inches. I am a history buff, and always day dream about old coins I find and who held them, what was bought with them, and how long it was in circulation until it was dropped? You love the enjoyment of a good hunt that produces lots of coins, and that's relaxing to you. Do what makes you happy. Besides, i enjoy your posts. HH.
 
Like they say, "different strokes for different folks", lol. Me personally; I love old sites and old coins. I try not to dig anything that reads under six inches. I am a history buff, and always day dream about old coins I find and who held them, what was bought with them, and how long it was in circulation until it was dropped? You love the enjoyment of a good hunt that produces lots of coins, and that's relaxing to you. Do what makes you happy. Besides, i enjoy your posts. HH.

More power to all of us! I also enjoy reading about other folks old finds...very interesting! It's just I am not "into" the older stuff. Too much modern stuff to recover! I may be out to prevent future generations of MDers from finding a rare zincoln! :lol::lol::lol:

I was a coin collector when I was a kid and never really ever gave it up. Took a hiatus on it for about 40 years....then started collecting error coins a few years ago...got several albums of them. Early on some were pretty cheap on ebay, but now some that I have have astounding starting prices or reserves! I used them with teaching Boy Scouts about coins so they could learn how to both grade and see perfection versus mint errors. I still enjoy looking at them on ebay and sometimes bid, but rarely win one! :lol::lol:

I also find it most encouraging that some folks in the forum find my tomes about my hunts entertaining or amusing. I love to gab, or in the case of the forum, write.
 
I took the research idea to heart....but I researched what I could readily find around me that would be quick to hunt and that I don't need to go through the permission routine. I wanted to learn my machine and could not think of a quicker way to do it.

For my efforts for a bit over 5 months, I have come close now to exhausting the local totlots and city parks. Just a few more to hunt. I like finding coins....I don't care if they are old or new. I am not into history. I don't hunt relics. I do find some occassionally ...like a breaking plow I dug up in the front yard of a local school! I gave it to their history teacher to show the kids that the site was once a farmer's field.

Civil war relics don't excite me, unless I could get some coins from that era. In hunting local parks, sure I have not found any silver coins, but I have had a barrel of fun and found a 1903 IH, several wheats, and a gold necklace which got sold immediately. Various silver rings and so forth. I am always amused at what I find on totlots....kids have the darnest things...including gold 1 dollar coins and even an occassional Ike!

I don't worry about anyone's hunting pecularities and I would be happy that no one be concerned about mine. I ain't mad, I just, as Ricky Ricardo said, "doin some splaining!" :lol::lol:

There is plenty enough room in this hobby for all of us! Just think, if there was another one like me in my city, I would not be having all this fun! While whoever is out in the woods gettin poison ivy, ticks, chigers, and rip briars for their effort to find one coin or a miniball, I am hunting in relative comfort and ease. And at my age, just taking up this hobby, I appreciate that!

My post wasn't meant as an insult, so I hope you did not take offense. Different strokes for different folks. No doubt. I personally just get tired of digging clad. If I found jewelry I might enjoy it but I dont like wasting my time digging thousands of foil signals and them all turning out to be foil...I enjoy your posts as well...HH
 
Newbie, you are one dedicated hunter. Go and have fun. I've been to a few tot lots recently that have been barren---no pull tabs or zincolns, nothing. Trying to learn a new detector, but still rely on my Tesoro. Going early in the morning to another school and try again. HH
 
No offense taken....

I realize that my explanation might have sounded a bit overbearing....but just wanted every1 in here to know where I am coming from.

:lol::lol:When you are as short in patience as I am, the satisfaction of swinging and diggin some coins is good for me. But if was a dirt hunter, then I surely would run out of patience and be mumbling some bad words! :shock:

I do a bit of scouting around when at these schools and parks, hunting open areas, around trees, and in car divider areas when I finish up the available local totlots, but the yield is always small and scattered. That's when I say, enough is enough...I could be on another totlot somewhere! And I give it up.:lol:
 
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