Myers Depot Metal Detectors

Hey Old timers! - Tell me about the good ole days.

Silverhorse65 said:
Excellent thread guys. Love reading about the 70's/80's/ and even 90's and what it was like. The good ol' days for me started in 2018 with a $60 detector that didn't even have a name attached to it. It was sitting in my brothers garage after he'd used it to find the boundary pins for his property. That thing was good for about a dozen or so freshwater beach hunts where I found plenty of bottle caps, clad, and toy cars. The rest, as they say, is History! I'm here now and swinging a nox and finding all that silver that the old timers left behind.
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Same here. Good ole days for me started in 2016 with a Teknetics Gamma.

I'm hooked on this hobby but feel like I'm late to the party.

The parks in my town are pretty old and I've been over them many many times. Never found a single silver coin. - Probably never will. They're the true definition of "hunted out".

But they must have been carpeted with old coins at one point n time. I bet the first people to get to the old parks in my town with capable equipment made amazing finds and had quite an experience.
 
Mtc8966 said:
....The parks in my town are pretty old and I've been over them many many times. Never found a single silver coin. - Probably never will. They're the true definition of "hunted out". .
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Not sure about your particular town and parks, but I can think of a few locations here in CA, that your analysis would be correct : The parks are old, and the turf is undisturbed. Yet they are nothing but a carpet of clad and zinc and aluminum. And no matter how hard you try (balls to the walls modern-machine-depth, or strip-mining, etc....) you simply can't/won't find old silver.

Yet back in the day (late 1970s to early 1980s), they were the go-to spot to fish out early mercs, IH's, barbers, etc.....

Then as the years went on , the easy-gimmees (4-star deepie high conductors) got thinned out. So the old-timers "moved to greener grounds" elsewhere. The side of town became "blighted @ the remainder of the 1980s and all through the 1990s, 00s, and '10s. And so today, pity-the-poor-soul who goes there now to try to find oldies.

I pass by some of those parks, and would never DREAM of wasting time there. Yet 35+ yrs. ago we could get silver any time we went. And the added power and whistles and bells of today's machines will not help you one bit. They are just too blighted and junky and clad-ridden now :no:

However, that's not to say that every park is like that. I can think of parks in CA that I can still reliably pull silver every time I'm passing through. I think it's because those were corridors that didn't have hardcore hunters back in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, etc.....
 
In my eight years, I’ve managed to find two virgin spots. What fun ! What I wouldn’t give to go back in time about 30 years or so !
 
I wouldn't say the parks are hunted out here in Iowa, but they've certainly been pounded. I got my Nox in June and have used it 8-10 hours a week since. I've mostly just gone to parks and public schools. No yard hunts because I don't want to hunt with others or knock on doors during the Covid. I've yet to find a "honey hole". Yard permissions seems to be where it's at if your willing to put yourself out there and ask.

I pulled a 1903 Barber Dime within the first hour of hunting with my Nox. The park I went to was definitely old for this area, 1880's or earlier. I've hunted that park quite a bit hoping the Nox will get me some more of that missed stuff. Pulled an 1893 Indian Head on the second hunt. Been back a handful of times since those first two hunts with nothing to show for it but clad.

So far, 17 silver coins, 4 Indian Heads, a combo gold/silver ring, and a 1940's USA/eagle silver ring. It's definitely not easy and silver seems to come about every fourth or fifth hunt, but a bit of it is still there.
 
Thank You Tom In CA, and to all the folks that have been in the hobby for awhile that contributed stories about the early days.
 
I bought a [$100] BFO about 1975 too, I was about 25 or so. Mostly found relics like Axes and other tools, chains even, in those days here in Missouri, lot of tree's were sawed down in the woods and found stuff like that. No coins tho, I didn't care about them anyway (?) I'd found coins in house yards and just gave them to the kids who lived there. I remember found lots of 1940's coins LOL. Found a few pocket knifes (one a CW pocket knife. I felt sorry about him loosing it but my wife said he may be 6 feet under it... and thought that was neet. How come I never found any sheath knifes? we all owned them while kids those days. I even would find 22 lead bullets with that BFO. Some body stoled that one and I built one from a schematic, don't know where that went, it did ok tho... Later I bought a White and eventually a Compass RM 6. It ignored Alum Foil (Cigar-ette Foil) WOW

Years later I have a Garrett-GTAx-750 and a Simplex

those years I had lot of places to go and check Relics, how come I didn't ???
 
How interesting it would be to put a million frame, single frame snap, one photo every hour, fixed camera, aimed at a coin laying on the ground, and walking away from it for 50 years. The coins I walked over in 1975 have changed the amount of exposure to my coil from a scant portion of the rim to a full frontal and back to the rim a thousand times. Depending on the weather, soil condition, my detectors ability and the time I have to search, I may, or may not find the coin on this particular search. And surely, if I don’t find it with my AT Pro, ideal soil and loads of time, the guy with the $39.95 Harbor Freight detector probably won’t either. There is no such thing as no targets, or having a area “searched out” but there are several conditions which dictate whether you found that keeper in 1975 or 2005. But, what has changed is the difficulty finding permissions which haven’t been hunted out, for the minute, and the propensity of people to use plastic rather than coins as currency. These, at least tomorrow, are the good old days, if you have the patience to keep looking.

AT Pro, AT Pro Pointer, Fiskars diggers
 
Since it would likely be extremely rare now for any fresh drops of silver coins to replenish those already dug, such coins will become scarcer to find over time.

Even now in some areas it is fairly rare to dig a silver coin, so later on when about 99% of coins you dig are crusty Zincolns you might then look back as now as having been "the good old days" :laughing:
 
GKL said:
Since it would likely be extremely rare now for any fresh drops of silver coins to replenish those already dug, such coins will become scarcer to find over time.

Even now in some areas it is fairly rare to dig a silver coin, so later on when about 99% of coins you dig are crusty Zincolns you might then look back as now as having been "the good old days" :laughing:
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This is true for when you're hitting the same areas over and over again. But there are "new frontiers". You can research spots that no one's gotten on to before. Or hit yards where no one's ever knocked on a door before. Or do old-town urban demolition sites, ("follow the tractors"), etc.....

But sure, the obvious parks, in places of the USA where there was no shortage of hardcore hunters in the 1970s/80/90s, will tend to have been cherry picked.

I have found virgin sites (stage stops type places) as recently as within the last few years. And when there, some of the old coins were so shallow that I could get them with my pinpointer before even starting to dig. Granted, it takes more research now than it did in the late '70s and early '80s, doh !
 
Tom_in_CA said:
This is true for when you're hitting the same areas over and over again. But there are "new frontiers". You can research spots that no one's gotten on to before. Or hit yards where no one's ever knocked on a door before. Or do old-town urban demolition sites, ("follow the tractors"), etc.....

But sure, the obvious parks, in places of the USA where there was no shortage of hardcore hunters in the 1970s/80/90s, will tend to have been cherry picked.

I have found virgin sites (stage stops type places) as recently as within the last few years. And when there, some of the old coins were so shallow that I could get them with my pinpointer before even starting to dig. Granted, it takes more research now than it did in the late '70s and early '80s, doh !
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I agree, just yesterday I was curious about a newer rural town hall/fire barn/ballfield on 15 acres, about 5 miles to the north. I never really have been interested because I’m not a big clad hunter. I brought up an online aerial map that dated to 1955 and noticed an old barn on this site next to the road. Went to a 1970 view and the barn and house across the street were gone.

Yesterday afternoon I headed up there and dug an 1899 Victoria dime on that site next to the ballfield.
 
Tom_in_CA said:
This is true for when you're hitting the same areas over and over again. But there are "new frontiers". You can research spots that no one's gotten on to before. Or hit yards where no one's ever knocked on a door before. Or do old-town urban demolition sites, ("follow the tractors"), etc.....

But sure, the obvious parks, in places of the USA where there was no shortage of hardcore hunters in the 1970s/80/90s, will tend to have been cherry picked.

I have found virgin sites (stage stops type places) as recently as within the last few years. And when there, some of the old coins were so shallow that I could get them with my pinpointer before even starting to dig. Granted, it takes more research now than it did in the late '70s and early '80s, doh !
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Agreed !!!! :thumbsup:

I should have included in my previous post that finding un-hunted private property permissions might still be a valid source of old coins as it is extremely unlikely that all private property sites have already been hunted.

The research you mentioned is another good idea !
 
My first really good (for its time) detector was a Compass XP Pro. We're talking mid 1980s, although it could have been a little earlier. I don't remember when,exactly. But it was in the relatively early days of GOOD detectors. The first time out with that detector (just received it from Kellyco) I went to an old baseball field I had played on as a youngster. It had been abandoned 20 years earlier and now was overgrown woods. I put my detector coil down on the ground and turned on the detector. It obviously was not operating properly since it immediately pegged at the top end of silver when I just turned it on. But I dug it anyway. A half inch down was a standing liberty half. I didn't even swing the coil once and found a standing liberty! In the many years since then I have found only two other SL halves. With that old detector I found the only shield nickel, liberty head nickels, indian head pennies, civil war eagle buttons, standing liberty quarters and Franklin halves I've ever found. So even though the Compass XP Pro was rather limited in depth (6 inch max, 8 maybe, with a 12" coil} I found a lot more good stuff with it than I did with the Deus, White's, or Equinox, simply because there was a lot more THERE back then. You can still find good stuff, but it ain't as easy. And when I got into it, it was mainly because I saw other guys coming into a coin/bullion shop I used to hang around in in the 1970s, and they would have handfulls of gold class rings to sell for melt value that they had found with even older TR and even BFO detectors.
 
I could kick myself for not hunting high school fields here in California when I started in 2009! Tons of great silver and probably gold has been relocated to who knows where when they redid them!:no::crybaby::crybaby:

And it makes me sick that I didn't try to learn my friends detector in 1982/3 .No one taught me how to use it.:no:
 
Speaking of not finding silver coins anymore, You can't even find clad anymore:lol: well unless I travel to my home county, which I do.
 
metaladdict said:
I could kick myself for not hunting high school fields here in California when I started in 2009! Tons of great silver and probably gold has been relocated to who knows where when they redid them!:no::crybaby::crybaby:

And it makes me sick that I didn't try to learn my friends detector in 1982/3 .No one taught me how to use it.:no:
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Metaladdict, you must’ve been hunting places other than school fields? Just curious why they weren’t on your list.
 
metaladdict said:
...

And it makes me sick that I didn't try to learn my friends detector in 1982/3 .No one taught me how to use it.:no:
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Well, I hate to bring even more remorse to your side of the aisle, but you've twisted my arm : Seeing as that you're in the north of SF area, and seeing as how you cite "1982-83", get this : There were several hunters in your area that wised up to the beach erosion that was going on during that winter of '82-83. And Stinson beach was one of the CA beaches that was severely hit.

Decades later, one of them related to me that there was a day when he got into a pocket of targets so thick, that for 1 to 2 hrs, all he could do was endlessly scoop around him, as the targets were literally layered ! At the conclusion of reaching bottom of this pocket-of-targets (targets all grouped and trapped in a sandstone bedrock depression thing), he literally had to climb out of the hole he had dug ! With his apron full of silver coins and a handful of gold rings. He described being so-sore, that he didn't think he had any strength left to claw/climb his way out of the hole .

Then move over 10 ft, and repeat the process :roll:

Sick sick sick :mad:
 
I started detecting in 1973 with a Compass (I believe) detector that was supposed to be a top of the line detector. Too young and dumb to know what I was doing so I kept going back to the same spots (for some unknown reason I didn't detect parks) but hunted schools and playgrounds. As mentioned in previous posts, our detectors were junk compared to the detectors of today. Discrimination was terrible and if you used a lot of discrimination you lost a lot of depth which was minimal to start. At 1 ball diamond, I dug an unbelievable amount of Merc's at 2 inches or less. I never even stepped foot into the playing field. It became boring so I stopped going there. My all time record was digging 7 silvers in a row. If I had the machines of today back in the 70's, I would have quit my job and detected full time. The 1st year I started detecting, I got out of work at 3, detected for about 2 hours and was home for supper at 5:30 and found over 10,000 coins. Was too busy (young and dumb) to detect on the weekends. Saddest part is my brother stole over $400 of my silver for Coke (as in the white stuff). Still finding a decent amount of silver and I truly enjoy finding it more today than back then. It wasn't uncommon to still find silver coins in circulation in the early 70's.
 
I C THE LITE said:
I started detecting in 1973 with a Compass (I believe) detector that was supposed to be a top of the line detector. Too young and dumb to know what I was doing so I kept going back to the same spots (for some unknown reason I didn't detect parks) but hunted schools and playgrounds. As mentioned in previous posts, our detectors were junk compared to the detectors of today. Discrimination was terrible and if you used a lot of discrimination you lost a lot of depth which was minimal to start. At 1 ball diamond, I dug an unbelievable amount of Merc's at 2 inches or less. I never even stepped foot into the playing field. It became boring so I stopped going there. My all time record was digging 7 silvers in a row. If I had the machines of today back in the 70's, I would have quit my job and detected full time. The 1st year I started detecting, I got out of work at 3, detected for about 2 hours and was home for supper at 5:30 and found over 10,000 coins. Was too busy (young and dumb) to detect on the weekends. Saddest part is my brother stole over $400 of my silver for Coke (as in the white stuff). Still finding a decent amount of silver and I truly enjoy finding it more today than back then. It wasn't uncommon to still find silver coins in circulation in the early 70's.
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Did your brother ever apologize or pay you back ?
 
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