Myers Depot Metal Detectors

Which of Your Best Sites Were Duds...

BBsGal

BBsGal

Forum Supporter
Joined
Jan 8, 2014
Messages
3,498
Location
Southern Oklahoma
What sites of yours that you had high hopes for turned out to be real duds?

The worst disappointments I've had in sites were a 1800s hotel site, a 1900s church site, and a 1908 school site. These all were flat out duds, not even a wheatie to show for hours of hunting.
 
Easy one. I grew up on a 8 acre farm, the last remnants of what was a 400 acre ranch. The main house was built in 1889 and there were several outbuildings and root cellars on the property. As a kid in the 1980s, I found a 1925 SLQ and later a very worn Morgan dollar just by digging around in the flowerbeds. It had never been detected and I always thought I'd stumble on a depression cache full of silver dollars somewhere on that property and kept an eye out for anything interesting. Life went by and 5 years ago I bought my first detector with big dreams of finding something potentially valuable there. Hundreds of hours of searching and even a new machine later; reality sets in. There's just nothing there. The oldest coin I found there with the detector was a 1970 clad quarter. In all that time I only found a dozen or so coins, all modern. No mercs, rosies or even a wheatie. Plenty of old tools, square nails, model T parts and even a giant plow were unearthed by me, so I know I was finding older stuff, just nothing valuable. Ultimate bummer, guess my luck there ran out when Reagan was still president. Many years of dreaming and no payoff. Oh well, I did get some very good on the job training out of fruitlessly searching so long there and do ok at the parks and permissions these days. I now know my machine well as a result of endlessly trying. HH! :digginahole:
 
Last edited:
BBsGal said:
What sites of yours that you had high hopes for turned out to be real duds?

The worst disappointments I've had in sites were a 1800s hotel site, a 1900s church site, and a 1908 school site. These all were flat out duds, not even a wheatie to show for hours of hunting.
Click to expand...
Great question. A buddy of mine scored a permission on a house built in 1840 that was used as a civil war hospital. Well the house it's right next to railroad tracks. Long story short the site is so infested with iron that anywhere you put a pin pointer it's going off. The iron had a blanket effect on the detectors too (V3 and etrac) only thing I found was a tax token.

Some sites just don't pan out no matter how good they look. Kinda like ex girlfriends lol

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
 
I had a 3 hour drive into looking at 2 ball fields from the 1930s this past weekend. Didn't even come home with one wheat,actually hunted for about 4 hours. It was a very long day,burnt a half a tank of gas to get absolute complete unadulterated horseshit.(I wonder how long before a mod catches that word..)
Truth is...you never know. I've scored great coins in farmyards and squat in a fairground. Found my only Morgan right in front of where I parked in a park that I had given up hope on before...
Silver,like gold,is where you find it. It's just about as sporadic as that. There are places that,after many people have found things in these types of places, are known to USUALLY have older coins. The downside is...everybody already knows that. Unless you have mad skills,a lot of patience and a willingness to battle where nobody wants to...old coins will remain fairly elusive.
Any schmo can wander into a place with about any machine these days and find good clean signals to 8". We are all out there either looking for that type of site that no one has wandered into yet or we are trying to sort out the remaining skewed and/or ultra deep coins that might remain.
Private property is the last great place to look. Even if it HAS been detected in the past,it's not going to have had the pounding that a public place has. It can be VERY difficult and it requires not only high potential sites but a true working relationship with your machine to be able to find old coins anymore. You might get lucky. There's the saying.."I'd rather be lucky than good". We've gone over the hump and you HAVE to be "good" and have a little luck. Personally I don't believe in luck,only well laid plans and the ambition to carry them through.
 
First oldish permission was a 50s house. I did a quick lunch hunt and turned up a silver quarter. Three more hunts, one with another good detectorist helping me, no more silver. I had high hopes after that first hunt.

BCD
 
1910 Mansion on hill overlooking River in town dating to the late 1700s. Nothing but a few modern coins. So disappointed by that place.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Metal detecting is a finite hobby where you can only uncover what's down there in your area. Unless you move around you are doomed to be just another digger who has great success at first then get uninterested as the finds slow..

Seen it over and over and....

This hobby has the most turn over in members..
 
IDXMonster said:
I had a 3 hour drive into looking at 2 ball fields from the 1930s this past weekend. Didn't even come home with one wheat,actually hunted for about 4 hours. It was a very long day,burnt a half a tank of gas to get absolute complete unadulterated horseshit.(I wonder how long before a mod catches that word..)

Truth is...you never know. I've scored great coins in farmyards and squat in a fairground. Found my only Morgan right in front of where I parked in a park that I had given up hope on before...

Silver,like gold,is where you find it. It's just about as sporadic as that. There are places that,after many people have found things in these types of places, are known to USUALLY have older coins. The downside is...everybody already knows that. Unless you have mad skills,a lot of patience and a willingness to battle where nobody wants to...old coins will remain fairly elusive.

Any schmo can wander into a place with about any machine these days and find good clean signals to 8". We are all out there either looking for that type of site that no one has wandered into yet or we are trying to sort out the remaining skewed and/or ultra deep coins that might remain.

Private property is the last great place to look. Even if it HAS been detected in the past,it's not going to have had the pounding that a public place has. It can be VERY difficult and it requires not only high potential sites but a true working relationship with your machine to be able to find old coins anymore. You might get lucky. There's the saying.."I'd rather be lucky than good". We've gone over the hump and you HAVE to be "good" and have a little luck. Personally I don't believe in luck,only well laid plans and the ambition to carry them through.
Click to expand...



Man do I know what you mean. I have 86 acres of farmland with a root cellar, spring house, smoke house, and an ancient chimney from a log cabin and it's probably the worse place I've ever detected. I just don't get it. I guess they just didn't have much back in the day.
 
Some people door knock, ive never had very good success with private property for some reason, so I stick to public. Seems to be working out okay :laughing: happy hunting!
 
BBsGal said:
What sites of yours that you had high hopes for turned out to be real duds?

The worst disappointments I've had in sites were a 1800s hotel site, a 1900s church site, and a 1908 school site. These all were flat out duds, not even a wheatie to show for hours of hunting.
Click to expand...

Last year, I specifically targeted small neighborhood "lots" that would be prime spots for years of slow trickle drops. I'd done very well after a couple of months, pulling close to 50 rings, about a half dozen golds, and about 20 silvers.

On a nice 3 day weekend in the summer, I was going from spot to spot, just checking my phone. Day 2 of the weekend, I started in the same neighborhood I'd done the day before, and had pulled several sterling items, and a half-dozen rings. I pulled open my phone and found a park, and went to it. The park was eerily quiet under the coil. I was finding NOTHING. It was hard to believe, since the parks had all been 'full.' So I started looking, and eventually found a small mark that indicated a flap cut. I actually said to myself, "DANG, that MDer digs nice flaps! I can barely see them!" Clearly, the park had been detected not too long ago. It was a complete dud.

Then... Then I realized, "oh, this is the park I hit yesterday, I just drove into it from a different direction, and it looked different when I walked in."

DOH! Dud indeed, I'd already cleaned it out. Ah well, at least my honest-to-goodness review of my own cuts were favorable. LOL

:)

SKippy
 
Well there was a couple this year so far. A 1930's house with a nice big yard. Nothing but clad twice, and only three coins the second hunt. I went right after a good rain too. I could not believe not one silver. Second spot I'm guessing real early 1900's. I did find a war nickel and some wheats. I figure there is more there, but there is so much nonferrous trash and iron it is impossible to hunt over a good portion of it. Overload city!
 
Skippy SH13 said:
Last year, I specifically targeted small neighborhood "lots" that would be prime spots for years of slow trickle drops. I'd done very well after a couple of months, pulling close to 50 rings, about a half dozen golds, and about 20 silvers.

On a nice 3 day weekend in the summer, I was going from spot to spot, just checking my phone. Day 2 of the weekend, I started in the same neighborhood I'd done the day before, and had pulled several sterling items, and a half-dozen rings. I pulled open my phone and found a park, and went to it. The park was eerily quiet under the coil. I was finding NOTHING. It was hard to believe, since the parks had all been 'full.' So I started looking, and eventually found a small mark that indicated a flap cut. I actually said to myself, "DANG, that MDer digs nice flaps! I can barely see them!" Clearly, the park had been detected not too long ago. It was a complete dud.

Then... Then I realized, "oh, this is the park I hit yesterday, I just drove into it from a different direction, and it looked different when I walked in."

DOH! Dud indeed, I'd already cleaned it out. Ah well, at least my honest-to-goodness review of my own cuts were favorable. LOL

:)

SKippy
Click to expand...

:toofunny::funnyup::laughing::laughing:
 
I found more silver in a yard from house from the 40's than I did from an old boyscout camp. I have learned to never discount any house / area.
 
My very first permission on private property was a massive dud. It was an abandoned, former home site that I was able to identify first from aerial photos - it was at the edge of a farmer's field, but the farmer was still plowing around it, leaving the grounds intact even though the house was gone. It was confirmed to have age on it initially by locating it on a 1901 USGS topo map, and the current (elderly) property owners were descendants of the original owner of the property when the house still stood - they said the home was built in the 1890's and was lived in until the 1950's. The home was demolished in the 60's, and to the best of their knowledge the site had never been detected.

Anyway, I couldn't wait to get my coil over the site, imagining all kinds of great finds. Ended up finding absolutely nothing other than an old .22 casing and a ton of pull tabs! Brought my expectations back down to Earth for all of my hunts ever since - I expect nothing and get thrilled whenever my expectations are exceeded! :grin:
 
Our family farm began before 1900. As many times as i hunted it before it was sold, I never found any silver and few coins at that. Nothing old. I did manage to find a few items from when my grandfather farmed with horses. For the most part farmers didn't carry money with them because there was no place to spend it. Back then a coin was worth more and if they did lose one, they searched until they found it. Also my grandparents told me that the reason that a lot of coins have holes in them, they were sewn into pockets (mainly school children) so they wouldn't lose them.
 
1800's train station. the newer rail road tore it up and filled it in to much. had such good potential historically. absolute dud though
 
About a year and a half ago my hunting partner found what we thought was going to be a VERY sweet hunt. Back in the mid 50's to early 60's it was a tourist place called Little Beaver Town. it was based on an old TV show. It has since all but disappeared with only the cement slabs remaining. In recent years it has become a hobo town where homeless people build shanties. The police have to go in once in a while and clear it all out. Anyway, we hunted that place all over for 3 hours or more and we each found 1 modern penny. Biggest disappointment of all of my metal detecting. :(
 
Last edited:
I just got back from a camping trip. Swimming pond dating back to the 40's.

Good news: my waterproofed Compadre works great submerged.

Bad news: found a wheat cent, 1947-D... and some clad and junk. No gold. No silver. I need a real long-handled scoop for water hunting and a dang wetsuit for the high mountain lakes. Brrrrr. Hour in the water and 4 or so to warm up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Valley Hunter
the Legend software ... ?
Replies
0
Views
48
Valley Hunter
Valley Hunter
CountyWorker
Industry Forum
2
Replies
24
Views
163
CountyWorker
CountyWorker
Rudy
Magnet Fishing Yields New Evidence
Replies
6
Views
234
mudwhale
mudwhale
maxxkatt
Fun comparison of our members with the members of the Danbury Metal Detecting Club
Replies
5
Views
170
CountyWorker
CountyWorker
GTimberMT
Short story about pull tabs! You never know!!
Replies
0
Views
154
GTimberMT
GTimberMT
Back
Top Bottom