randy
Forum Supporter
Since last April, I've been working this old hay field, which of course can only be worked after it has been hayed, but we were fortunate enough to have a snowless winter around here this year, so I was on it whenever I had free time. I covered every square foot of it (tho I'm sure I made some errors), and finished it today.
I've posted many of the finds over the past 12 months, but since I'm a numbers guy, I figured I'd share some details. I don't post every rosie and merc I find, and besides, some of those silvers were quite ugly
Anyway, the field is public property, and the county GIS says its about 35 acres or so, which works out to about 2 silvers per acre, when you subtract the wooded sections, which I did not hunt. That is alot of record keeping to make sure you hit every square foot of a site, but I use google earth, a map and compass, and streamered tent stakes (hammered into the ground so no one or no machine gets hurt), to mark key points of progress. I use sports cones to grid a site day to day between the more permanent tent stake markers. Maybe I will graduate to a GPS someday
but what I do seems to work out for the most part.
2 silvers per acre is not bad as these things go, especially for a field. I have another field I am working which has only given up only 2 silvers over about 20 acres. Now that is patience
.
The oldest silver I found at this site was an 1895 barber dime, and the silver coins ranged mostly from 1900 to 1925. I dug a total of 20 barber silvers, which seems sort of amazing, at least to me, 13 dimes, 6 quarters, and 1 half. Also dug a few SLQs, a couple of walkers, and 3 coppers. Oldest overall coin was a KG II copper.
And, I almost gave up on the site. When I hit a new site, I do a process I call "sounding", which is literally listening to how the site sounds, walking as many different sections of it as possible. I've developed an ear for good sounding and bad sounding sites, just as a general approach. The site sounded pretty good, but had a lot of high tone trash, which is a two-edged sword. High tone trash says the site hasn't been hit hard, but also says you will be wasting alot of time. After three hours of the first hunt, not a single silver, and I need that to be about 1 silver per 2 hours worst case; ideal is 1 per 90 minutes. So I was about to give up on the site, but hit a merc near the edge, at about 4 hours, where old houses were backing up to the field. I figured it was spillover from the houses, but kept going, and hit another one at 5 hours, and decided the site was worth it, and, fortunately, it worked out.
I was also fortunate enough to develop an ear for the high tone trash, which, in general, was larger and rang just a bit lower than a silver, and therefore could be ignored. I'm sure I missed a few silvers with this cherry picking approach, but that's economics, and I'm an economist. You just have to make these calls sometimes, right or wrong.
There was competition in there as well. I saw someone else's plugs. To their credit, that section of the site did not give up much. But, for whatever reason, they chose not to work the whole site. Better to be lucky than good.
All were found with my trusty, ancient E-Trac and the Detech Ultimate 13 coil. I love that coil; my finds have gone up materially since I started using it several years ago. While I know one of these days I will have to graduate to a modern machine, a big concern for me is what the after market coil options will be (as well as if the modern machines are as efficient as the E-Trac, specifically on tone and sizing).
So that's that. I hope someone found this writeup and my approach to hunting for silver coins valuable. Its still out there, at least if you are lucky enough to stumble upon a killer site once in a while.
HH everyone
I've posted many of the finds over the past 12 months, but since I'm a numbers guy, I figured I'd share some details. I don't post every rosie and merc I find, and besides, some of those silvers were quite ugly
Anyway, the field is public property, and the county GIS says its about 35 acres or so, which works out to about 2 silvers per acre, when you subtract the wooded sections, which I did not hunt. That is alot of record keeping to make sure you hit every square foot of a site, but I use google earth, a map and compass, and streamered tent stakes (hammered into the ground so no one or no machine gets hurt), to mark key points of progress. I use sports cones to grid a site day to day between the more permanent tent stake markers. Maybe I will graduate to a GPS someday
but what I do seems to work out for the most part.2 silvers per acre is not bad as these things go, especially for a field. I have another field I am working which has only given up only 2 silvers over about 20 acres. Now that is patience
.The oldest silver I found at this site was an 1895 barber dime, and the silver coins ranged mostly from 1900 to 1925. I dug a total of 20 barber silvers, which seems sort of amazing, at least to me, 13 dimes, 6 quarters, and 1 half. Also dug a few SLQs, a couple of walkers, and 3 coppers. Oldest overall coin was a KG II copper.
And, I almost gave up on the site. When I hit a new site, I do a process I call "sounding", which is literally listening to how the site sounds, walking as many different sections of it as possible. I've developed an ear for good sounding and bad sounding sites, just as a general approach. The site sounded pretty good, but had a lot of high tone trash, which is a two-edged sword. High tone trash says the site hasn't been hit hard, but also says you will be wasting alot of time. After three hours of the first hunt, not a single silver, and I need that to be about 1 silver per 2 hours worst case; ideal is 1 per 90 minutes. So I was about to give up on the site, but hit a merc near the edge, at about 4 hours, where old houses were backing up to the field. I figured it was spillover from the houses, but kept going, and hit another one at 5 hours, and decided the site was worth it, and, fortunately, it worked out.
I was also fortunate enough to develop an ear for the high tone trash, which, in general, was larger and rang just a bit lower than a silver, and therefore could be ignored. I'm sure I missed a few silvers with this cherry picking approach, but that's economics, and I'm an economist. You just have to make these calls sometimes, right or wrong.
There was competition in there as well. I saw someone else's plugs. To their credit, that section of the site did not give up much. But, for whatever reason, they chose not to work the whole site. Better to be lucky than good.
All were found with my trusty, ancient E-Trac and the Detech Ultimate 13 coil. I love that coil; my finds have gone up materially since I started using it several years ago. While I know one of these days I will have to graduate to a modern machine, a big concern for me is what the after market coil options will be (as well as if the modern machines are as efficient as the E-Trac, specifically on tone and sizing).
So that's that. I hope someone found this writeup and my approach to hunting for silver coins valuable. Its still out there, at least if you are lucky enough to stumble upon a killer site once in a while.
HH everyone
Nice write-up, too!
