Dirt Fishing! A great way to lose a couple of hours. Mostly, I'm a beach hunter, and that's determined by where I live. I'm near year-round tourist beaches that replenish themselves, while our towns' oldest neighborhoods date only to the 1920's, so the prospects for dirt fishing are somewhat limited. But last Saturday, the surf was rough, and I had gone into town for an estate sale. On my way I saw an alluring verge behind a sunken, broken square curb. Square curbs are relatively old. And the house behind the verge was built in the 1920's, judging from it's Mission style architecture. On my way back home, I determined to hit that verge.
It was cloudy, drizzly, so I put on my German fleck camouflage jacket. I used a 6" coil and my customized CTX 3030 beach program. Why use that program in the dirt? It's really the only one I'm familiar with, and it finds the goods in our local dirt quite well.
My dirt hunting strategy usually goes like this: I hunt the coins and nickels first, and then later, if feasible, I return to clear out all non-ferrous signals, which gives me a chance at cool stuff like pins, buckles, gold and costume jewelry, etc.
So, I was hunting the high numbers, and then remembered I needed to watch for nickels. Right then I get a 12-13 nickel signal, quite intense, right near the surface. I scratched the dirt away with the tip of my probe...and saw the head of an Indian! It was a 1923 Buffalo nickel.
The buffalo is worth about $2 in good condition (meaning you can at least see the date) . This one would be quite a bit better than Good, probably XF+, but for the environmental damage. It would sell on ebay for about $10-15 if it had no corrosion. Next target was a very vintage looking silver ring, it rang up 12-37 just like a zincoln, 4-5" deep. The 1920d wheatie also came in at 12-37, also at about 4". I sure don't want to skip 4" deep zinc penny 12-37's around here. I dug 4 wheaties there, and one later, the others rang in a bit higher, probably 12-40 or so, if I remember right.
Got back to the car, discovered that a piece of the ring was missing - likely the solder had cracked after all that time in the soil, is what I thought. I went back to the hole to find it. And there, right by where I'd dug the ring, in the runnel below the curb in the street, was my coil cover! I didn't find the ring fragment, but I did save my coil cover.
A few blocks away, i found a tiny empty lot adjacent to one with an old wooden house. It was only about 15 yards wide. I dutifully ran my 6" coil over what I figured had been the front yard. Got into the NW corner and there were these 3 (or 5, depending on how you count 'em) silver rings, all pretty close together, a spill from when they knocked down the house, I guess. You can bet I was checking all the mid to low tone targets around there! I found a pair of junk earrings. No gold, dag-nabit!
I worked back to a tree towards the rear, and once I got under the tree I saw a No Trespass sign tacked on the trunk. It was hidden by low-hanging branches. That sign had either been there a long time, or else whoever posted it wasn't too bright, as you had to get under the tree before you could see it.
I was done anyway. I had dug my first ring spill.
It was cloudy, drizzly, so I put on my German fleck camouflage jacket. I used a 6" coil and my customized CTX 3030 beach program. Why use that program in the dirt? It's really the only one I'm familiar with, and it finds the goods in our local dirt quite well.
My dirt hunting strategy usually goes like this: I hunt the coins and nickels first, and then later, if feasible, I return to clear out all non-ferrous signals, which gives me a chance at cool stuff like pins, buckles, gold and costume jewelry, etc.
So, I was hunting the high numbers, and then remembered I needed to watch for nickels. Right then I get a 12-13 nickel signal, quite intense, right near the surface. I scratched the dirt away with the tip of my probe...and saw the head of an Indian! It was a 1923 Buffalo nickel.
The buffalo is worth about $2 in good condition (meaning you can at least see the date) . This one would be quite a bit better than Good, probably XF+, but for the environmental damage. It would sell on ebay for about $10-15 if it had no corrosion. Next target was a very vintage looking silver ring, it rang up 12-37 just like a zincoln, 4-5" deep. The 1920d wheatie also came in at 12-37, also at about 4". I sure don't want to skip 4" deep zinc penny 12-37's around here. I dug 4 wheaties there, and one later, the others rang in a bit higher, probably 12-40 or so, if I remember right.
Got back to the car, discovered that a piece of the ring was missing - likely the solder had cracked after all that time in the soil, is what I thought. I went back to the hole to find it. And there, right by where I'd dug the ring, in the runnel below the curb in the street, was my coil cover! I didn't find the ring fragment, but I did save my coil cover.
A few blocks away, i found a tiny empty lot adjacent to one with an old wooden house. It was only about 15 yards wide. I dutifully ran my 6" coil over what I figured had been the front yard. Got into the NW corner and there were these 3 (or 5, depending on how you count 'em) silver rings, all pretty close together, a spill from when they knocked down the house, I guess. You can bet I was checking all the mid to low tone targets around there! I found a pair of junk earrings. No gold, dag-nabit!
I worked back to a tree towards the rear, and once I got under the tree I saw a No Trespass sign tacked on the trunk. It was hidden by low-hanging branches. That sign had either been there a long time, or else whoever posted it wasn't too bright, as you had to get under the tree before you could see it.
I was done anyway. I had dug my first ring spill.
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