Yesterday I thought I had a chance at a double digit day, but didn’t come close.  Nailed it today tho, baby!

So, in yesterday’s entry, I tried to articulate (probably poorly), how my grid seemed to be running perpendicular to a hot zone.  That is, as I transected the grid across the piece of the site I thought was most promising, the silvers seemed to show up in a line at one particular place in the transect.

So, its like duh, why wouldn’t you just change your grid to run into the putative intersecting hot zone?  Easy to say, but it does take a couple of days of gridding to get a visual picture of the site, especially when the aerials and other research don’t give you any reason to believe in said putative linear hot zone.

So today was the day, brutally cold and windy, to set up a grid around the presumed hot zone.  And it worked.  Hot dog, baby!  Started at 10:30, and after I pulled my 6th silver, looked at my watch, and it was only 12:00.  Are you kidding me?  That’s a rare run rate, and I was too giddy to do the math.  You can’t get an adrenaline like this from other games (at least the ones I’ve played).  Not only that, after I looked at my watch, pulled my 7th on the day just 5 minutes later.  Are you kidding me?

At that point is was 2 Q’s and 5 mercs, giving me a dollar day, which are rare enough, but I wanted a double.   I mean, it was only noon after all (and I skipped lunch, being on this roll, wouldn’t you?).

And it wasn’t much longer before I pulled a another merc and a rosie, the latter of which didn’t come in with an FE number lower than 25 on the E-Trac.  Its the sort of target many would not have dug, and I may have been among them, except it had that sound and that precise pinpoint, and the ground is rough, so you gotta pull it, especially when you are on a roll, and the adrenaline is flowing and the prospect of a double is in the air.  9 at this point, baby.

But the 10th took some work.  I was getting a ton of good high tones, but they turned out to be high tone trash, wheates, or a stray clad.  I know I was swinging too fast, as the adrenaline was pumping.  I kept saying to myself: SLOW DOWN!  You have an E-Trac.  If you see the coil is moving, you are swinging too fast.

Then I got some good luck that looked like bad luck at first.  A local came over to talk to me.  I generally don’t like it when people come up to talk to me (always the prospect of park people or some asshole with a ‘tude), but it actually almost always ends well in my experience, and this was no exception.  I hope to have more to write about this local’s conversation later (as it was way cool), but the proximate effect was to slow me down, and get me to stop thinking about the double.

And at 1:24, I got a beautiful deep 11-47 which I was certain was a deep silver Q, and turned out to be my first walker of the season.  10 silvers in less than 3 hours!  Are you kidding me?  And wait ’til you see this walker.  Nothing trumps the site of deep, big silver in the hole.

Got another rosie a bit later for my 11th of the day, and as I moved away from the linear hot zone, got not much more on the day.  I was, at this point, moving towards a section that previous prospecting suggested was dry, and it was.  And it sounded that way.  The cold biting wind, and 11 silvers pulled gave me a nice excuse to call it a day.

21 from this site now.  I’m gonna downgrade it to a 25 site from a 35 site, however, as there is no evidence of anything outside this narrow band, and the endpoints of the band seem tapered.  What you do is try to construct why a site is as it is from the evidence, use the reconstruction to guide your detecting, and find more silvers based on this reconstruction (an article on this, called “flow paradigms”, seems appropriate, but is for another day).  But, its a huge site, so maybe more than the estimate will be forthcoming.  We’ll see.  And, I have not clue why there is this strip of silvers across a huge site.  I’m still expecting some scattereds, but it will take some patience working more low density areas.

A note on the weather.  It was brutal.  A cold, icy wind.  But when you have a 6 silver day yesterday, and belief in more from the site, and are getting them, you have to do it.  You tough it out.  Who wouldn’t?

But wait, there’s more.  When you drop a double, the adrenaline doesn’t let up, and you feel the need to keep writing.  In this case, it is actually a tip, which I meant to post yesterday, (and yeah, its more on noise cancel, but here it is):  If you get an iffy target, go as close to the target as you can to get a clean threshold, do a noise cancel, then go back over the target.   Most times, the target will ID better.  The principle here is that you wan the channel that works best in the local target’s dirt.  Try it.  It works (at least for me, in our highly variable soil).

So, lets look at that shiny cleaned up, and then that beautiful walker (which, unfortunately, seems a bit out of focus).

Well, I didn’t nail this one, but when you have a day like today, sometimes you just don’t care, baby!

Yesterday was the first day I was able to test my replacement big unit.  It was warm (58 degrees), but the ground was still frozen solid (that happens after 10 days of sub 20 weather).

I went to a park with a large hunted out field, just to make sure I heard the blissful sound of threshold hum and the occasional clad, then into the woods at the same park to some ruins that have produced 3 of my best 30 finds; an extremely difficult, iron infested site. (and come to think of it, I’m not sure any other site can claim 3 of my top 30 finds).

Anyway, the coil purred like a kitten in the hunted out section, and seemed to work acceptably in the difficult section, tho I found nothing of note in either place.  At least I was able to get the test out of the way on a throw away day with the ground frozen.  Why do coils go bad?  Who knows? I hope this one doesn’t go bad like the last one.

Anyway, today was the big test, to see if the new big unit could score silver at a site marked as a prospective honeyhole, where the pro coil scored 4 silvers on 1/17.  Its a difficult site to work: the mineralization is brutal, and there is lots of iron, so you are constantly wondering about iron falses vs mucked up deep silvers.  But it was 66 degrees today, so you have to give it a go, don’t you?

And it did not go well initially.  The first hour produced little, just three clads, and lots of chatter from the coil.  But, the coil sounded like it usually does at hard sites with the man cranked, tho I was wondering if the pro coil might have been a better choice for the site, given the smaller footprint in the high mineralization, and given that it found 4 silvers last time.

But I have faith in the big unit (when it is working), and my faith was eventually rewarded with a merc and a worn barber right next to each other (no doubt the same event).  Not only that, scored a couple of rosies in the next half hour to complete the trifecta in just 2 hours, all before lunch.  Are you kidding me?  I rarely get trifectas.  At this point, I’m looking at a 2 per hour site, and thinking double digit day.

But it was not to be.  After lunch it went slowly, I pulled another merc and then a Q just near the end of the day.  Total of 6 silvers in 4.5 hours.  Any time you can get 1 per hour plus is fantastic, but that special experience of the rarefied air of a 2 per hour honeyhole was not to be, at least not today.

I’m not sure what to think of the site going forward.  Its produced 10 silvers in 2 hunts, but it is hard to read.  I already wrote about the possibly filled section on 1/17.  All of the silvers were sort of in a line, which my rectangular (and perpendicular) grid transected.  The obvious thing is to grid along that line, rather than perpendicular to it, but why are all the silvers in a line like that?  Who knows?  Who knows what the site has going forward.  Still sounding like a 5-35 silver site.  Its huge, but the area producing the silvers is quite small.  We’ll see, if the weather holds up.

One more note on the big unit.  Dug just 5 wheaties today.  Gotta love it.  The previously blogged entries here before the ground froze using the pro coil noted a large uptick in wheaties relative to silvers.  While any economist will tell you that this is not a large enough sample size, just anecdotally we see an uptick in wheaties with the pro coil, and a downdick with the big unit.  Its simple.  While I’m not ready to claim the big unit gives better depth, I am willing to claim that it give better TID at depth, allowing us to leave those wheaties for the competition (and I did that today, choosing not to dig several of them, that I doubt I would have had the confidence to ignore with the pro coil).  My stats since using this coil bear this out.  I just hope that its does not go bad.

Ok, enough intellectual BS.  Gotta see that shiny cleaned up; may be quite a while before I drop another sixspot.

Got my replacement Detech 13 today.  Nice one KellyCo — no hassles on getting me the replacement at all.

Of course, I can’t use it.  They are saying warmer weather early next week, but I’m not sure it will be enough for the ground to thaw; we’ll see.

My concern is that there is an underlying problem with the engineering of this coil, and it may go bad as well.  Only time will tell.  I once owned a non Minelab machine, and went thru two bad coils on that machine due to systemic engineering issues, and called it a day with that coil, that machine, and that company.  I do not have alot of tolerance for products that fail.  I hope it was just bad luck with my first Detech 13, and not a systemic problem.  If it does fail, I’m not sure what I’ll do for a large coil — maybe a big SEF (also made by Detech, but I’ve never heard of any issues with it).

Looks like I’m done for a while.  They say we won’t be above 30 or for a couple of weeks, and may be getting a big snowstorm.  That’s just as well, I guess, got out today for the first time since Friday, and it was miserable cold.   Ground is starting to freeze — in that state now where the first inch or so is frozen — won’t be long ’til its all rock hard.

Today’s hunt was lousy, 5 wheaties and nothing shiny.  Its a close by site — wanted to go to Friday’s site, but it is far and didn’t want a long drive in case it snowed today.  Today’s site was one I discovered over Christmas week, and have yet to get a silver out of, tho I think I have at least 10 wheaties there.  This is a place one of my acquaintances told me he worked hard for a period of 2 months and dug everything, so I am determined to get a silver out of there, more for curiosity’s sake than anything else.  So far, it looks like he did get them all (the main part is totally dead so far), tho I am getting some deep high tones around the edges of the site.

We’ll see, might be a month or more before I am out there again, and this is a low priority project for when I need something close.

Alot goin’ on here.  Lets try to nail it.  Not too optimistic on that score, but we’ll see.

First off, the title refers to a hideous statistic that dates back to my last entry (1/15), and that is 17 straight wheaties dug without a silver coin.  Are you kidding me?  Hell could not be worse.

On 1/15, we dug a merc, then 8 wheaties, then whined about it (wouldn’t you?).  Rained on 1/17, had to work most of the day 1/18, but found some time to get out to a local park I’ve never been to, and would never plan to be to, except that it was close, and had not the time to travel far, so I hit it up, and dug 4 more wheaties.  Site has promise actually, given the deep high tones I dug, but it is a project for another day.

But today it was 34 degrees and windy, the perfect day to stay inside, except when driving home from Tuesday’s site, I drove by a field and said to myself — that’s a 25-75 silver site.  Finally I had a day to attack it (after spending the rainy day Wednesday at the court house to see if the site was public property), and attack it today I did, in 6 layers (those who read me know I consider 80 degrees cold; I’m in my comfort zone at 95 and humid).

But it did not start well.  I found only 2 coins in the first hour, a wheatie and a clad dime.  But the wheatie was good, I guess.  The one thing I did notice was that the ground was lumpy, and this was supposed to be an old baseball field (yeah, I cheated, there is more to the game than just driving by, I looked at the old aerials as well).  Baseball fields aren’t lumpy, so I figured the evil fill and grade twins had been here (well, just fill in this case), so I focused my attention right along the road where some old trees were.  Fill and grade don’t mess with those).  When I was nailing deep clad there, I surmised the problem with the baseball field area was indeed fill and grade, rather than that hunted, and his sister out, had paid a visit.  I was in business (at least in terms of solving part of the site).

The trick was to find a part of the site where fill and grade hadn’t been, and with alot of terraced grading at the site, you just use your detector and listen for high tones.  Eventually I got a section where there were some more wheaties (4 more to be exact), giving me 17 in a row with no silver, but at least the ground seemed natural (or more accurately, graded before the silver era usage).

Finally, I got me an 11-45 which I knew was a silver (it had “that sound”, as E-Trac users know), then another, then the Q.  Are you kidding me?  17 wheaties in a row, then 3 silvers.  Yes, I was “due”, but economists/statisticians will tell you that that is “gambler’s fallacy” to be “due”, but well take it.  Not only that, pulled a 5 gr silver ring as the next target (yeah, there are 4 silver coins in the pic, hopefully I’ll close that off, we’ll see).

So, of course you are going to set up a grid in this area, (after the first hour produced just 2 coins in a different area), and that went ok.  I pulled 9 more wheaties, and as the final target of the day, another rosie (which is the 4th rosie in the above pic).  14 wheaties and 4 silvers on the day, coupled with 12 wheaties and 1 silver over the previous 2 days.  Ouch.  I want my new Ultimate 13 (tho, admittedly, most of this ratio failure is not the fault of the pro coil, but due to prospecting (where we dig more wheaties than normal at new sites), and brutal mineralization at the current site (where TID fails so you have to dig em all), and just bad luck (I guess, anyway, or lack of focus/distraction due to the brutal cold wind).

At least a couple of the wheaties were old (a ’10 and a ’17).

Going forward, this site is huge, but the best part appears to have been filled.  I’m downgrading it to a 5-25 silver site, we’ll see.  (Too bad it looks like the ground will freeze next week; might be a while before we get back).

As for the rest of this entry, was gonna do some killer Friday Afternoon Album entries, but I’m shot.  And of course, this entry is way to long as it is, but I mostly nailed it.  Just have to drop a cleaned up pic of that shiny, cause its my first multi day of the year.

Went to a new site today, an old park in the middle of nowhere.  The village it is in is very small, but it has a baseball field on the old aerials, so you never know.

As expected, density was an issue, as I pulled only 2 coins in the first hour of hunting.  At least one of them was a merc — nice to see a merc for a change.  Decided to set up a grid around where I found the merc, and pulled 8 wheaties and no more silver.  Are you kidding me?  Talk about a ratio killer.  And the frustrating thing is that some of them sounded quite good.  One was an 09-48 which I figured for a slam dunk silver Q (turns out there was a pull tab piece in the hole, and I was getting that adding effect due to my deep on, fast off setting).

Outside the wheaties, pulled just 4 other clads, for a total of 13 coins in 4 hours.  And this is a public park.  Talk about low density.  The site is rather large, and just screams for my big unit, which is on its way to KellyCo.  I think this site needs to be tabled ’til I get a new one back, tho I don’t get terribly excited about a 1 in 4 hour site.  Can’t judge a site on just one hunt, tho.

Its been a rough few days.  Friday was a rough hunt, as previously blogged, no detecting Saturday, but Sunday I decided at the last minute to go to a group hunt.  It was supposed to be 60 degrees, after all.  Who wouldn’t want to be out detecting?

I had low hopes for the hunt, given that the site was 800 acres of mostly nothing (fields and woods), with old cultural features sprinkled in for those who did the research.  I didn’t do the research, cause I didn’t think I was gonna go, but decided to go just for the social aspect.  Its fun to hang with 50 local detectorists, after all, even if you find nothing.

I found nothing, despite finding several old cultural features, and giving them quite an intense go.  I did find a big pile of metal detecting trash that some other asshole dropped at one of them; no wonder the hobby is banned by park people.

I think about 5 people, maybe a couple more, found a silver or copper.  I wasn’t one of the 10-20% on this day.  Is it skill or luck?  I dunno, all I can say is that those who did find something are people who I consider skillful.  They found what they found near cultural features.  Not like finding a random reale in the middle of a 100 acre field (I’ve actually done that, cause what I generally do is luck).  So, skill takes the day, and it wasn’t me.   (I did find a clad dime in the middle of a 100 acre field on the day, talk about a sort of ironic luck, if there is such a concept).

So, I left, not cause I wasn’t finding anything, and knew I wouldn’t find anything, but cause it was too damn cold, and some of my friends were leaving as well.  60 my curvy butt.  45 tops, and a cold 45 at that, with fog, mist, clouds, and drizzle.

But after lunch I decided to hit a backup site, and that is when things went from miserable to worse.  I kept getting CO 01 on pretty much everything.  It was constant.  Even when holding the coil in the air.  I was finding clad, but nothing deep.  I wondered about a coil or machine issue.

I moved to a backup backup site, and it was even worse.  I went to a third site 5 miles away, more of the same — constant low tones at CO 01, no matter what you do.  I went to a site 5 minutes from my house that I know very well, and is totally hunted out (cause I was the one who hunted it out), and the dirt is very clean and there is no EMI, and tested the machine there, still the same.  Some part of my rig failed.  No wonder I couldn’t find anything.

Monday, swap out the big unit Ultimate 13 for the stock coil, and she’s purring again.  Hit a nice deep target which I figure is either a wheatie or bottlecap, and put the big unit back on, and its as quiet as a mouse.   Nails the bottlecap with better TID than the stock coil, and I figure my coil troubles are behind me.

Decide to then go hunt a police station to test the coil (wouldn’t you?  Ok, that was totally random, but that’s what happened. Think about it — they are generally public property and part of the municipal park system, and sometimes in old buildings, and who is gonna bother you?  Its not like you are skulking from the cops (and, in my experience, police officers tend to be very interested in MD’ing).  (And besides, one of my best all time finds was at a police station). They also tend to be very trashy, cause not many people hunt them, and it seemed the perfect place to stress test the possibly dysfunctional coil.

But, the coil seemed to work fine, until it didn’t.  Got a rosie and a couple of wheats at the police station, but then the machine went haywire, in a sort of different way (not just constant low tones, but all sorts of tones).  Since the site was so trashy, it was hard to tell what was going on, so I decided to move on to a hunted out park to eliminate some of the uncertain variables and work on my machine again.

(Why do I bother?  Its not even in focus.  And we’ve all seen rosies before.  I should just cycle the same stock rosie pic).

And at the hunted out park, the coil was toast.  Constant low tones even while holding it in the air.  The stock coil was fine (and I’ll tell you, it is a pain in the ass to switch them for these tests).  I found a nice deep wheatie with the stock coil, which the Ultimate 13 could barely hear.  Ouch.  This may explain the issues I wrote about Friday.

Well, I had a high opinion of the Ultimate 13, but it seems it went bad on me, so I have to withdrawal all previous opinions for now.  KellyCo says send it back and they’ll send me a new one, so I may soon be writing about KellyCo’s service (good or bad, depending on how it goes, and right now, I’m expecting it to be good).  I still like the Ultimate 13, and what I’ve found with it, and hope a new one restores my confidence.

So, for now, its back to the pro coil.

Oh my, totally missed this one, should have done a Friday afternoon album instead, or relayed some conversations with my competition about parks we have both hunted recently (which was totally interesting).  But sometimes you just have to document what is going on, as tedious as it is.

Frustrating hunt yesterday, and my first of the year without scoring a silver.  And I felt like I got everything right, too.  Was hitting deep wheaties, deep clad, bottlecaps, even a couple of deep 200 year old copper buckles, all the tells you could want, but sometimes you just don’t get the girl.  Oh well.

Based on getting 6 wheaties, I should have gotten 2 silvers, and that is what I expected when the hunt started.  I did, by far, get the most deep coins yesterday of any hunt here (digging 8-9 inch clad is frustrating, cause it can sound so good), and more diligent channel management seems to be helping, but, I think I’ll give this site a rest for a while, and look for greener pastures.  I’ll come back someday, as there are still some edge/out of box sections to do.

I did pull a small (1.5 gr) sterling silver ring as a consolation prize.

Yesterday back to the same site as the previous days, and gave equal time to the older section where I found the copper, and the graded section near the ball field where the modern silvers were.

Not much near where copper was except for a couple of wheaties, but scored a 1940 Q near the ball field.  Nice to get a silver other than a rosie this year.

It was under this rock, which isn’t a huge rock, but but you wonder how a coin dropped in the 50s sinks under a rock (that is literally older than dirt), at all.  Get a pot of dirt, put a quarter on it, put a rock 3 inches down directly under it, sit it on your kitchen table, and check it in 50 years.  Bet the quarter is still on the top.

But out there, the way coins (and rocks), move and shift around it amazing.  (I once found a wheatie directly under a 4×6 inch rock (1 inch thick) in an area I believe has never been disturbed).  Its not intuitive, but I have theories on why this happens.  And I also have theories on how understanding this (or at least thinking you understand it), can help your detecting.  I don’t have time to write it all up, but the executive summary is coins won’t sink as far in shady areas, and areas where the grass is old and unhealthy, and rocky areas.  My results bear this out — I do much better where the grass is weaker than where there is a thick, healthy carpet (part of the dynamic is the fact that grass decomposes to soil, earthworms, grubs, burrowing mammals, water/ice, and so forth play in the dynamic also.  All for another day).

One thing for today is more on noise cancel, tho. I can’t reiterate how important this is on the E-Trac (at least around here).  I went about 45 minutes yesterday without digging a single target.  Of course the site is sparse, and I do not like to dig, cause digging is expensive, but that was ridiculous.  I even dropped my digger over the coil to make sure the machine was still working.

Eventually I got a real crappy CO 27 to 37 at about 4 inches, not likely to be anything good, but I needed to dig something, and it turned out to be a wheatie at 4 inches, in decent shape.  Are you kidding me?  Got something similar nearby, this time I remembered to noise cancel, and it came in loud and clear, like it should.  Shifted back to the old channel, and it was a crap signal.  I know this stuff matters, but I haven’t seen such a stark case in a while, as I am usually pretty good about it.  Maybe it was something local to the site.

I usually noise cancel about 20-30 or so times a hunt, but I made a conscious effort to do so more often yesterday, including on each iffy target.  I probably NC’d about 40-50 times, and it helped.  I was hitting deep ones moreso than other days at the site (too bad they were all very deep clad.  Grrr) and dug more coins today than any other day here.  Now, who is to know it is not a shift in density?  You don’t without more scientific method outside the couple of targets I did do, but its not.  Noise cancel and channel management matters on the E-Trac.

Well, too bad I couldn’t turn it into a multi-silver day.  5 hunts here recently (6 overall), and just one silver each.  But, any silver day is a good day.

Yesterday I speculated about the possibility of pulling an old coin from the sparsely-targeted 50s park I’m working due to finding a couple of old flat buttons.

The past couple of hunts there, I’ve found a couple of rosies near the baseball field, but fill and grade were there in the 50s when they built the field, so I wasn’t expecting much older than that there.  Further out, in the more naturally contoured section, I found the flat buttons.  Being that this section is closer to a road that I believe is at least 200 years old, I decided to focus there and hope to score an oldie (and still score some more modern silver, as that was part of the park in the 50s as well), rather than work closer to the ball field.

It seemed like a mistake.  I spent nearly 4 hours in older flat button section, gridding it carefully, and got bupkis.   I got some constructive stuff, like deep clad and deep bottlecaps (those that read me know there is nothing better than finding deep bottlecaps (other than the goods themselves, of course)), but nada in the old coin department.  I couldn’t even muster a wheatie.  I decided to do one more rank of the grid, and if I don’t get a least a wheatie in that rank, I’m going elsewhere.

I did get a wheatie just at the end of that rank, but decided to go elsewhere anyway.  I hit the embankment by the ballfield, cause I love hunting embankments, but there was nada there as well.  This place is sparse.  I then went thru some bushes and across a creek to an “out of the box section” which doesn’t really look like park property (but is), cause I do well in these situations sometimes, and it is clear this zone hasn’t been hunted much due to the trash, but it is also clear why — no deep high tones other than a lone 60s penny. (This section merits further exploration on another day, tho).

Then I decide to just meander (I don’t like doing this cause its inefficient), and I hit a very deep rosie between the tot lot and the ballfield.  Are you kidding me?  Maybe sometimes I outthink myself, cause that is generally the last area I hit cause it is always harder hit by everyone else.  But, there was a silver there.  Maybe there are more.  Who knows?  I don’t think so, but we’ll see.

That area is obviously now high on my list, but there wasn’t the time to set up a new grid to work with my old grid (I keep all the grid points in my head, and it is too much to start new sections that I can’t complete before going back to work), so I decide to go back to the old section and just add on until I have to go, and I get bupkis again.

With not enough time to complete another rank before I have to leave, I just start meandering back towards the parking lot thru the old section, and hit a beautiful deep high tone bouncy signal.  Didn’t think it was a silver cause it was a bit low (CO 42, more ore less, but some bounce into the silver range), figured it could be an exotic silver, but was most likely a wheatie or deep memorial. (This was the zone that gave up a clad quarter at 8 inches yesterday).

Turned out to be an 1822 largie on its side at 5 inches.  I knew there would be old coins in this section.  The trick is to get a silver this old.  Here’s hoping, not likely.  But, at least we got our first copper of the season.

Well, the weekend sucked.  Was actually warm enough around here to detect, but I dealt with a plumbing crisis all weekend instead.  I rarely get out on weekends, but thought I’d have the chance this time. Oh well.

But today I got out to the same site as Friday, the 50s park with sparse targets where I found a rosie and a copper flat button.  And today, I managed a another rosie and a copper flat button.

The differences were that it was warmer today, and I spent more time out there.

Any hunt with silver is good, but in all honesty, it was a frustrating hunt.  Got the silver early, and then just not even much hope.  I dug a total of just 4 coins in the 2 hours after the silver.  No one, of course, likes digging clad, but just a few more deep ones to break the monotony and give my tendinitis a rest would have been nice.

Did have one heart stopper — after the flat button, which again gives you the hope of a real oldie, cause its was mid-high tone one, I got a beautiful 8 inch deep silver quarter signal just 2 feet away.  Turned out to be a 1969 clad Q.  Are you kidding me?  Talk about dashing hopes.  And the flat button was only about three inches deep.

I don’t know about coming to this park, its only 50s, but there are reasons to believe a real oldie could be hiding here, but I feel like I’m waiting for Godot on that.  I will say that I’ve gotten one silver coin each time I’ve been here, but it feels like pulling teeth.

BTW, the button has a back mark.  Near as I can tell from some half-hearted googling, dates from the 1820-1860 range, tho I am certainly no expert on these things.

Got out today to a small park in a neighborhood that was built in the 50s.  Not my first choice, but I was in the area due to other business.  And besides, in each of the previous two trips, this park has surrendered a silver coin, so it is not a hopeless cause (this is the same site where I found a merc on 12/17 (and, no doubt, wrote a very similar entry at the time)).  My theory is that I’m not going to invest time in a new site, which may require permission, and may require return permission, both of which may be awkward, when the weather is miserable and unpredictable.

Today, however, the weather was predictable: it was miserable.  Cold and windy, and the ground was frozen.  Not the sort of rock hard frozen where you need a jackhammer, sort of the frozen like hard ice cream, where you can work a plug if you really want to, but it is a pain in the ass.

Well, I got me a rosie and a copper flat button.  Nine out of ten detectorists would prefer the flat button.  I’m the 10th.  For me, its about seeing the shiny in the hole, that experience.  Puzzle solved.  But the flat button is cool.  It even has the loop intact.  It gives you the hope of finding an old silver, cause it was a high tone target that is at least 200 years old.  Around here, pretty much everything has been farmland since the early 1700s, so you just never know.

I did succumb to the weather with an hour and a half left to hunt.  Oh well.  It wasn’t fun freezing my ass off.  If someone who takes things more seriously than myself and is willing to freeze gets the shiny, that’s life I guess.

Just a barely legal rosie yesterday, at a ballfield that gave up a couple of ’62 rosies near the end of last year.  Site dates at least to the 50s, but has been hunted hard.  Its trashy tho, and while that defends some silver, it also mucks with the TID, leading to the inefficiency of digging deep clad.  I had many deep ones that sounded like silver but were clad dimes, sounding good due to the additive effects of nearby trash.  Unfortunately, you have to dig ’em.

This site isn’t high potential, but its here for now.  Cold winter hunting is sort of throwaway in some sense, cause I don’t know if I’ll feel like going out, or how long I’ll stay out.  The cold did get to me, and I left an hour and a half early to do some errands, and get back to work.  Today looks even colder, so I don’t think I will go out.