Back to the ruins of 4/24, where I pulled 8 pennies, all of them old, including 4 coppers ranging from a Jersey copper to 1826.  Figured I had a shot at some bust silver, or at least some dead zone silver, but it wasn’t to be.

Spent a couple hours working new parts of the site, but found bupkis. Decided to do something I rarely do, but figured it was appropriate in this case, and re-grided the hot zone where the 8 old coins came from, from a 90 degree angle of the first grid.  The theory was, with so much awkward vegetation and iron, it would be impossible to hit every target the first time, so no doubt I’d get that seated half dime from a different angle this time, wouldn’t I?

I didn’t, but I did yet another largie.  Just proves re-gridding has some value.  I’m not surprised I missed it the first time, cause I almost missed it the second time as well.  Was a deep, iffy, 11-45, maybe silver, maybe ferrous, that I was certain would be a seated, and was a grueling 8-9 inches deep in rocks and iron.  Took me 10 minutes to dig it out,  I was, of course, a bit disappointed that it was yet another penny, but, for Chester County coppers and our acidic soil, its not half bad.  Possibly my best largie ever, but that ain’t saying much.

Its an 1816.  The coin is better than the photography.

I’m a bit mystified by the site.  A large colonial era ruins, active til the 1930s aerials, derelict in the 1950s aerials, having bupkis everywhere except a very small hot zone which produced 9 pennies spanning 3 centuries.  And, this hot zone is only 10 by 30 yards.  Well, I’ll never figure this game out, will I?

A rough week (but with some good coins), but no silver, and I needed a fix, so I went to a park which has given up the goods in the past,  Just a 3 silver park, last visit was Jan 2012.  I don’t always walk into these places when I need a fix and drop a hat trick, but it is sweet when I do, isn’t it? 🙂

I could write more, but I’m swamped.  I thought the park was mostly dead last time I was there, except the out of the box section I worked at the time, but now that I’ve gotten better, and have a big unit, I figured I’d give it a go.

Merc was on the edge of the park.  Silver Q was with a memorial penny (weird signal, but should have been dug by the competition), rosie was a slam dunk,  After that, about 90 minutes of dead.  So now, a 6 silver site, not sure if there is more.  Tough to read,

Had a couple of rough days in the field of the last entries, like, I didn’t find anything, like not not even junk.  My swinging arm felt like lead.  I decided to move on, at least temporarily, and most likely permanently.

Hit a brand new site, which is some ruins in some woods I recently discovered via some research (as if there are other paths to discovery, like random wandering or space aliens implanting visions in my brain :)).  Had only 90 minutes to hit the site yesterday, and pulled my second career 3 ringer.  I’m not a relic guy, but I do know these things are rare here in Chester County.  That said, all this is to me is a tell for the hope of dead zone silver —

Today was the first full day of hunting at the site, and I managed to pull 8 coins, all of them pennies.  Are you kidding me?

4 coppers, 2 IHs,. and 2 wheaties.  Not the greatest pic, so it doesn’t show that the coppers aren’t as abused as what usually comes out of the ground around here.  The dates on the largies are 1810, 1816, and 1826.  The shield copper is a New Jersey copper, the 3rd of my career, and by far the nicest of them (tho admittedly, the front is toast).  The IHs are also somewhat decent for around here, a 1901 and 1902.  The wheaties are 1912 and 1944.

I guess that means this is a double penny trifecta.  Whohoo!  Those who follow me know there are only three types of coins I like to find: silvers, silvers, and well, you get it.  But this seems actually kinda rare, 4 coppers in one day, as well as the IH’s.  Whatever, where’s the dead zone silver?

The interesting thing about this hunt was that all the coins were concentrated in a very small area of the site.  Yesterday I spent 90 minutes with only one diggable target, and today the first hour or so went by with bupkis, until I hit this hot zone, with diggable target after diggable target.

The site was extremely awkward — thornbushes, other bushes, downed trees, and so forth.  It was hard detecting (and digging, thru rocks and roots), but that is the nature of colonial era sites in the woods.  It was so grueling that I left an hour before I had to, due to burnout (imagine tight low and slow swinging thru thornbushes and downed trees in an iron infested zone, and you get the idea), but in all fairness to leaving early, I’m sick, so I just had to walk off.  Too bad, cause the one section with all the stuff almost seemed like a virgin site,  at least based on the run rate of diggable targets.  I may grid that section the opposite way sometime.

Here are some of the relics from the hot zone —

A couple of buckles and a monogrammed spoon.  I found most of the spoon, but not the middle part.  It looks like silver, but, sadly, is base metal (prolly silver plate, actually).

I also found this cool whatchamacallit —

Its hollow thru and thru, including the bulbous part being totally hollow. I have no idea what this is, or could have been used for, but it must have been cool, given the effort to make such a thing in that era.  If you have any clue what this thing is, please comment. (Edit: I’m told on one of my Facebook groups that: It’s the top to an 18th(?) century fireplace andiron [sic]. I have yet to google any of that to see what it means).

Back to yesterday’s site, just one good target, a beautiful 01-44 with a silver sound.  Could have been something older, but turned out to be a Franklin half.  We’ll take it.

I don’t get too many of these, in fact, its only my second out of 33 silver half dollars, which includes 5 barbers, and 22 walkers.  I guess they fell out of favor.

Well, that’s that, no time today.

RFT = Random Field Theory, for our new readers, in the unlikely event there are any 🙂

Anyway, first, running an ultra is hard.  50K is alot of K’s (and miles as well, 31 or so to be more or less exact, which is 5 more than a marathon, which doesn’t sound like alot, but try running a marathon, then run 5 more miles on top of it).  Then on Monday I had a plumbing crisis to deal with, and went DIY rather than calling a pro, took 4hrs when calling a pro prolly would have taken 15 minutes, but DIY is so much more satisfying, isn’t it?  (well, only when it works, of course).  Tuesday it rained like all get out, but today I went metal detecting.  Woohoo!

I just wanted a stress free experience, so I hit this huge field that I’ve known about for a while (which is public property), but never thought it worthwhile until I did the Random Field Theory thing over the past few months.  That site was private property, and possibly had never been detected.

This site had been detected, cause I saw some other clown’s plugs.  Are you kidding me?  Who detects random fields?  It sounds so inefficient, but it is so relaxing, and, as I’ve shown before, you find great stuff once in a while.

I didn’t get great stuff, but I didn’t come away completely empty-handed either; I nailed a barber in the first hour, but the next 3 hours were deader than a [well nevermind, I was about to say something highly political which would have offended someone, despite it being correct :)].  In any case, we’ll take it, cause silver coins are hard to find, especially in random fields, but a 1 in 4 hour run rate takes some patience indeed, doesn’t it?

But, there’s a bit more.  Not related to metal detecting, but tomorrow I see Iced Earth live at the Troc for the first time, prolly my all-time favorite metal band.  I get to see if I can survive my first ultra, a DIY plumbing crisis, and the metal pit all in the same week.  No doubt the plumbing will be remembered as the hardest of the three 🙂

Too bad, cause I was having a bit of a lucky run lately.  A couple of days ago, I went to my favorite metal detecting town, where I’ve pulled 205 silvers, by far my most for any town, to close off a couple of sites.

One was a 40 silver site that just had an hour left to do, always the completist, and I guess I could have blown it off, but if its a silver per hour site, or better, you have decent odds, so why not?  Not only that, I once got a barber half in the last hour cleanup section, so I always do it.  But, I didn’t get anything.  Oh well.  Onto another park in the same town, a small park that had only given up 7 silvers, and I had already covered it, but 6 were all in one small area, including a barber Q, so I wanted to cover that hot zone with the big unit.  Bupkis.

Onto a third site in that town, which I’ve only hunted briefly, and I figured had decent potential.  It doesn’t.

So, that was the end of the mini silver streak on Wed.  Yesterday, tho, I did score a 46 rosie at a new site in a much tougher town (an 11 silver town).  This was a vacant lot site where some 30s houses stood.  Pulled a ton of clad but just one silver and one wheatie.  Hard to tell whether it had been hunted or not.  Probably, as there should have been more silvers, but these sites tend to be hit and miss.  Anyway, a one and done site.  I don’t really have time to take a pic of lone rosie; we’ve all seen ’em, tho I’m sure I would if I had more time, cause every silver coin remains hard to find, no matter how many you get.

So tomorrow I’m running 50K.  That’s alot, as these things go.  So, no detecting today to rest, and who knows for how long after.

Gotta love that title.  I do, anyway.  Here they are baby! — a sweet sixspot:

And all shinyed up.  I have no idea why I still do dirt on, and dirt off pics.  I guess old habits die hard, don’t they?

All modern silvers, of course, but we’ll take ’em.  For me, its still about the experience of “that sound”, and then seeing the shiny in the hole.

Anyway, is there a story here?  I’m not sure.  I don’t think so, but I’ll try.

These are from a park I first hit in Feb of 2012.  Huge park, but mostly dead.  I did find a couple of silver dimes then, but wrote it off, due to the lack of a good run rate (especially compared to what I was getting elsewhere in those days), and no clad (not that I’m a clad hunter, but those who follow me know that clad is a good tell).  I found my third silver there in Dec of 2012, but bupkis since.

I went back cause recently I’ve been inventorying some of my old sites with by big unit and better skill, to see if one or both of those factors could make these hopeless sites sing.  It certainly worked on the one of the past couple days, so why not this one with short grass and superwet ground as well?

But it wasn’t quite like that.  5 of the silvers were found in an out of the box section, and not only that, 4 of those 5 were found on the edge of the out of the box section.  Are you kidding me?  Dude, if you are smart enough to find the out the box section (and it appeared to be mostly hunted out outside a stray rosie, which we’ll take, of course), then be smart enough to hunt the edge of the out of the box section.  I couldn’t believe I found 3 Q’s and a merc there, and bupkis pretty much everywhere else.  Two hours, 5 silvers in that section.  Not bad, not bad at all, as these things go.

But that section ended, at it was onto the main section.  Not much goin’ on there.  In 90 minutes, I dug just 4 coins, and 3 deep wheaties that all sounded like slam dunk silvers.  All were in standing water,  I wonder if the water jacks up the CO #.  Apparently.

The 4th was my 6th silver of the day, a merc that I was pretty sure was ferrous before I dug, but only dug cause I needed to rest my swinging arm, and the sound had a bit of fight to it. But it was a real iffy signal.

7.5 inches down I was surprised to see the merc, and then swung the PP around the hole (as I always do), and got another signal, figured I was in business for a second silver in the hole, but the ferrous showed its ugly head after all —

I’m not sure if I was lucky digging ferrous and happened to find a merc, or it was skill to hear the merc next to the ferrous.  Who knows?  All I know is that it was the only silver in the “main section”, and only one of 4 coins dug in 90 minutes.  We’ll take it.

So, its hard to assess this site.  Clearly, 5 of the silvers were circumstantial, and don’t count towards evaluating the site (but we’ll take ’em anyway, won’t we?), and the 6th may have been blind luck.  Its a huge site, supposedly hunted out, but similar have lead to the 30s and 40s in the past.  This one is now at 9, but I just don’t see it going much further, tho we’ll see.

Its still nice, tho, to periodically reevaluate old sites with new skill and new equipment.  You never know what you’ll find.  One more aside — my silver to total dug is now at a record 5.45%, due to the absence of clad at the last couple of places.  I think that’s good, pulling silver from parks where there is no clad, but unfortunately, the only other time it was this high, I went into a bit of a slump.  I’m expecting the same this time, due to the excessive, non-repeatable luck lately, but we’ll see.

Back to Friday’s park for another couple of hours today, and pulled another merc and an SLQ.  This one is dateless, unfortunately.

Both were on their side — the merc was just one inch deep but in a grass-free area up against a fence.  It was prolly pushed around a bit when they did work on the fence.

I’m pretty certain there was another guy’s plug where the SLQ was, but its hard to be certain.  Some machines have trouble with coins on their side, so its possible he heard it, or thought he heard it, and couldn’t find it. Or, maybe he hit another target or it wasn’t a plug at all.  Who knows?

Well, that section of the park is done.  I’ve been all over this place, but have only ever pulled silver from the one end.  I wonder if there is any more for me in other sections?

Managed to double my YTD silver count today by dropping a fivespot.  Not bad, as these things go.  Last time I pulled 5 or more silvers in a single hunt was way back in November.  Of course, we lost a few months due to the endless winter, but, realistically, the fivespot is the new double digit day.  We’ll take it, cause silver coins are hard to find.

What’s remarkable about this hunt is that the site is a place I’ve called “Chester County’s most difficult silver park” in previous posts.  Now that I have 12 silvers from the place, I guess I can’t call it that anymore.

But, it really is like that.  My first 5 hunts at this park produced bupkis.  Most people would have given up, but I don’t give up.  Eventually, I got smart enough to do the sidewalk strips around the park, and got a couple of mercs in the trash.

Once I got the Big Unit, tho, this park seemed to open up a bit.  Outside the sidewalk strips and a stray merc with the stock coil, all the other silvers have come with the Big Unit.  All have been hard and on the edge of detection.  While I have no science to claim the Big Unit outperforms the stock coil on these targets, and while I also think this is a very high skill hobby that I’ve gotten better at over the years, I think the Big Unit has helped.  So that’s that.

What’s also helped is that it has rained alot around here recently, and the grass is short.  I doubt I would have found today’s silvers in the middle of August.  I also think I was unbelievably lucky, but we’ll take it. Still the (2nd) hardest park in Chester County to pull silver from.  (There is a new first, a very old park where I’ve hunted 6 good hunts, including with the Big Unit, and still have scored bupkis, but today’s hunt gives us hope for all of those really difficult sites.).

Ok, this entry sucked, but when you pull a fivespot from a hunted out park, it just doesn’t matter, does it?  Here they are all shinyed up —

Today I went to a site I last detected in Spring of 2012.  As of that time, it had produced 45 silvers, making it an official honeyhole in my scoring system, and my 9th best site overall. Now its produced 46 silvers.  Whohoo!  We’ll take ’em all, cause silver coins are hard to find.

I hadn’t been back cause they don’t mow the grass short in summer and fall, and last spring I was in other opportunities.  And, this site seems safe.  I’ve only done 20% of it, and therefore, it should be a 100+ silver site, but I’ve been working the edges and the soundings in the middle seem dead, so its more likely a 50 silver site.  We’ll see.

Dug a V nickel on 3/30.  Isn’t she a beauty 🙂

The 5th one I’ve ever dug.  Compared to 1252 silvers.  That’s why I don’t dig the low tones too much (forgetting the fact I get so many silvers in low tone trash), cause even when they are something good (as if that treasure is something good), they end up looking like that around here.  Digging is expensive, and swinging for silvers is cheap.  Only an economist would metal detect as I do 🙂  But, in the middle of a field, where the diggable signals might come once an hour, you dig ’em all.  Its a 1911, if you are curious.

From the fields of dreams site of the last couple entries, which sadly, is now officially closed. My permission expired today; It was a long time coming — I was only allowed there until they broke ground — its a development site — being turned into office buildings or condos or something.  Too bad about the effing winter cause I missed a couple of months of detecting while they were waiting for final approvals, and I was looking at effing snow on my fields of dreams while the clock ticked.

But that’s that.  The fields only produced 6 silvers, but they included a beautiful 1830 bust half, 2 seated dimes, a half reale, and a pair of rosies.  Also 6-8 coppers or so (I feel the same way about coppers as I do this nickel, so I don’t remember the exact number, but like wheates, they are great tells, and keep you going), and, of course, this nickel.  No IH’s, but I never get those. I wonder why?  I don’t care; they always look like garbage around here as well.

Most importantly, I got a couple months of stats on the random field theory.  It takes alot of 5 hours days of not getting a single coin to get the coins I did get, but it seems worth it in the end.

Farewell Farewell Fields of Dreams.