January 2020 Highlights

[ToySoldier]

Many of us experienced amazing weather in January. For me, almost everything came from existing permissions and public places I've previously hunted since I wasn't planning on hunting in January and didn't line up new places to hunt.

Specifically, the Barber Dime came from an old sledding spot I very briefly hunted last year and didn't find anything noteworthy. I went back in January for a quick hunt and found the Barber in the first hole. I returned a few days later and couldn't get my coil over another silver. The US Army coat button came from a 10 minute curb strip hunt near my house.

Not shown are 26 wheat pennies, including one or two new entries into my wheat penny book. Yet, only 1 silver!

Happy hunting!

keywords: Biederman gold star club member, civil war infantry, uncas, medical corp pin, louisville lunch token

 

[jack&jill]

A pretty nice month Soldier seeing you had no plans to hunt this last month. Old Silver, Sterling and a small herd of Buffalo's along with some very nice history looks real nice for the start of the2020 season. Congrats for sure and stay on it as I see a lot of great more finds coming in your future. Trapper

 

[Jamflicker]

Nice assortment of finds and I love those two tokens you found.

 

[Soil Surgeon]

Nice stuff , congrats !

 

[ToySoldier]

A pretty nice month Soldier seeing you had no plans to hunt this last month. Old Silver, Sterling and a small herd of Buffalo's along with some very nice history looks real nice for the start of the2020 season. Congrats for sure and stay on it as I see a lot of great more finds coming in your future. Trapper

Thanks! I like those the nickels! One of them came out very nice, too.

Nice assortment of finds and I love those two tokens you found.

An old token is as good as silver, as far as I'm concerned. I nearly tossed the aluminum token into the junk compartment. It was nearly dark and initially looked like a piece of can slaw. I could feel the writing on it, though.

The furniture store token got my heart rate up, I'll admit. After an hour I was getting skunked in this wooded valley with a creek. I was finishing up and hit that big signal in the middle of a trail. I left it in the clump of dirt and went home to clean it. I could tell it wasn't silver, but thought I had hit big copper! Not quite, but I'll take it.

Nice stuff , congrats !

Thanks!

 

[markinswpa]

TS, you need to work on the silver to wheat ratio. Haha. Awesome start to the year, congrats on the shiny and as always love the Buffs. The tokens are cool and the CW button is pretty sweet. Glad to see you're able to still get out. HH Mark

 

[cellrdwellr]

Awesome start to the year, congrats!

 

[ToySoldier]

TS, you need to work on the silver to wheat ratio...

I know it. I'm now at 30 wheats to 1 silver this year. I have a new early 1900s private permission this weekend. I try not to expect much, but I'd by lying if I said I wasn't hoping to straighten out this wheat to silver ratio.

 

[Princess]

Way to go - I like the dated buffalos, army button, and Barber best. You've definitely had a great start to your 2020 season!

 

[Mistersippi]

Great hunting toy soldier! Winter is my primary detecting time down here in south Mississippi!

 

[markinswpa]

I know it. I'm now at 30 wheats to 1 silver this year. I have a new early 1900s private permission this weekend. I try not to expect much, but I'd by lying if I said I wasn't hoping to straighten out this wheat to silver ratio.

Good luck this weekend TS. I hope it turns out to be like the promising permission I had last year. Multi silver permissions are about as rare as an honest politician these days. Woke up to 3in. of snow, not good. Again, good luck. Mark

 

[ToySoldier]

Good luck this weekend TS. I hope it turns out to be like the promising permission I had last year. Multi silver permissions are about as rare as an honest politician these days. Woke up to 3in. of snow, not good. Again, good luck. Mark

Yep. Snow here, too. But, in typical fashion for this area, it'll be gone in 24 hours. 50+ degrees for Sunday, and the melted snow will make for easy digging.

I used to live farther north and learned what's it like to have real winters. Where it would just snow on top of the existing snow and ice. It gets plenty cold here, but we also get these little mini-spring days throughout winter. The biggest problem is that the winter temps do hover around freezing a lot. Instead of getting below freezing and staying that way, we have high chances of unexpected and dangerous/damaging freezing rain storms.

 

[AirmetTango]

Pretty good January, TS, especially since it’s...well...January! I’m usually expecting to be shoveling snow more than digging coins and relics this time of year! Kind of nice to get a head start to the season. Your furniture store token got me drooling a little - that’s a stellar find!

TS, you need to work on the silver to wheat ratio. Haha.

I know it. I'm now at 30 wheats to 1 silver this year.

I feel your pain, TS! Granted I’ve got a pretty small sample size so far this year, but I’m threatening to join you in the disturbingly low copper to silver ratio. I actually include Wheats, Indians, and Largies together in my ratio, so I’m currently at 19 coppers to 0 silvers so far I’m gonna need a silver spill to get the ratio back in line...or a buried jar of Seated will do

 

[YooperBSN]

Yep. Snow here, too. But, in typical fashion for this area, it'll be gone in 24 hours. 50+ degrees for Sunday, and the melted snow will make for easy digging.



I used to live farther north and learned what's it like to have real winters. Where it would just snow on top of the existing snow and ice. It gets plenty cold here, but we also get these little mini-spring days throughout winter. The biggest problem is that the winter temps do hover around freezing a lot. Instead of getting below freezing and staying that way, we have high chances of unexpected and dangerous/damaging freezing rain storms.

Congrats on the amazing month TS! I can only drool, dream, and hope to aspire to a month like that! Then again, I cant complain about having to dirt fish today in our fresh 5 inches of snow as we have had a pretty mild winter here in Michigan too.

 

[ecmo]

Congratulations on a real nice group of finds, the buff, silver, ring and token.

Now for what I'm really curious about and no one else gave a mention about, I am busting with curiosity about that very attractive and professional layout display and the identifying printing. Is this something you can create on a computer, or buy at a hobby shop? The cardboard layout I mean.

Sorry I'm such a dummy but that really impresses me. Nice!

Sent from my LG-V495 using Tapatalk

 

[ToySoldier]

Congrats on the amazing month TS! I can only drool, dream, and hope to aspire to a month like that!.....

Thanks. By any measure you're doing great! Getting out and still having fun even after the "newness' of the hobby wears off and nothing but junk is recovered is a success in my book. I try not to expect too much and I'm just as interested in tokens and relics as silver. I hope to find one interesting thing each hunt. My favorite things to find are.....toy soliders! I'd go crazy if I hovered over every high tone begging for it to be silver only to be let down again and again. I check my attitude when I catch myself getting annoyed after a plug comes up with another piece of junk.

....Now for what I'm really curious about and no one else gave a mention about, I am busting with curiosity about that very attractive and professional layout display and the identifying printing. Is this something you can create on a computer, or buy at a hobby shop? The cardboard layout I mean.....

Thanks for the compliment! I create those collages on the computer. It doesn't take long mostly because I make it a point to keep up with photographing and logging my finds after every hunt. My metal detecting photos folder has a folder for each property. To make a collage, I already have all of the pieces and just need to put them together. I've been doing photo editing for a long time and have also figured out some tricks so I don't have to start from scratch each time.

You can do this with an excellent truly free photo editor that's been around for years called Paint.net (link below). It's better than the Paint program that comes with Windows. The basic workflow is:

-Create a new "canvas" that fills my monitor screen when it's at 50% zoom.
-Open each photo I want, cut and paste what I want from them into the new canvas,
-Stretch them to the size I want, and arrange them.
-Type the description text.
-Save that higher resolution copy if I ever wanted to print it.
-"Save as" a second copy for email or posting on here where the size/resolution has been reduced by half and compression increased.

https://www.getpaint.net/

I sometimes do these for property owners after the ends of hunts when they've asked to see what I found and they're not around to show them. Or I offered to do it right up front because I thought it would help get the permission. I'll email the collage or print it as a glossy 8x10 at a drug store and mail it to them or drop it off in person. I might also include a couple of the house relic items I don't care to keep. In some cases I've sent along the oldest wheat, or even one of the more common keeper coins like a Mercury dime. (Everybody like a Mercury dime!) Almost nobody has ever asked to keep anything I wanted to keep. Most people are just satisfied seeing what was found and perhaps there's also some respect for the obvious effort I've put into it. I'm certain that both my follow up and transparency has also led to additional permissions.

Occasionally I've included a separate photo of the trash I found. This one lady apologized for her yard being so trashy. She said "I had no idea!!! How embarrassing!"

 

[YooperBSN]

Thanks. By any measure you're doing great! Getting out and still having fun even after the "newness' of the hobby wears off and nothing but junk is recovered is a success in my book. I try not to expect too much and I'm just as interested in tokens and relics as silver. I hope to find one interesting thing each hunt. My favorite things to find are.....toy soliders! I'd go crazy if I hovered over every high tone begging for it to be silver only to be let down again and again. I check my attitude when I catch myself getting annoyed after a plug comes up with another piece of junk.

I will admit that I've caught the silver bug, but at the same time I am mostly able to "compartmentalize" my mindset depending on what/where I'm hunting. Even on a "silver hunt" though, I am still truly happy to find anything that isn't can slaw or aluminum chain link fencing ties. [emoji1787]