Park Yields More Silver

AirmetTango said:

Earlier today (Sunday), I went back to the park that gave me my first silver spill and first silver quarter on my last hunt, hoping to get lucky again while the ground was still soft and damp from recent rains. I only had a couple hours before I needed to be back home, so the hunt needed to be somewhat brief.

Being a glutton for punishment, when I first arrived I continued in the backyard area of the former home site - I got too tired of digging trash last time to do more than a couple stripes there , so there’s still plenty of real estate to go over yet. It’s hard to resist spending a little time in that area - even though it’s trashy, it’s the kind of trash that makes you feel like something good is going to appear under the coil at any moment. There’s can slaw and bottle caps, but there’s also at least as many copper/brass fittings and pipe bits, odd worthless house/farm relics, etc to keep you thinking a coin or token or something will show up. I did 3 passes this time, and I got my share of junk - I’ll spare everyone the pic of the trash pile this time, but it looked similar to the one from the other day that I shared in the link above (minus the bike parts ). At the start of the second pass, I got rewarded for my efforts with a cool, old money clip - not sure if it’s silver, since it isn’t marked and it didn’t quite clean up like my other silver has. Maybe just plated? Either way, the etched design is neat - about the only thing that would have made it cooler would be if some cash was still sandwiched into the clip!

After the 3 pass in the “backyard”, I suddenly realized my time was running out, and I still wanted to revisit the section of the park where I got the silver spill last time out. With only 20 minutes left before had to pack up for the day, I moved to the other section of the park - and within 5 minutes, I got over what turned out to be another mini-spill! The signal really wasn’t great from a VDI perspective - there was some high tone which prompted be to stop and listen closer, but the tone varied quite a bit because the VDI centered in the low to mid 60s, with a few hits getting into the upper 70s, maximum 80 to 81. Even got as low as 29, so I really didn’t have my hopes up, but the depth was showing 6”, which has proven to be the “right” depth at this site. Digging down, I was pleased to have a nickel pop out right at the 6 inch mark from base of the plug - a Buff! I loved the little coin shaped imprint it left in the clump of dirt it came out of (see pic below)! Learning my lesson well from last time, I knew I had another spill - something else had to be in the hole that was causing the higher portion of the signal. Moving a little dirt in the hole soon revealed a beautiful silver rim!! It was completely caked in dirt front and back, but it was clearly quarter sized The second pic below shows the rim in the hole, and the third pic shows both coins out of the hole - the quarter is the round clod of dirt below the nickel! Cleaning at home revealed the Buff has no readable date, and a 1948 GW...my second in two hunts after going my whole first year of detecting without a single silver quarter!

Time was really getting short at that point - but who the heck can stop after pulling silver out of a hole?? Just a few swings more won’t hurt, right?? Within a few more minutes, I had another signal that sure sounded like another potential spill, bouncing between 53 to 78 or so and right in that 6” sweet spot again. Dig down, and out comes another nickel right at 6”, plastered with enough dirt on one side to look like a run-of-the-mill nickel. Flipped it over and swiped with my thumb, and saw shiny...uh oh, no more rubbing on this one! 1943 War nickel I rescanned the hole, but it was clean. War nickels are always interesting signals - I’ve only found 3 so far, but all of them had a high tone component while in the ground, presumably from the silver content. Out of the ground, however, all 3 of them ring a solid 53.





You called it, SoOregonMd! Gave me the positive mojo on that one! No steel cent though...gotta go back and dig the iron tones for that one, I guess

Anyways, at that point, the potential for getting in trouble with my wife began to outweigh my greed, and I finally packed up for the day and headed home

Oh, and I also raked in $0.01 in clad.

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