PlasteredDragon
Elite Member
It's been a rough couple of weeks for me. I worked 127 hours in the last pay cycle of 11 days, and 38 hours in the last 4 days. Finally today I completed a longstanding task at work and announced I was cutting out early. My boss sent me off with his blessings and thanked me for all my hard work. So I figured I would run out and do a little metal detecting.
No plan in mind, I figured I would head over to a local park and hit the picnic tables and the tot lot. No chance of finding anything old, but just to get outside would be nice. So off I went. I was driving down a street near my house and passed a home where there were guys laying a new front walk. The yard was all torn up--it looked like they were regrading the lawn. I got about 20 seconds down the road before the gears in my head started turning. It's private property on a historic street and there is no lawn to damage. I pulled a u-turn and went back.
I explained to the guy that I was a local detectorist and asked if he would mind if I puttered around in the dirt. He said that was fine, and just to be sure I asked if it was his property. He explained that it was his Aunt's home, and she really wouldn't care, they were going to redo it all anyway. Yayy!
I was very excited. First signal I dug was a 1954 Peruvian 5 Centavos coin!
How weird is that? But the 1950's that's good. I kept working the tiny yard and found penny after penny, all of them wheaties from the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Everything that was coming up was old. But sadly... no silver coins, no indian head pennies. Just wheat cents. I did find a nice old button and an old silver plated (at one time) spoon. But no "hot" coins. Darn. Still it was fun.
So I thanked the guy and went off to the park. It was really a bust. I found just over a buck in change, but it was all modern. Nothing to speak of in the tot lot, nothing around the picnic tables. I had to date only found one old coin in this park--the first Mercury Dime I ever found--but ever since then, not much. In desperation I started scanning the detritus around the parking area hoping for an odd quarter that might have dropped and rolled into the leaves.
"I'm really slumming it." I thought to myself as I was doing this. "Scraping around a parking lot in the trash hoping for a quarter. This is low." I started getting depressed. especially with all the trash I was digging.
So I gave up and started back to my car, idly gliding the detector along the edge of the lot as I went. As I approached the car I got a nickel signal. The ground here is full of nails, bottlecaps, pulltabs, and shredded beer cans. A nickel signal here is almost not worth digging. I hemmed and hawed about getting down on my sore knees and working my arthritic hands one last time. Finally I decided to dig it, since it was shallow.
It was a 1936 Buffalo Nickel.
Only the second buffalo nickel I've ever found. It's extremely weathered and looks like it has been in the ground for a long time... to be found by me some 80 years after it was minted under a mere quarter inch of soil next to a heavily trafficked parking lot in a local park.
There is no such thing as hunted-out ground.
I wonder what I will find tomorrow?
No plan in mind, I figured I would head over to a local park and hit the picnic tables and the tot lot. No chance of finding anything old, but just to get outside would be nice. So off I went. I was driving down a street near my house and passed a home where there were guys laying a new front walk. The yard was all torn up--it looked like they were regrading the lawn. I got about 20 seconds down the road before the gears in my head started turning. It's private property on a historic street and there is no lawn to damage. I pulled a u-turn and went back.
I explained to the guy that I was a local detectorist and asked if he would mind if I puttered around in the dirt. He said that was fine, and just to be sure I asked if it was his property. He explained that it was his Aunt's home, and she really wouldn't care, they were going to redo it all anyway. Yayy!
I was very excited. First signal I dug was a 1954 Peruvian 5 Centavos coin!
How weird is that? But the 1950's that's good. I kept working the tiny yard and found penny after penny, all of them wheaties from the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Everything that was coming up was old. But sadly... no silver coins, no indian head pennies. Just wheat cents. I did find a nice old button and an old silver plated (at one time) spoon. But no "hot" coins. Darn. Still it was fun.
So I thanked the guy and went off to the park. It was really a bust. I found just over a buck in change, but it was all modern. Nothing to speak of in the tot lot, nothing around the picnic tables. I had to date only found one old coin in this park--the first Mercury Dime I ever found--but ever since then, not much. In desperation I started scanning the detritus around the parking area hoping for an odd quarter that might have dropped and rolled into the leaves.
"I'm really slumming it." I thought to myself as I was doing this. "Scraping around a parking lot in the trash hoping for a quarter. This is low." I started getting depressed. especially with all the trash I was digging.
So I gave up and started back to my car, idly gliding the detector along the edge of the lot as I went. As I approached the car I got a nickel signal. The ground here is full of nails, bottlecaps, pulltabs, and shredded beer cans. A nickel signal here is almost not worth digging. I hemmed and hawed about getting down on my sore knees and working my arthritic hands one last time. Finally I decided to dig it, since it was shallow.
It was a 1936 Buffalo Nickel.
Only the second buffalo nickel I've ever found. It's extremely weathered and looks like it has been in the ground for a long time... to be found by me some 80 years after it was minted under a mere quarter inch of soil next to a heavily trafficked parking lot in a local park.
There is no such thing as hunted-out ground.
I wonder what I will find tomorrow?
