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End Of Year Summary Report


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Hope this doesn't bore anyone to tears.  Sorry in advance if I cause you to burn through a kleenex box.  I'll try my best to not get too carried away, but that's tough sometimes.

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2017 was to keep a detecting log.  I think it's the only resolution I actually met.  :sad:  This is better called "treasure hunting log" as it does include a bit gold prospecting without a detector.  My native gold hunting was actually four sojourns:  8 day trip to Southern Arizona (detecting with the TDI/SPP), a half day at the (public) Gold Panning Park in Wheatridge, Colorado, half a day at (in?) Salt Creek in Southern Indiana and an hour in Big Pine Creek in Northern Indiana.  The last of these was with poster tvanwho when he showed me how to sluice -- my first ever experience with that technique.  (Thanks, Tom!)  The only gold found (or should I say 'recognized'?) were from the two Indiana sites, and it was extremely fine (100 minus I'm guessing).

The rest of my time was spent hunting for old coins with my three VLF models, the majority with the Fisher F75 which I acquired in mid-June.  The treasure(?) in 232 total hours of hunting is as follows:

1) 69 old coins, which were mostly Wheat Cents (61).  One silver quarter, 6 silver dimes, and an 1867 "with rays" Shield Nickel.  The only Wheatie worth mentioning is a 1932-D which was photo-posted here in an earlier thread.  Dividing by total hunting time that comes out to 0.30 old coins per hour.

2) 466 modern coins ($20.65 face value), all Jefferson nickels, clad dimes, clad quarters, and post-1958 pennies.  140 were Zincolns (post-1982 pennies) and 110 were copper Memorial pennies (1959-1982).  (Most of you know that in 1982, both varieties were minted.)  So a copper to zinc ratio (if I include the above 61 Wheaties) of 1.22.

3) 323 'old' pulltabs (either ring with beavertail attached or ring missing the beavertail) and 106 'new' pulltabs ("square tabs" being a popular name).  That's a ring to square ratio of 3.05.

4) Two gold rings (one a woman's wedding band, one a man's class ring) and three pieces of sterling jewelry.  The gold jewelry to pulltab ratio is thus 2::429 or a bit worse than 1 to 200.  (I've heard everyhwere from 1 in 100, to 1 in 1000 from other detectorist as being the norm.)  Recall my goal is finding old stuff, so I'm less likely to find modern jewelry than those who make that a primary goal.  Given that I was very lucky to find those two rings.

5) Things I didn't find this year (but did find last year) are Indian Head Pennies and 19th Century military buttons.  (I did find a 20th century military button, probably WWII, but those don't carry the aura of the earlier ones, IMO.)

To finish and answer some of your head-scratching:

A) I'm a dig-all-nonferrous detectorist.

B) I like to try and 'age' my sites.  Pulltabs and Zincolns are key components to get an idea of time-dependent usage of mixed-age sites.

C) I know my finds are modest compared to many detectorists.  I hope to do better next year in finding the things I care about:  native gold and old coins.  In particular there are plenty of detectorists who find more than $20 in modern coins in a weekend.  If modern coins were my goal I'd do a lot better there, but at the cost of missing some of the treasures that actually excite me.  The main improvement I'm planning on this year are doing better research to find sites which hold the old coins.  And maybe a couple more trips out West where there's a chance of finding native gold with a MD. 

Happy New Year to all of you and I hope your detecting goals have been met this year and 2018 will be even more productive!

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2 hours ago, dsrtdwg1 said:

Will you continue this on to 2018 ?

For sure.  Like most things, if you make the entry soon after the hunt it's pretty easy to keep accurate records.

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