Detecting A Sandy Volleyball Court?

[Gerry in Idaho]

15 hours ago, Joel said:

Well that was interesting. 

Joel,  Thanks for taking the time to do the test.  Now you know for certain, one of your tools is worthless for this task.  Hopefully you are happy you actually took the time to do it and learn?  I started a new Thread and am asking for others to give their results.  Please add your testing and input to help others.  Thanks again.

[GB_Amateur]

Made it out to hunt this volleyball court last Monday, my last hunt before our state's stay-at-home order.  I'll start with a bit of background.

This park was established about a century ago, and the volleyball court (in its current location) can be seen in an aerial photo from the early 1960's.  For a lot of reasons (including about 8 hunts in this park over the last month), I'm confident this site has been detected before, likely multiple times.  However, there is so much still present aluminum ring-and-beavertail pulltabs (completely intact, bent, broken) that I can tell previous detectorists cherry picked the high conductors and in many places discriminated out the lower conductors.  As you'll see there is evidence of that in the volleyball pit.  It is a more/less standard size pit, with the sand-filled part not extending past the regulation boundaries.  When searching I found that the sand is about 6 inches (15 cm) deep.  I have no idea when it was last redone.

I hunted with the Minelab Equinox 800 and 11" round (stock) coil.  I ground balanced in the pit, went with Park 1, 2 tones, tone break at 0/1, recovery speed 5, iron bias FE2 = 5, gain = 20-23.  I always carry a gold pan and gold nugget scoop with me anyway, and I laid out a magnet (at Gerry's suggestion) and then forgot to bring it!

Pretty slim pickin' for a 2 1/2 hour hunt.  The rusted nails were all at the bottom edge or the sand or deeper.  Note the 22 bullet (below leftmost ring-and-beavertail).  The three modern coins didn't require any cleanup, which I attribute partly to being in the sand.  (The two pennies are Zincolns.)  The (dateless, unfortunately) Buffalo nickel was in the sandy area, but I'm not sure how deep.  I got a choppy nickel-zone (12-13) signal and dug a rusty nail down into the dirt below the sand layer.  After refilling the hole I went over the spot again and got a strong nickel-zone signal that seemed to be a few inches away from my previous hole.  Down only 2-3 inches was the Buffie.  Only a bit of water and soft toothbrush cleaning got it to the above state.  It is reddish in color, typical (in my local soil, anyway) of USA nickels that have been in the ground for many years.  I kinda doubt it's been in the sand since it was dropped (likely 50 years or more ago).

The Irwin "made in USA" screwdriver was sitting on top of the sand.  I wonder if this was a previous detectorist's probe.  Definitely my most valuable find in the pit.  😁  The curved nail is a square nail.  The three staples sounded pretty good -- all in the sand in the 3-4 inch depth range.  (Side note:  I had intended to search in Park 2 mode to get smaller items, but Park 1 found these with no problem.  Of course iron shows up more strongly than non-ferrous of equivalent size.)  Magnet would have helped recover those pesky things.  The curved nail is a square nail.  The crown cap has a plastic liner but is quite rusted, so likely been in the ground for quite a few years.  I don't know what that eye-looped fastener is below the middle R&B pulltab, but I can hear Gary Drayton:  "Templar, baby!"

I was surprised at how clean this pit was with respect to metallic items.  I interpret that to mean it was searched fairly recently, maybe after last summer&fall season.  All four of the coins and the aluminum washer were right near the border of the pit, so maybe the latest detectorists just hunted the garden-spots, such as under the net.

A good learning experience and thanks to all who gave advice.  Wish I could have found a piece of gold jewelry....  As soon as the stay-at-home orders are lifted I'll be back in that park, but doing my usual old coin hunting.  That has already produced some goodies (two silver dimes and an IH penny included) and there's more to be found.

[dogodog]

Not a bad day and I'm sure the volleyball players would thank you for removing those nails (ouch). eye loop thing looks like a drop ceiling nail, Used to attach your wire to it and to the grid. Or Curse of the Templar Volleyball pit (your choice). I like to search a 20' perimeter around courts and such, that's where the careless fans sit. Good luck on the second pass!!

[kac]

The whole park that sparse on finds? Usually if people are cherry picking here I end up with loads of nickels and sometimes zinc pennies. There has to be more there I'm sure. Keep looking.

[GB_Amateur]

2 hours ago, kac said:

The whole park that sparse on finds?

No, just the volleyball pit metallic targets pictured.  I didn't dig all the deep iron signals by any means.  But I think I covered the area pretty well down to the 6 inch sand-dirt transition.  I'm sure I missed some -- always do.

As far as the rest of the park, I've still only searched less than 20% of the less used parts.  They show signs of old droppings and not so much new -- that's a park hunter's dream (well, short of being completely unsearched which is too much to ask here).  I've been avoiding the pulltab zone above nickels and below clad, but still have recovered well over 100 beavertail-only and some of the small R&B -- all these hitting in the nickel zone.  Besides one other Buffie (common date) the nickels have been simply face valued (one 1939, a couple 1940, one 1940-S), but there have to be Warnicks in there along with more Biffies and probably a V-nickel or two.  I've been patient trying to be thorough.  So, yes, there's more awaiting.

Metal detectorists have a lot in common with the general population.  Many look for the low hanging fruit and are satisfied with that.  They've left me some high haning fruit and I relish the challenge.  You will hear more from me, but like most of you I'm laying low.  There are bigger things to be concerned with right now.

[kac]

Ever take your Vaquero out there for kicks? Set the disc up enough to scratch out the iron and if your running into too much can slag start nudging that out. Beaver tails are a good break point if your looking for smaller gold.

Biggest thing is crowd avoidance these days.

[Gerry in Idaho]

I'm surprised you never found at least 1 earring or earing post?  No bits of a chain and or clasp either, tells me to step up to the Prospect #1 Mode.  Yes, please go back when you get a chance and give us the details from Prospect Mode.

I've never hunted a VBall Court and not found at least an earring post/back?  I also seem to find my share of lead pellets (bird shot) in our area, as I think they get the sand from the Boise River banks and sand pits and there must be quite a bit of dover hunting going on.  I think the small lead shots in our sand is a local thing though and big inner cities probably buy their sands from beaches?

Nice Buffalo for your efforts too.

Thanks for sharing.

[kac]

If it's an old court then chances of tiny studs might not have been in fashion at the time it was used. Possible for a ring or bracelet. Also if it is anything like the soccer field near me that had 4 baseball diamonds on it they had scraped it down about 6" or more then put loam and sod on top. Anything tiny is probably in that heap of sand I need to check out.

There is another park I hit a lot and at the turn of the century they had moved baseball field #1 across away from the stadium. I had found indian head pennies and buffalo nickels where the field originally was but they were pretty deep close to the 12" mark. Wild guess if anything left that is old is the deep stuff.

[GB_Amateur]

25 minutes ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

I also seem to find my share of lead pellets (bird shot) in our area, as I think they get the sand from the Boise River banks and sand pits and there must be quite a bit of dover hunting going on.  I think the small lead shots in our sand is a local thing though and big inner cities probably buy their sands from beaches?

Not sure about where they get the sand.  However, on a school playground that was backfilled with gravel I've found lead bullets.  My hypothesis then was that the gravel was from rivers or creeks and the bullets had collected there before the gravel was harvested.  That matches your birdshot in the sand theory.

7 minutes ago, kac said:

If it's an old court then chances of tiny studs might not have been in fashion at the time it was used.

Actually the court has apparently been in continuous use for over 50 years, so recent play may have led to lost microjewelry.  I'll take Gerry's suggestion and try Prospect Mode.  Gerry, would I be better off using the 6" coil for that search?  kac, I have two coils for my Tesoro Vaquero -- the stock 8"x9" concentric and a DD ("widescan") 5"x10" which is the stock coil on the Lobo Supertrack.  Suggestion on which to use?

[kac]

Ya if still in use the prospect mode might do well for the small stuff. I have 2 coils for my Tejon, 8x9 concentric and 10x12 widescan. The widscan is good in open fields some woods hunting but it struggles with steel caps and can mask out in heavy iron areas ie foundations. The concentric rules the parks around here and does well on ear rings, reg rings and general coin shooting. Steel caps on that fall below the foil mark so I can just ignore them but that is the Tejon that is similar in freq as the Lobo. Concentric will put caps low on the Vaquero but I don't know where that break is. If caps aren't an issue there then the 5x10 might be really good on the small stuff.

Always thought of strategically placing trampolines around to seed the areas I like to hunt. Not sure how the parks dept would feel about that.