Prospecting For Processed Gold

[Dirty Nickels]

Excellent thread.

[tvanwho]

I've heard soccer fields for gold chains ,especially where the Hispanic adults play. We were asked to help find a large gold wedding band on the sidelines of such a soccer field. Apparently, the players put their street shoes here along with wedding bands, and sometimes ferget the ring is in their shoes. We found the ring in about an hour and returned it. My buddy was telling me about baseball fields where adults play,especially down the base lines,while we were hunting a ball field. 2 minutes later he scores a mens 14K ring just inches deep to prove his point !!!  I got a heavy mens silver ring just a few inches deep in thick grass following this strategy at a local baseball field. An outfielder throws the ball hard and his wedding band flies off his finger is our reasoning. Both these locations require ADULTS PLAYING to get gold rings and chains !!  

  I've found a few silver and gold chains and bracelets in past years. Silver chains make a machine gun like chattter as I recall.Gold chains are more iffy beeps,usually its the clasp that makes the detector beep. Would like to hear gold chain hunters secrets myself?  I found most of my jewelry with Tesoro Lobo St and 9x8 or 8 inch round coils. The Black Sand mode is really handy for mineralized black sand beaches. I got a Playboy gold pendant at just a sandy swim beach  location about 7 inches , in sand that made my machine chatter real bad until I put her in Black sand mode, otherwise I would have missed that gold item.

  I've never found any jewelry at sand volleyball courts and not many coins either. Guess i need to go to some games and watch where folks put their stuff so I know where to look for goodies?

 

-Tom V.

[Steve Herschbach]

For me I have turned away from trying to outsmart the targets and gone more towards efficient target recovery. When I hunt jewelry now I never dig a plug. I simply look for targets, stab them with my pinpointer, and if the pinpointer hits them, pop them with a screwdriver and move on. If the pinpointer can't hit it I just pass it up for the next target. The pinpointer has actually become my discrimination device. This way I am able to recover very many targets with minimal effort and as close to zero impact to the ground as possible. Kind of no-brainer relaxing also once I get into the rhythm. I barely pay attention to what I am finding until I get a nice surprise.

[plidn1]

If you watch where the players take off their ball gloves you will find a rich area. Base lines are good and places where the out fielders tend to take their glove off comming in at the end of an inning. The action of pulling the glove off produces more rings then the actual throwing of the ball. 

[fredmason]

So many excellent pointers for park and sports field hunting. Steve, the high-speed hunting you describe reminds me of a couple I used to run into in one of my favorite parks. They seemed way to old to be detecting back when I was thirty. They were about the age i am now, how one's perspective changes-I digress.

Her method was to get a signal and scratch around with her screwdriver. If it was not right on the surface she moved on. She found many rings and never dug a hole.

fred

[plidn1]

Your detector is only a tool.

Having a detector that does everything but shine your shoes is great. But it will only do half the job. You have to train your mind to focus every minute of the day to find treasure.

So many times I have been out and about and found valuable jewelry just laying on the ground. You would not believe how many times I have found an item of value before the detector is close to it.

Here is an example:

I was once hunting a tot on a cold, drizzly, day and the wind was blowing about 35 mph. I glanced over at the sand box and it was smooth as glass. Then I realized in the middle laying on top of the sand, was a long, 14 K gold chain, like someone had layed it out in a straight line for me to find.

The strange thing was, it took a minute or so to realize what I was looking at. Because I had let my mind get lazy and focused on only what the detector found and not what I was looking for.

If your mind does not recognize what you are looking at, you lose. How many times do you look for something that is in plain sight but you don't see it?

There are many ways to keep your mind focused for treasure. On rainy days check around the drains in the parking lots or check along the fence lines on windy days. These are just a couple of exercises you can do to stay sharp. I am always looking for what is on the ground every where I go. It just amazes me how many times I do find items of value.

Not every day is a payday, but if you're in the right frame of mind, you can bring them closer together.

[Mike Hillis]

I agree with you 100%, plidn1.

HH
Mike

[deathray]

im blind as a bat,lol

[tvanwho]

I never got that lucky at eyeballing jewelry but on occasion have scored a gold ring and dug nothing else but trash the rest of the day. Usually it happens the other way around. I will definitely put the shallow rings tips to the test this summer and try to visit some local ball games in local parks and observe.the players .I do have a new used Canon SX50 with a very stable 50 x zoom lens now. Bought for wildlife photo hunting but could shoot people pics too.

  Some of my regrets in life were treasures that got away from me, usually cause I was too stupid or ignorant to know what I held in my hand or saw out the corner of my eye until years later. Hunting for Civil War era  gold coin caches in NC, we found nothing, was walking out of the woods, and just happened to glance over my shoulder at the right instant, saw 2 rows of 5 gallon bucket lid size round depressed circles in the yellow grass, like 12 of them, wondered to myself if that was what we were looking for, when I should have wondered out LOUD to my treasure hunting partner at the time !!!!  Coulda had my own tropical  island in Bermuda a long time ago !!! Been back numerous times, cannot find those depressions.

  Or the time, I spied a blue glow under a rock formation in a Maine river bed. It was a 4 inch long, gem quality, aquamarine crystal, flawless, but I could not bear to break it off.This voice in my head told me that God put it there and I had no right to break it off. Stopped at a rock shop in New Hampshire and the lady told me to go back to the spot and dig like crazy under the crystal for a pocket and NOT to tell a soul !! I soon found out why there are so many lost mines in the world as every bend in the river looked the the same as the last one. Altho, I do know the shape of the unique rock formation it was under, IF the flood stage, boulder smashing hasn't pummeled it after 30 years?

Or the time, a drunk showed me a coin he had found at an old farm site.I was with his friend checking out a Thomas Electroscope Model 20 at the time when they first came out. Well, guess what, it was no ordinary penny !!  An 1856 Flying Eagle cent this old man had eyeballed. I was broke as usual at the time but the old guy just wanted $500 for it. The coin book back in 1985 indicated that was a $5,000 coin and it was in good to very good condition. Incidentally, I bought the Escope and it was the only dowsing rod I ever found coins with until it disappeared on a cache hunt in upper New York state. I have been pouting over that loss ever since.No other Escope would find coins for me, only that one for no apparent reason...

The school of Hard Knocks is a tough one, no doubt about it...dunno if I will ever stumble across another treasure or not, but hopefully will be smarter now ..

-Tom