Variety Of Treasure Recoveries On 1 Trip

[fredmason]

I have sifted several dumps, but, never Tonopah. That would be great fun.

Building a sifter is not difficult...the main thing is not to use any mesh larger than 1/4 or 3/8 in...for dumps 3/8 will save any thing except very small beads.

A short story that I have told before...

When I lived in Chino Valley, Az I was sifting a dump near the Veterans Hospital...

I hade my faithful Daughter with me. As I shoveled a load on the sifter the earth started moving and we both got a scare as a big gopher woke up and broke out...

After we had a laugh I continued digging and throwing onto the sifter...suddenly, a round object rolled to the bottom of the sifter...there, staring right at us was an eyeball...that was spooky!

Turned out to be glass but it sure looked real.

fred

 

[Cal_Cobra]

3 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Sorry you didn't get to join them in the windy wet and wild cold desert.  I've heard of the Memorial Weekend Sift out there at Tonopah and always wanted to do it.   I think it would be neat if we could get a small group of us DP followers on here and do a weekend gathering.  I would enjoy learning the tips and techniques of proper sifting and shaking.  It would also be a good time to put the MAX Recovery Speed of the Nox and a small coil to use.  I heard there is quite a bit of iron nails and bits in the dumps.

 

The biggest challenge at the dumps as far as detecting goes is the tons of cans and other big iron out there.  I have a nice sifter, but sifting is hard work, you're black with dirt at the end of the day and you may or may not find anything as it's almost impossible to tell what's been sifted or not from over 40 years of people treasure hunting the dumps.  I've almost gotten to the point where I prefer detecting and have been more successful detecting then sifting for several years.  Sifting is all luck, get into a honey hole and you hit a home run, get in a lame hole and all you got was a lot of back breaking exercise - lol    Either way, at the end of the day it's all about hanging out with your friends, and making new ones, being out in the open desert and just enjoying a nice time without the hustle and bustle of work and the big city.  The finds are just icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned, but they are fun to make!   

BTW Over 40 gold coins have come out of the Tonopah dump, probably thousands of silver coins and who knows how many tokens (what many are actually after).  A friend found an old treasure magazine from the 1970's with an article about treasure hunting the Tonopah dumps and the guy they were writing about eyeballed a Wells Fargo Express enameled metal sign, those days are long gone, but there have been some great eyeball finds (albeit a lot smaller objects!).

I agree, a DP group would be fun!

HH,
Cal

 

 

[Cal_Cobra]

2 hours ago, fredmason said:

I have sifted several dumps, but, never Tonopah. That would be great fun.

Building a sifter is not difficult...the main thing is not to use any mesh larger than 1/4 or 3/8 in...for dumps 3/8 will save any thing except very small beads.

A short story that I have told before...

When I lived in Chino Valley, Az I was sifting a dump near the Veterans Hospital...

I hade my faithful Daughter with me. As I shoveled a load on the sifter the earth started moving and we both got a scare as a big gopher woke up and broke out...

After we had a laugh I continued digging and throwing onto the sifter...suddenly, a round object rolled to the bottom of the sifter...there, staring right at us was an eyeball...that was spooky!

Turned out to be glass but it sure looked real.

fred

 

Fun times!  Those glass eyeball are pretty creepy!  We find a lot of porcelain doll parts at the dumps, haven't heard of any glass eyeballs though.  BTW those old glass eyes were likely made using the old paperweight techniques in Germany, and believe it or not, people collect them (not I). 

-Cal