Site Revisit With Change Of Detector -- Same Disappointing Result

[GB_Amateur]

Through most of 2020 I detected a large park which had been previously detected but still produced decent old coins for me.  In one post I told of a well used path to a small waterfall which confused and frustrated me.  The path (approx 150-200 m long) is right next to a creek ('stream' for you New Englanders 😉) and it was likely used for watering cattle in the late 19th and early 20th Century. The path was hard packed gravel and crushed stone, occasionl larger pieces of limestone, with soil filled in between all that aggregate.  This path gave thick iron response to the Minelab Equinox and produced almost no coins.  (I do remember one Zincoln -- I would.)  Back then I tried both the 11" stock DD coil and the 6" DD with similar results.  With both coils I recovered shallow (meaning mostly within the first 1" depth) lead bullets as well as brass casings.  Most were 22 cal. but a few were larger and those in particular I was able to date at over 100 years old.  My conclusion is that this path was used by hunters prior to it becoming part of the park.  So in summary, lots of small iron (nails and wire), as many bullets and casings as I cared to recover, but no coins.  And the recovered targets were mostly located in the top 1 inch.

Some time after my report, kac suggested returning with the Tesoro Vaquero and 8"x9" stock concentric (the only concentric I have for it presently).  He and dogodog recommended setting the threshold to where Zincolns just break up.  I found out from the park caretaker that the path is scheduled to be covered over completely with a boardwalk so if I was ever going to return, I better make it quick.  A week ago I took his advice as well as kac's and doggo's.  But in two hours of hunting with the Vaquero I recovered almost nothing.  One lead bullet somehow snuck past the threshold and I think I got an aluminum can base, but specifically no coins and practically no trash either.

I had been committed to using concentric coils only and took my Fisher F75 with its tiny 3"x6" concentric as a backup.  Returning the the vehicle I swapped out the detectors and returned for 2 more hours.  I only use silencing discrimination (and silencing masking) when I have no choice so I set the F75 up in Default process, 4H (4 tones with nickel zone joining the high conductor coins in the highest tone).  Low tone is 0-15 which is nominally the entire iron range.  With this detector I decided to dig anything 'interesting', at least at the start.  As was the case in 2020 I immeditately started recovering lead bullets and brass casings, all very shallow as before.  Two more hours and still no coins.  I gave up.

At the far end of this wooded path there is construction of a new paved path in the open area of the park.  (I've bitched many times before that I hate these backfilling-party upgrades!)  For the last hour of this session I decided to search near that path, also at or close to where I had hunted previously.  All the coins found that day (just two clad dimes and two copper Memorials) were found in that last hour with the F75 and its tiny coil.  Here are the coins I found that day and the next day (described below):

The next morning I returned to search several dirt piles -- the dirt having been removed ("scraped off") so they could backfill the walkway with crushed stone before paving with asphalt.  That 2.5 hour hunt was exclusively with the ML Equinox 800 and 11" coil with my standard park/school coin hunting settings.  The dirt piles produced only a clad dime -- what a disappointment.  For the last hour I just searched part of the park I had hunted previously.  One wheat penny was in the ground up trunk of a recently cut down tree (not surprisingly with damage from the blades of that tool).  The other Wheatie was in along a path I'm pretty sure I had detected previously, but was less than 2" deep and thus sounded like a shallow Zincoln.  (Lesson to self:  Be careful what you mentally reject digging....)

Oh, what's that other thing?  Near the end of the first day in a dirt pile I got a signal in the nickel zone of the F75 (25-35 on the 0-99 scale) and thought maybe it was in fact a nickel.  Imagine my disappointment  when it turned out to be a 10kt gold child's ring weighing 0.43 g. (still about $10 in gold content at today's price).  That's my first gold jewelry find since December of 2018.  Ignoring the foil and pulltab ranges has its advantages... and its downsides.

Finally, the non-valuable non-ferrous finds over these two days.

The finds along the 'noisy' path to the waterfall (4 hours of the 7.5 hour total) are the lead bullets and brass casings, the aluminum bracket at far upper left corner, the chrome plated strap clamp (off womens clothing?), and the two items right above it -- one a small cap (but not bottle cap) and the other a small gear, possibly from a clock.  To the right of those, also found along the wooded path, is heavy gauge copper wire wrapped around a fine gauge copper wire -- something electrical I guess.  Everything else was from the rest of the (open) area I hunted over those two days.  The tag with printing is religious and not old.  Note the interesting toy cannon from a WWI(?) playset.  I have no idea what those two embossed mating pieces (pot metal?) to the right of the toy gun are.  That rectangle at the lower left is some kind of nametag, etc., not a buckle.  Lower far right is a thick amber glass jar piece, probably part of a canning jar.  Crown cap is pre-plastic liner era (I seldom find those as they rust away over 50+ years).  Upper left is a decorative knob off of a piece of furniture.  Finally the upper right -- what this was doing in a pile of scrape-off dirt at a park I have no idea.  Here's a picture of a nearly identical piece I found googling:

And some info on the company that made it:

I'd much rather be showing you pictures of early coins, especially silver, and I'm sure you would, too, but the earlybird detectorists got those worms, leaving the decaying insects for me.

[rvpopeye]

A good quantity day with some gold frosting ...

That'd make me happy !

[Joe D.]

   Those two mated pieces look to me to be a kids life size "cowboy" cap gun barrel!

   Sorry you didn't find the coins that "should" have been there, but is it possible that someone beat you there? And cleaned it out! Or they simply got buried deeper, being a path! Still interesting finds!!

   Anyway, I'm sure there are other locations, including the waterfall area, that has some hidden coins/jewelry!!👍👍

 

[schoolofhardNox]

It's hard to know what went on there on that path. Maybe they scraped some dirt 50 years ago, maybe a washout took the coins and relics away, or as always feared, somebody got there first and cherry picked the coins. Either way you don't have to wonder what might have have been there if you didn't detect it, and saw them covering it up with the new boardwalk. If there were some coins hiding there you would have found them judging by what you were able to recover. You didn't miss any, they just aren't there for some reason.

 

[Valens Legacy]

Nice hunting G-B and glad you found some nice targets, but I wonder if you have tried to hunt any part of the creek. Those types of trails are good for old coins in the water just a few feet from the bank. It really depends on how fast the water is going to be able to hunt it.

Good luck and keep a swinging.

[F350Platinum]

Hey GB, one of the pot metal pieces is the Monopoly cannon. Interesting finds! Glad you got some gold.

And I got the hammer for the cap gun if you need it 😀

[kac]

16 hours ago, Joe D. said:

   Those two mated pieces look to me to be a kids life size "cowboy" cap gun barrel!

   Sorry you didn't find the coins that "should" have been there, but is it possible that someone beat you there? And cleaned it out! Or they simply got buried deeper, being a path! Still interesting finds!!

   Anyway, I'm sure there are other locations, including the waterfall area, that has some hidden coins/jewelry!!👍👍

 

I had 2 of those as a kid!!