New Sites Aren't As Fruitful As I'd Hoped

[GB_Amateur]

My 2021 New Years Resolution (and I think my 2020 one, too) was to find sites I hadn't previously searched rather than to put all my eggs on cleaning up what's left of familiar sites.  (I still do some of that, too, though).  This year I've already reported on four previously unsearched (by me, that is) sites, all which have produced.  More on those in my year end summary in a month.  Early in November I decided to make one more try for 2021 at finding some new ground and with the help of HistoricAerials.com, I found four promising locations.  I'm going to simply refer to them as sites 0, 1, 2, and 3.

Site 0 is the easiest to report on.  From early 20th Century USGS topos it was a small (one room?) school that disappeared around 1950.  A drive by showed that not only is it now a private home, but that the intersection where it was located has been seriously reworked, i.e. enlargened.  At best it falls into the 'private permission' category and I'm not at all good at those.

Site 1, with added help from Google searching, was an elementary school and high school back at least to the eary 30's.  The HS closed in the mid 60's and the elementary school a few years later.  The building is still there but there are mixed signals as to whether it's public or private.  Some threatening signs indicated at least part of it is currently privately leased, but the a__holes are very vague about what is and isn't theirs.  I spent 1 1/2 hours in a couple spots with promising results (see photo of good finds below) but I just didn't feel comfortable.  There was a lot of coming and going by various groups (sports participants, church goers, etc.) and although no one bothered me I just didn't feel welcome.

Site 2 was another small elementary school.  I don't know when it was formed but it appears to also go back to early in the 20th Century.  I think it closed around 1960.  It's now a small public park and community center.  Unfortunately both my visual (internet) research as well as detecting and viewing the site in person makes me think it's been heavily reworked since the school was torn down.  First hunt there, 3 1/2 hours, produced 2 Wheaties and a sterling ring, plus a fair amount of modern coins and trash.  That was my survey hunt.  My second trip there was intended to focus in on a trashy but potentially less overfilled part with the ML Equinox and 6" coil, but that wasn't very fruitful.  About 2 hours in I was approached by an elderly (81 year old) friendly neighbor who filled me in on some history.  He said he had attended that school as a youngster (presumably around 1950) and told me that although several detectorists had been there before me, as far as he knew they had never searched a slope near one edge of the property where he said he used to play and that bulldozers hadn't bothered.  Now that's the kind of info I like to hear!  I thanked him and headed over there.  For now I'll leave it at that and tell more in the show-and-tell portion of this post.  He twice more returned and told me of some other nearby sites I should search but they all sounded like private properties.

Site 3 is an active, modern elementary school which replaced an early one built around 1955.  I was able to go there during their Thanksgiving recess.  Unfortunately this site has been heavily reworked since the original school was razed and it also feels like it's been rather thoroughly searched.  In 7 1/2 hours (two days) of hunting I only found 2 Wheats plus one other oldie (more on that shortly).

OK, here is the eye candy you've been waiting for:

Top two items are from Site 1 -- 1983-D nickel-clad half dollar (only my second ever) and a necklace chain and pendant which was clean but unfortunately apparently (magnetic) nickel plated copper.  Both were reasonably shallow but not on the surface.  Based upon these finds I don't think this part of this site has seen detectors in 2 or 3 decades.

Now the finds are in pairs from lower left.  Site 2 produced this sterling ring with stones (don't know if real, but they look nice to my eye, and especially to my wife who has already claimed it!).  Thanks to that 81 year old former student I found the 1899 Indian Head Penny on the virgin slope where he used to play.  Turns out the EMI was so bad I had to use 4 kHz on the ML Equinox and its dTID rang up in the high 20's (silver coin zone), not 20-ish where they show up in MultiFrequency.  It was only about 4 inches deep.

Next two (silver alloy 'Warnick' and broken piece of jewelry) were found at Site 3, showing that there are a few spots which haven't been backfilled.  The broken piece showed up in the USA nickel zone (dTID 12-13 on the Equinox) and given its size I think this is high conductive composition.  Both ends show that they were broken off something larger (bracelet?) and the fact there is zero copper coloring there makes me think this could be a silver alloy.

Finally, the last two items on the right were found this past week in my bread-and-butter 2021 site, the 'Wheatfield', not one of these four recently reserached sites.  The ring has a men's wedding band shape but is marked '925' so sterling.  (My wife has claimed it, too.)  The IHP is a 1901.  In my two times searching there last week I found 5 Wheat pennies each day (3 hour hunts per day).  I expect to spend my last few hunts this year at that site.  I'm sure there are more oldies and I'm shooting for a record year (quantity) of Wheat penny finds.  I only need 5 more to tie last year's 103.

The above picture is the 'good'.  Here are the 'bad' -- interesting (?) non-coin finds from these four sites:

And if you want to see 'ugly', you'll have to await a future post. 

 

[schoolofhardNox]

Some potential with the 2 Indians and silver jewelry. I hope you can go back to that slope and work it over some more. I like EMI areas because most people just give up there. Some of the other items are interesting too, like the barrel tap and the item below it with the tree? on it. Always fun to try and see what you can get that others missed.

[F350Platinum]

Looks like even in your 'bad' photo you got some interesting buttons and a couple of fairly old buckles. I've never hunted a public park or school, but the age of the map is a help I see. Nice stuff!

[Old Line Paul]

Thank you so much for this post! As a beginner, I really appreciate learning how you go about finding and evaluating potential sites.

[kac]

Still not bad runs considering you got more than zincolns.

Old Line Paul, good starter site to poke around at is www.historicaerials.com where you can cross reference old maps and old aerials photos back to the 30's in some places. If you have access to property lines and ownership that will help you so your not trespassing and even give you leads to ask for permissions.

[strick]

 Some of those bads are goods in my book. It looks like you put in a lot of effort nice hunting.

strick

[F350Platinum]

10 hours ago, Old Line Paul said:

Thank you so much for this post! As a beginner, I really appreciate learning how you go about finding and evaluating potential sites.

OLP, I use the OnX hunt app on my cell phone, if you are willing to pay the ransom, it will show you real time where you are and who owns what you're standing on. Thing is it's sometimes inaccurate, I have one permission where the property lines are off and I had to ask what the deal was. The guy who owns the adjacent property gave me permission to all his land anyway so it's all good 🤣

You can go to historic aerials or USGS (old maps had dots where houses were/are), and mark building locations in OnX by comparing terrain features.

Glad to see you moving along, guess you're hooked now. 

Sorry GB 😬

[GB_Amateur]

12 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Some of the other items are interesting too, like the barrel tap and the item below it with the tree? on it.

5 hours ago, strick said:

Some of those bads are goods in my book.

Yes, non-coins can be interesting, occasionally valuable (not here though), and always reveal something about a site's history.  That cask/barrel tap was a neat find at the Wheatfield.  The item below it, though, has a dinosaur image (actually on both sides) and is a modern souvenir marked with two places -- Plant City, FL and Cave City, KY.  Also from the Wheatfield.

Other interesting items in the photo are a brass disk from site 3 with what looks like a bullet hole through it (just to the right of the dino), a large aluminum lid with a women's high heel shoe emblem and a woman in a long dress (both embossed) -- could this be a condom tin lid??  That also was from the Wheatfield.  The rusty iron wheel with four equally spaced holes in the upper center came from Site 2.  It might be off a heavy duty cart but I think it's more likely a flywheel off of either a toy or some kind of scientific demonstration apparatus.

11 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

...A couple of fairly old buckles.

Yep, small one lower right (from Site 2) off of a shoe?  Others are probably also from clothing but I do get a fair amount of horse tack in sites that were once farms/ranches/etc.  That turns out to be most of my parks and schools since quite a bit of Indiana was settled and converted to tillable or pasture land prior to the Civil War and that practice continued through the remainer of the 19th Century.

Thanks to all for your responses.

[Calmark]

Its good to see you've found some nice items to make time spent researching, swinging and digging worth it.    I've started to do more research and made a goal like you to try to find new areas instead of always hitting the same old tired spots.

The past 2 months I decided to really learn my Nox and also have looked at historic aerials online to help zero in on some older sites.  This is a very helpful website to help visualize where things used to be.  I've found a few spots that once had an old school, but are now parks or community centers.  I've managed to find a few dozen wheat cents, a few silver dimes and some older nickels after putting in a lot of hours. 

Sticking to the most original dirt has been the key for me.  The majority of the areas in my sites have been disturbed or filled in, paved over or are off-limits.  But by concentrating on fringe areas that are still somewhat original, I've managed to pull off a few good finds like you have.  EMI has been a big pain in towns, but by going slow and digging a lot, enough good finds have popped up to at least keep me motivated. 

All the sites I've been on have been detected in the past.  I think research is going to be the key to finding some lesser-known areas that haven't had lots of detectorists over them the past 30-40 years. 

Good luck in your future hunts and congrats on some sub 1900 finds!

 

[GB_Amateur]

32 minutes ago, Calmark said:

EMI has been a big pain in towns, but by going slow and digging a lot, enough good finds have popped up to at least keep me motivated.

Your sites sound exactly like mine -- lots of overfill/backfill likely hiding old coins too deep to be picked up with IB/VLF's, best ground paved over, land gone from public to private, cherry picked by previous detectorists, etc.  And they've left me a few crumbs but it ain't the 1980's anymore.  😪

You probably know this, but turning down the recovery speed can really help with EMI sometimes.  I run RS = 4 as my default (maybe I need to experiment with RS = 3...).  Very seldom does the Noise Cancel feature help me because most of the time the EMI is too broadband, I think from power lines -- often buried in curb strips.  I'm going to write up a post about recent experience with 4 kHz on the Eqx, but it's in no way as good as MultiFrequency, at least in my sites (moderate ground ==> 2-3 bars Fe3O4 on the Fishers).

Keep us posted on your finds!