Persistance Pays Off

[schoolofhardNox]

A couple of weeks ago during an extreme high tide, I put aside 2 days to hit two different beaches to see what I could get at low tide. Those visits are a good example of how not to plan your hunt rigidly. Both days I focused on the wrong thing and at the end of each hunt I found a patch that helped save the day. One of those days was an area that I re hit yesterday, some 2 weeks later. It produced 2 silver rings, silver earring an pendant all in the last hour of the hunt. Yesterday it was sanded in a bit more, so the targets were deeper, but focusing on a productive area rather than having a master plan, payed off. What I wasn't counting on was that every hole I dug was in an area that was packed with a sand and cobble stone mix! Solid as concrete. I use a pointed spade and the only way to dig was on your knees with raking the rocks out of the hole. I slept well that night  I dug 134 holes trying to focus between the silver signals and possible gold signals. I abandoned the small gold which reads #1 on the Equinox because this beach has a lot of black rocks that also read a solid #1. Since digging was extremely hard, I opted to ignore most of them. So here are the results of an all day hunt. I remember a post about nickel ratios in parks vs gold, so I'm including my ratio. It is way off of what a park gets and what some other beaches get, but if you hit the right area, you can get these results. 20 nickels dug (including 1 silver war nickel) vs 3 pieces of gold. Most of those nickels dated early 60's and older. This is why beaches can not give you the expected ratio as this will not be repeatable every time out. It's beena little while since I hit gold and I was starting to give the equinox the old "stink eye"   look. But it's back on my favorite list now The chain hit at #2, the ring at #8 and I think the stud at #3 or 4.

[The Seeker]

That’s some good hunting/recoveries. Congrats on getting back on the gold train. HH

[Happa54]

Excellent digs....Congrats!!!!

[Chase Goldman]

Nice finds.  That bracelet includes an unusual name spelling, wonder if you could track down the owner with a little research on the name combination.

[Cal_Cobra]

Nice digs, love that old ring!  Those mercs look like they've been out there a long time.

[mn90403]

Well done school and well reported.  Sometimes there are macro clues and sometimes there are micro clues.  When I find a patch I sometime see if I can find a better one before I return to the only one that is producing that day.

Mitchel

[schoolofhardNox]

Thanks everyone. My wife informed me that if that ring had actually fit her finger, it would be hers right now  So far most of my rings have been small  The Mercury dimes were in a constantly wet area. They develop this huge black crust all over them. We call them "cookies" around here. They continue to disintegrate from the inside out until there is nothing left of them. When you crack them open you can see the imprint of the coin design on the part that breaks off. Eventually they just degrade to nothing. Chase, if I put out a message showing that chain, I would have a hundred people a day telling me that those are their kids names . Unfortunately it would be hard to find the real owner.  I finally gave up trying to return the half carat diamond ring I found that had a serial number on it. Zales said they do not keep track of those numbers....it is the buyers responsibility to contact the lab that engraved it. In other words they don't care, just buy another ring from them. Sad but true.

[Tometusns]

Nice finds!!

[mn90403]

2 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Thanks everyone. My wife informed me that if that ring had actually fit her finger, it would be hers right now  So far most of my rings have been small  The Mercury dimes were in a constantly wet area. They develop this huge black crust all over them. We call them "cookies" around here. They continue to disintegrate from the inside out until there is nothing left of them. When you crack them open you can see the imprint of the coin design on the part that breaks off. Eventually they just degrade to nothing. Chase, if I put out a message showing that chain, I would have a hundred people a day telling me that those are their kids names . Unfortunately it would be hard to find the real owner.  I finally gave up trying to return the half carat diamond ring I found that had a serial number on it. Zales said they do not keep track of those numbers....it is the buyers responsibility to contact the lab that engraved it. In other words they don't care, just buy another ring from them. Sad but true.

Some collect insurance and don't want the original back!

[Chase Goldman]

24 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

That should not be quoted to me!  

You're right, highlighted the quote in the wrong post. See revised post below.  My apologies.