CZconnoisseur said:
.......It makes you wonder about ALL the billions if not trillions of silver coins minted since the 1790s...how much of it was melted down vs how much was lost at houses, parks, etc. Even if 1% of the silver coins minted in the last 200+ years were lost due to bad pockets, carelessness, etc that means there would be virtually dump-truck loads of coins remaining!!!.......
Yeah, no doubt about it, a lot of silver was lost over the last hundred+ years.
Keep in mind i'm a self-proclaimed pessimist...
-Take those billions of silver coins lost and then divide that number by each State,
-now take the number of coin's lost in any given State and divide it by the number of counties in that State,
-further, divide the remaining number of coins lost in each county by the number of cities in that county,
-then count the number of parks, fairgrounds, etc. in or near each city and there you have it, only a fraction of the billions of silver lost,
Almost done....
-Now factor in that detectorists have been hunting those prime coin dropped areas for the last few decades when silver was relatively shallow and could be detected easily even by the crappy metal detectors way back then.
-Further, the prime areas located in or near the bigger cities likely had a higher concentration of detector owners which means many sweeps/sqr ft over the years at prime areas.
So what does all that mean today for finding any remaining silver coins?
IMHO:
-Learn, put miles on and experiment with your machine and take it to the maximum limit of its capability,
-Research, research and then research old outa-the-way long forgotten sites mentioned by others here,
-Become proficient with your detector for finding deep, on edge or coins near junk. A lot of the remaining silver is deep and tricky to detect,
-Don't believe your detector's ID for really deep depth indications...dig all those. The main reason i now use minimal to no discrimination.
-Speaking of junk, some of my best numerous silver finds have been in turn of the century old parks heavily infested with deep corroded nails. Nails from grand stands, carnival booths, attraction tents, outhouses, concession booths, etc.
These heavily nail infested areas are a big clue many people have trampled on that ground in the past. And the best part, most fair-weathered detectorists shy away from these historic junk infested areas because of their cheap machines or lack of experience detecting detecting junk dense sites and give up.
Its not a walk in the park detecting these type areas but well worth it for those who push on.