Ever Wonder What You're Missing Part Two

[RLOH]

Very seldom to I get a chance to hunt a spot with old coins and tons of new trash mixed in. I live on Lake Erie and there is a turn of the century park overlooking the lake. There is one section called the "bluff" which is a terraced hill with benches all along the top. It has been here for over a hundred years. This bench section is about 15 foot wide and is well groomed. I have taken almost every detector made and have hunted this bluff with mixed results. It seems that the older coins were 8 to 10 inches deep. Remember the trash is almost saturating this overlook. I have used an Explorer with a 5 and 8 inch coil here and I did find some Barber coins from 8 inches or so. I had some success with a Coinstrike and if I could get the coin isolated, I found some early wheats and Indian heads, but again 6 to 8 inches max. I knew that if I could get deeper than 8 inches there had to be older silver, but the amount of trash hindered the depth hunting. Last spring they put a five foot wide sidewalk along the entire length of the bluff and scraped about 8 inches of dirt off. They immediately put about two or three inches of limestone in and tamped it. It only took them a couple of days to form this sidewalk up and I just caught the last 75 foot of bare ground that was scraped to 8 inches deep. What I found were about twenty coins all at least a 100 years old and NO TRASH whatsoever. Most of the coins were less that 2 inches deep, with some laying right on top of scraped ground. I have never hunted a spot this productive and easy. So there you have it, a spot with many old coins 8 to 10 inches deep and to be honest, they might as well been three foot deep because the staggering amount of trash had almost all of them hidden. This sidewalk was about 600 foot long and I missed the window of oppotunity. You have to remember the 8 inches of dirt removed contained 99 percent of the modern trash. There were no pulltabs, bottle caps, nails, nothing. I had always knew there would be old coins here and my suspicions were true. The oldest coin was a 1873 seated dime. I doubt that I will ever have a spot like this again. This kind of spot sure showed me what I was missing. R.L.

 

[Digger]

A few years ago, an old house located about a block away from the Courthouse, was bing torn down. Seems the bank had purchased it to make way for an employee parking lot. I contacted the bank President and asked if I could hunt the area for old coins. Through research, I had learned that parades around the City square would end with a 10 block walk to the park, for continued festivities. This old house was the first residential property adjacent to that route. The evening after the house was torn down, I went over the yard with some good success. Quite a few wheat cents, a few old nickels and even a couple Mercury dimes. Nothing outstanding, but decent finds none the less. A few days later I noticed that they were removing the sidewalk. Again, I called the banker and received permission to hunt. I arrived at the scene just as the dumptruck was hauling away the chunks of concrete and brick. This indicated to me that there had been a brick sidewalk prior to putting concrete over it, years ago. Grabbing my Sovereign Elite, I walked to the east end of the area where the sidewalk had been. Within the first couple sweeps, I got a solid signal that locked on with a "wiggle". At a depth of one inch, I pulled out an 1854 Seated dime. Not a foot away, I dug an IH cent. Again, only an inch or so deep. By the time I had scanned that 90 foot stretch of ground that once represented the sidewalk, I had dug several more IH cents. All from under what had been a sidewalk, just a few hours earlier.

A few days later, I drove by the area and saw that the construction crews had cleared off the area for the new sidewalk. It was already formed up, and soon was going to covered with new concrete. I was certainly glad I had hunted it a couple nights earlier or those coins would have been buried again. As I looked aroud the site one last time, I noticed that the dirt taken from the edges of the old sidewalk had been piled up near the back of the property. Running my detector up and down the pile of dirt produced a Franklin half, a few more wheat pennies, one more IH and another V nickel.

R.L. is correct. Be observant and take advantage of every opportunity you have to search where sidewalks are being removed. Many of them were simply poured over where a brick walkway or a boardwalk were previously. And don't forget to check out the dirt that may have been removed. Sometimes it is still onsite and other times it has been hauled to another location. If it is a sizable project, find out where they took that dirt and give me a call! Most importantly, always ask permission from the owner. When construction is being done on a residential lot, I've never been denied access with my detector. HH Randy