New guy here

[Boise Ron]

I have had my SE for about 3 years, and have been hunting mostly local parks and schools, with pretty good success.
I had to join the forums to share my latest finds.
Last Saturday, my son Dave, my buddy Mike, and I went to an old gold mining town a couple of hours from home. There are TONS of square nails and other ferrous trash, and lots of bullets of various ages, mostly very shallow. We hunted for about 7 hours, and the only thing I found worth keeping were 2 dimes. The 1850 was only about an inch deep. The 1860 was under about 3" of forest duff plus maybe a half inch of dirt.
Mike and Dave got skunked, if you don't count bullets and square nails.

Yesterday, Mike and I went back to the same place. We hunted again for about 7 hours, and the only keepers were this quarter and a barrel spigot. The spigot was basically in the same hole as the quarter, off to the side about 4 inches. There was also a 1" square of rusty sheet metal in the same hole, so the original signal was really confusing. The quarter was only down an inch or two. The spigot was about 4" down, partially under a buried rock.

Poor Mike got skunked again.

The town site dates from the late 1860s, and was only occupied for about 3 years. There are NO buildings remaining, or even any foundations. We concluded that the place where I found the 1850 dime, the quarter, and the spigot might have been a bar, probably set up in a tent.

Ron

 

[DukeOBass]

Very Sweet!!! I wouldn't mind finding a few of those!!

 

[Elton]

n/t

 

[TokenDigger]

Welcome to the forum. Those are some nice finds and that spigot is cool. Hope you find some more goodies and thanks for posting them. HH

 

[gear box]

Welcome and thank's for sharing the story and pic's. WOW those are some nice find's.
HH Gary

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Good pix. Good story. thanx for posting the eye-candy Mining camp "tent city" towns can be difficult to work, as they can be riddled (as you saw) with iron, nails, scrap tin, etc... Especially if you get close to their commercial/work/mining zones. But if you can be where they strictly lived/ate/slept/drank, and if those zones are not the same areas they dug/worked, then there can be coins and such. Congratz.

 

[Boise Ron]

Good pix. Good story. thanx for posting the eye-candy Mining camp "tent city" towns can be difficult to work, as they can be riddled (as you saw) with iron, nails, scrap tin, etc... Especially if you get close to their commercial/work/mining zones. But if you can be where they strictly lived/ate/slept/drank, and if those zones are not the same areas they dug/worked, then there can be coins and such. Congratz.

We tended to look for broken ceramics and glass. Even so, there were areas where my threshold was blanked over large areas, due mostly to square nails and steel cans. I found the first dime (1850) while following a game trail down a broad ridge which had very few targets in it. I noticed a white piece of pottery, and started looking around. Off to my left about 20 ft was a shallow depression that was roughly ringed with rocks. I started hunting toward it, and was rewarded with a solid dime signal within about 5 feet of the trail (which had probably been a human trail 140 years ago). The dime was literally only about an inch deep. The vegetation there was mostly sagebrush, with no ground cover.
I have this theory that coins sink in lawns (parks, schools, etc.) because the grass "churns" the soil. i.e., the roots draw minerals from the soil and take them to the surface, where they are eventually converted back to soil. The coins, of course, don't come up, so they "sink". In my experience, this doesn't seem to happen where there is no grass or other ground cover, as is the case where I found these coins, so they don't sink, except due to erosion, which can either cover or uncover artifacts. Is this accepted theory? Did I reinvent the wheel?

Thanks to all who have commented so far.

 

[dewcon4414]

Welcome. I hunt those old sites with almost no disc in IM and will switch over to ferr after ive hunted it in cond. Ferr seems to do a better job at finding the old coppers and the less IM allows me to know when im in and out of the trash. I like the old sites that were here today gone tomorrow before all the plumbing, electrical, and just modern day trash. The nails are much easier to work around in Ferr just because the machine recovers quicker. Dont let it fool you thou.... all that iron high tone switches to the lower right bottom in the form of rust so you still get some of that high tone. If its too much i disc out crown caps or use a pattern i have. You are doing great to find the silver but there has to be some old copper since they had a lot more of it.

As far as coins sinking.... its kind of how you look at it. Everything comes into play. Most agree they get mostly covered up then moisture or lack there of, roots, freeze and thaw in some parts of the country, and cridder in the soil move them around. They are covered at different rates in different parts of the country. Here in Ind we have a tremendous amount of foliage, rain, snow, trees, worms, cold and hot weather .... lets not even talk about all the soil we move around here. So our coins get down there pretty deep just by the trash that goes over them.

Dew

 

[stubbs1]

Welcome Ron Great finds , I'm sure there will be many more GL & HH

 

[Derrelld]

AWESOME!

 

[Eddie in Poulsbo]

Great finds Ron and welcome to the forum. GL and HH.

Eddie

 

[george decker]

where did those dimes hit? far upper right? I can't find squat for silver....