So I woke up early again and fought the rush hour and finally make it to the old park I had been to from Sunday. Not a bad day. I was dectectin for about 4 hours and came away with 1 Millenium dollar, 9 quarters, 6 nickels (one from 1943 Philedelphia Mint), 4 dimes, 15 pennies, transit token, key, button, and small silver toe ring. Over all I wa happy about the day. I am still on the hunt for the old silvers that I know are out there. The park was first used in 1880. Excited only 2nd time out on the feild with my MXT
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Went back to the Virgin Park...
- Thread starter juantonio
- Start date
question: how do you know (or should I say, what makes you think) this park is "virgin"? There's a lot of parks that have been pounded hard, that would still yield up clad and an occasional war nickel or silver, etc..... When a lot of guys hunt parks for old coins, they purposefully pass anything shallow (ie.: clad) in their quest for the older deeper coins. While the lack of "strip-mining" means, of course, they're going to miss masked things, or surface low-conductors, yet it doesn't mean the park is "virgin", by any means.
Well first off in miami no one goes to parks to detect. Everyone just goes straight to the beach. Never have I seen anyone in a park with a detector. Second of all because suck the number of good targets. And as far as the shallow deep theory you have. No target in miami besides the beach is "deep" because here we have hard coral rock just a few inches down therefore the targets don't filter through and stay pretty shallow. The 1943 nickel was only 2 inches and the 1944 wheat just 3 inches. Also many do not know the history of miamis older parks and they don't care to they go to the beaches like miami beach key Biscayne etc.
Critterhunter
New member
I'd have to agree. It would be a true rarity to find any public site, park or otherwise, anywhere in America that hasn't already seen hundreds if not thousands of detectors over the past 30 or 40 years or so. I've almost never seen anybody say they've found a virgin park in 20 years or so. Only rare times I've heard of that was say when it was a public site that had a modern building on it, and so everybody passed it up thinking it had no history with the potential of old coins. Places like where a church used to hold picnics on private land, which more recently (say in the last 40 years) was bought by the city and a modern building placed on it.
As for depth, you'd be surprised at how deep coins will sink in soil that you'd think would only allow them to drop a few inches deep. Some of my sites are VERY hard packed clay and yet I've dug very deep old coins at them. Why? Sometimes due to the ground getting very swampy at certain times of the year and turning that hard packed clay into soup, or sometimes because of decaying plants or fill that has been placed over the harder ground.
At one site we hunted it had good soil but was very mineralized and so when the old coins dried up we gave up on it, being such a small spot and not giving up keepers for a long time anymore. One day I drove by and saw they stripped about 12" of top soil off of it. That night a friend and I hunted it and I was disappointed to see that what was left was a very hard limestone packed clay. I thought not way any coins sunk further into that and so all that was left had been taken away with the top soil. Yes, we did find several old coins laying right on top of that hard clay layer, but at the same time we also dug some that had somehow sunk down into that hard cement like clay. Why? Again, I suspect floods or times of very hard rains that made even that hard clay a soupy mess.
Recently a newbie to detecting joined our local ranks to hunt with the circle of friends I hunt with. He mentioned several spots that I suspect he thought might have been unknown and virgin sites to detectors. Needless to say we had hit those tucked away spots, such as old grit mills back in the woods, years ago and have long since given up on them. I don't normaly give up on any "dead" site. A good machine and the right attitude will net you more silver, as no place is ever hunted out. But small ancient sites with high potential- some of those lack any kind of non-ferrous signal left to be found. Of course there is still coins hiding in all the iron nobody digs though. Fortunately most of my old public sites are still filled with deep "junk" signals other than nails, and we all know a coin can read like junk due to numerous factors, so I don't lack for spots to hunt. But, in the case of tiny little spots like say an old grit mill where there is high potential for something like a gold coin, a few of those spots are now completely devoid of any non-ferrous signals. They were small enough to dig every signal above iron, and with the promise and motivation that something good lurks below.
When people are new to detecting, some of them think of spots on public land and are sure nobody ever thought to hunt it. Fact is 99.9% of those spots have been pounded to death because of their public access. The only true way to find "virgin" spots these days is either hunting private land you've gained permission to be on, or by hunting the vast woods in public areas where long ago hunters, trappers, or loggers might have roamed. Even a small body of woods that has been detected hard is still virgin ground to me, due to the nature of weaving in and out of trees and brush, and also as the trees get older brush dies back and opens up spots that might have been impossible to hunt say 20 years ago. Most of my silver half dollars have come from the woods for that reason.
As for depth, you'd be surprised at how deep coins will sink in soil that you'd think would only allow them to drop a few inches deep. Some of my sites are VERY hard packed clay and yet I've dug very deep old coins at them. Why? Sometimes due to the ground getting very swampy at certain times of the year and turning that hard packed clay into soup, or sometimes because of decaying plants or fill that has been placed over the harder ground.
At one site we hunted it had good soil but was very mineralized and so when the old coins dried up we gave up on it, being such a small spot and not giving up keepers for a long time anymore. One day I drove by and saw they stripped about 12" of top soil off of it. That night a friend and I hunted it and I was disappointed to see that what was left was a very hard limestone packed clay. I thought not way any coins sunk further into that and so all that was left had been taken away with the top soil. Yes, we did find several old coins laying right on top of that hard clay layer, but at the same time we also dug some that had somehow sunk down into that hard cement like clay. Why? Again, I suspect floods or times of very hard rains that made even that hard clay a soupy mess.
Recently a newbie to detecting joined our local ranks to hunt with the circle of friends I hunt with. He mentioned several spots that I suspect he thought might have been unknown and virgin sites to detectors. Needless to say we had hit those tucked away spots, such as old grit mills back in the woods, years ago and have long since given up on them. I don't normaly give up on any "dead" site. A good machine and the right attitude will net you more silver, as no place is ever hunted out. But small ancient sites with high potential- some of those lack any kind of non-ferrous signal left to be found. Of course there is still coins hiding in all the iron nobody digs though. Fortunately most of my old public sites are still filled with deep "junk" signals other than nails, and we all know a coin can read like junk due to numerous factors, so I don't lack for spots to hunt. But, in the case of tiny little spots like say an old grit mill where there is high potential for something like a gold coin, a few of those spots are now completely devoid of any non-ferrous signals. They were small enough to dig every signal above iron, and with the promise and motivation that something good lurks below.
When people are new to detecting, some of them think of spots on public land and are sure nobody ever thought to hunt it. Fact is 99.9% of those spots have been pounded to death because of their public access. The only true way to find "virgin" spots these days is either hunting private land you've gained permission to be on, or by hunting the vast woods in public areas where long ago hunters, trappers, or loggers might have roamed. Even a small body of woods that has been detected hard is still virgin ground to me, due to the nature of weaving in and out of trees and brush, and also as the trees get older brush dies back and opens up spots that might have been impossible to hunt say 20 years ago. Most of my silver half dollars have come from the woods for that reason.
juantonio, how long have you been md'ing, as a hobby? Critter hunter is right: If it's an old park, as you say (and not a modern, say, post 1940's park that might not be interesting to old coin-hunters), then odds are, it's been hit. Sure, maybe not hit "thoroughly", but none-the-less, hit. Sure maybe a lot of guys in your area are beach hunters, and go "straight to the beach". But are you saying that simply because of this, that ....ergo .... there are no land-hunters? This does not logically follow. I have beaches near me too, and know guys who exclusively beach hunt. However, there are also land-hunters here, or persons who do both venues.
Just like critter-hunter says, so too have I seen the same thing. Having been in this for 35+ yrs, we "did our homework" 10, 20, and 30 yrs. ago. Both private and public spots, anywhere within an hour or so drive of me, has been checked, if it were a '20s or earlier park. And if there were "easy pickens" (oldies anyhow), we'd stay-on-it and thin it out. Yet years later, humorously, I'd meet newbies who'd come into our club meeting, for example, who would tell me of a "sure-fire" virgin spot lead. And as I'd listen, it'd invariably some country picnic site, or some park in another town, or some stage stop, or ....... whatever, that we'd pounded to smithereens ages ago. And sometimes when I'd ask the person "what makes you think this is virgin?", they say the same type things you're saying. Or humorously, perhaps "the little old lady across the street said she'd never seen anyone md'ing there, and she's lived their for 40 yrs....!"
As you can see, that doesn't mean anything. It merely means "the little old lady" does not monitor the park, or church lawn, or stage stop, or whatever 24/7. And being that the "average person" isn't into detecting, they just don't "register" those things anyhow. So they don't make mental note of such things. So it means nothing to me when someone says "I've never seen anyone detecting at such & such place".
Just like critter-hunter says, so too have I seen the same thing. Having been in this for 35+ yrs, we "did our homework" 10, 20, and 30 yrs. ago. Both private and public spots, anywhere within an hour or so drive of me, has been checked, if it were a '20s or earlier park. And if there were "easy pickens" (oldies anyhow), we'd stay-on-it and thin it out. Yet years later, humorously, I'd meet newbies who'd come into our club meeting, for example, who would tell me of a "sure-fire" virgin spot lead. And as I'd listen, it'd invariably some country picnic site, or some park in another town, or some stage stop, or ....... whatever, that we'd pounded to smithereens ages ago. And sometimes when I'd ask the person "what makes you think this is virgin?", they say the same type things you're saying. Or humorously, perhaps "the little old lady across the street said she'd never seen anyone md'ing there, and she's lived their for 40 yrs....!"
As you can see, that doesn't mean anything. It merely means "the little old lady" does not monitor the park, or church lawn, or stage stop, or whatever 24/7. And being that the "average person" isn't into detecting, they just don't "register" those things anyhow. So they don't make mental note of such things. So it means nothing to me when someone says "I've never seen anyone detecting at such & such place".Don't get me wrong though: there are parts of the USA where hunters might be "timid" (to chase deepies in the turf, for fear of drawing scrutiny), or where local hunters don't have deep-seeking skills (machines that top out at 6"). So .... yes.... there are parts of the USA where old coins come out of the parks much more easily than other areas (where perhaps a bunch of hard-core turf-hunters happen to live).
Oh, and just because your wheatie and war-nickel were 2" deep, does not mean that .... therefore .... all the old coins there "aren't deep". Those might have happened to be exceptions (d/t in firm hard-pan ground above a root, or brought up a decade or two past by a gopher, etc....). And if past park hunters avoided anything 4" or less (in their quest to avoid clad), then of course, they'd miss the occasional shallow oldie.
I don't know for 100% (about your corral theory of creating a layer that nothing sinks beyond). This might be true, for all I know. But if the park dates to the 1800s, and "nothing is deeper than 2 inches", then this is ALL THE MORE REASON why .... most certainly ..... hard-core hunters wouldn't have already hit it. Of course "no one gets it all".
Oh, and just because your wheatie and war-nickel were 2" deep, does not mean that .... therefore .... all the old coins there "aren't deep". Those might have happened to be exceptions (d/t in firm hard-pan ground above a root, or brought up a decade or two past by a gopher, etc....). And if past park hunters avoided anything 4" or less (in their quest to avoid clad), then of course, they'd miss the occasional shallow oldie.
I don't know for 100% (about your corral theory of creating a layer that nothing sinks beyond). This might be true, for all I know. But if the park dates to the 1800s, and "nothing is deeper than 2 inches", then this is ALL THE MORE REASON why .... most certainly ..... hard-core hunters wouldn't have already hit it. Of course "no one gets it all".
Valid points but I still do believe that it is virgen based on my research. Also the homeless that live in the park in years hav told me they have never seen anyone I was the first. The coral rock is almost like a bedrock of coral. But my friend Tom I appreciate your input but at the end of the day it is a great park for me to hunt with many targets that has much to be discovered.
Critterhunter
New member
Please don't think we are ganging up on you here or trying to knock a newbie around. Not our intent and I apologize if we've come across that way. We are mainly try to "get you up to speed" quicker on the realities of this hobby. Fact is that shallow wheats or war nickels are passed by many seasoned detectorists. They can often tell, by machine ID or just by traits/hints to the tone and ID, what a silver coin is versus a wheatie, and of course will pass anything else lower on the conductivity scale such as war nickels when they are just banging out the silver. We've got lots of sites like that around me. I can go into them and walk out with 10 or 20 wheats on a good day but not one stinking silver.
Why? Because somebody went in and ignored all the coin hits that didn't hint to being silver. Even if the machine doesn't ID silver coins from clads often the tone is a bit "sweeter" or the ID jumps up to "COIN" faster with a silver hit than a clad one. That's what is called cherry picking. The good news though is that even guys with the deepest machines often do this and pass any "wheat" or "clad" hits. But believe me, I've dug a ton of silvers that read like clads or wheaities, or heck even as zincs, due to orientation, minerals, being worn, being on edge, being masked, dry conditions, and so on. If they are passing "wheats" then they are passing silver by accident, especially when they pass on those 6" or deeper "wheats". Also, if they aren't digging all non-ferrous signals above iron, and honestly most of us don't dig that stuff, at least on most days, then there are still silvers to be found. Until you dig every signal above iron out of a site I never consider it hunted out, and even then there are still plenty of old coins being hid by iron. Even a small speck of iron, shallower than the coin, will completely mask it, and the iron doesn't have to be straight above it, just shallower than the coin.
So point being that just because shallow wheats, war nickels, or other targets are present, I can gurantee you that spot has been hit hard over the last 30 or 40 years. That is, unless it's on private land and nobody was granted permission before you. Just the realities of life, but then again if this hobby was easy everybody would be doing it and there wouldn't be no challenge. No public site is ever "dead" or hunted out. You must maintain that mindset and be willing to dig the real iffy coin hits everybody else thinks is not worth bothering with. The clean silver signals, shallow, deep, or otherwise, are mostly gone. Only when the soil allows coins to sink super deep, and thus beyond the range of most detectors, will a guy with one of the few machines that can go deeper find those deep clean silver coin hits. I have spots like that, where my 12x10 is punching deeper than at least most machines that have seen that site. But even with a machine and coil capable of going that deep, beyond the depth of most other guys, you must be seasoned at it and know how to work the coil, adjust the machine, and what to listen for, to push it beyond what some good machines can punch down to. That's when it's more about the man than the machine, when you are using a top end machine with a quality larger coil to get that extra bit of depth.
But on the flip side of that coin, a super small trash coil will work wonders to find the shallow silver that others have missed. At sites where the soil doesn't allow coins to sink beyond most machines, waste of time to wander looking for the deep hits IMO. All those shallower 6 or 7" silver dime hits are gone and no others can sink deeper that that beyond the reach of most machines or men. So waste of time to look for the clean "deepish" silver hits sink the soil won't permit that situation. Now it's time to strap on a small coil (like say 4 to 7" in size) and work slowly in between the trash. Don't curse the trash. Instead, be greatful, for now you are looking where most won't look, and with a coil that can give you results (use a DD). Don't hit the trash and move quickly past it. Instead, work around the edges of that pull tab hit for any hints to a high tone mixed in at the edges. You'll find shallow silver that way, but don't be in a hurry. Just like looking for deepies, the only ground you should be concerned about is right in front of your two feet. Work THAT spot. Don't be in a hurry to "get over there". The grass is never greener 20 yards away. When you have that mindset you'll walk into "dead" public sites and, with a good amount of effort and work, you will find silver others have missed.
Good luck, and remember it's far harder to cut your teeth and learn how to look for old coins at public sites that have been worked hard. Try to hunt private land for a while where you won't get frustrated. Once you've got enough experience in how to find the deeper or masked stuff then move on to the public sites. Or, at the very least, hit a modern school or park where the clad is plentiful. Working a dead site where coin hits are scarce is a good way to get turned off to this hobby quick. You got to pay your dues and take it slow before finding the stuff the guys for the past 40 years have missed.
Why? Because somebody went in and ignored all the coin hits that didn't hint to being silver. Even if the machine doesn't ID silver coins from clads often the tone is a bit "sweeter" or the ID jumps up to "COIN" faster with a silver hit than a clad one. That's what is called cherry picking. The good news though is that even guys with the deepest machines often do this and pass any "wheat" or "clad" hits. But believe me, I've dug a ton of silvers that read like clads or wheaities, or heck even as zincs, due to orientation, minerals, being worn, being on edge, being masked, dry conditions, and so on. If they are passing "wheats" then they are passing silver by accident, especially when they pass on those 6" or deeper "wheats". Also, if they aren't digging all non-ferrous signals above iron, and honestly most of us don't dig that stuff, at least on most days, then there are still silvers to be found. Until you dig every signal above iron out of a site I never consider it hunted out, and even then there are still plenty of old coins being hid by iron. Even a small speck of iron, shallower than the coin, will completely mask it, and the iron doesn't have to be straight above it, just shallower than the coin.
So point being that just because shallow wheats, war nickels, or other targets are present, I can gurantee you that spot has been hit hard over the last 30 or 40 years. That is, unless it's on private land and nobody was granted permission before you. Just the realities of life, but then again if this hobby was easy everybody would be doing it and there wouldn't be no challenge. No public site is ever "dead" or hunted out. You must maintain that mindset and be willing to dig the real iffy coin hits everybody else thinks is not worth bothering with. The clean silver signals, shallow, deep, or otherwise, are mostly gone. Only when the soil allows coins to sink super deep, and thus beyond the range of most detectors, will a guy with one of the few machines that can go deeper find those deep clean silver coin hits. I have spots like that, where my 12x10 is punching deeper than at least most machines that have seen that site. But even with a machine and coil capable of going that deep, beyond the depth of most other guys, you must be seasoned at it and know how to work the coil, adjust the machine, and what to listen for, to push it beyond what some good machines can punch down to. That's when it's more about the man than the machine, when you are using a top end machine with a quality larger coil to get that extra bit of depth.
But on the flip side of that coin, a super small trash coil will work wonders to find the shallow silver that others have missed. At sites where the soil doesn't allow coins to sink beyond most machines, waste of time to wander looking for the deep hits IMO. All those shallower 6 or 7" silver dime hits are gone and no others can sink deeper that that beyond the reach of most machines or men. So waste of time to look for the clean "deepish" silver hits sink the soil won't permit that situation. Now it's time to strap on a small coil (like say 4 to 7" in size) and work slowly in between the trash. Don't curse the trash. Instead, be greatful, for now you are looking where most won't look, and with a coil that can give you results (use a DD). Don't hit the trash and move quickly past it. Instead, work around the edges of that pull tab hit for any hints to a high tone mixed in at the edges. You'll find shallow silver that way, but don't be in a hurry. Just like looking for deepies, the only ground you should be concerned about is right in front of your two feet. Work THAT spot. Don't be in a hurry to "get over there". The grass is never greener 20 yards away. When you have that mindset you'll walk into "dead" public sites and, with a good amount of effort and work, you will find silver others have missed.
Good luck, and remember it's far harder to cut your teeth and learn how to look for old coins at public sites that have been worked hard. Try to hunt private land for a while where you won't get frustrated. Once you've got enough experience in how to find the deeper or masked stuff then move on to the public sites. Or, at the very least, hit a modern school or park where the clad is plentiful. Working a dead site where coin hits are scarce is a good way to get turned off to this hobby quick. You got to pay your dues and take it slow before finding the stuff the guys for the past 40 years have missed.
whitewill_1
Member
Wow this is a great thread. I have to bump this up for new guys to read. I have found this all to be true by my own experience. Slowing down and unmasking in old hunted parks is absolutely required if you want to find the old stuff left behind. No old parks are untouched. Even in places where the beach attracts alot of detecting alot of mders move inland when the tourist season ends.