An hour with the Digger

[BillF]

I was just curious. Both of my parents were born and raised in Missoula. Thanks.
Bill

Always interested in other MDers finds so keep them coming. I am from SW Montana near Butte but live in Anaconda, Mt. My area is a EPA super fund site and many home yards and miles of surrounding open ground have been taken down 4 - 6 inches and new soil brought in so tons of places are gone to MDing.

 

[BillF]

Back again today. Changed from 15 GB to 24 GB. Found a quarter, 2 dimes, nickel, car wash token(stupid thing says it has no cash value) and a hand full of pennies. Got tired of the rain and switched to AM to listen for signals in between the ENORMOUS amount of trash and found 4 wheats, the oldest 1917. About loaded my pants when I pulled a small coin sized gold object out. Turned out to be an old watch face. Dang!
Unless I find a trove of wheats and silver hunting in AM at this spot, I probably won't post to this thread anymore. I just wanted to show how much this Digger coil has been able to find in such a small area. Thanks for looking, HH.

 

[BillF]

Went back to this site this evening. Right back over the same area, just came in from a different angle.
Got a quarter, nickel, hand full of pennies, 5 wheaties, 4 silver war nickels and a tiny bus token from the 40s.
The war nickels are bothering me, the signals weren't that strong but they were solid from every direction and they came in at 10-16 on the ID, sometimes they did bounce up into the high 20s low 30s, I think that's why I dug them and why I might have missed them before. They didn't have any sort of high tone,low tone swinging from side to side like regular nickels.

 

[Mark in S.E. IA]

Bill, War nickels are not normal nickels. They have anywhere from 38 to 40% silver. I've found war nickels that come in as a nickel number, in the 30's and jump all over the place. So you just never know when it comes to war nickels, lol

If your finding all those wheat pennies and your not finding any silver coins then your doing something wrong and I'm guessing that your swinging your coil way too fast, it's something most ppl do with the Xterra's. You should not be swinging the coil any faster then a 4 second swing and if your in a heavy trash area then it would be best to swing even slower. Maybe 5 to 6 second. if your silver to wheat ratio is higher then 5 to 1 then your doing something wrong. I just checked my ratio for this whole summer and it's 3.36 to 1, that's about normal for me. if it get's higher then that, I make sure the next time I'm out MDing I'm swinging slower.

I do not know why it is but you can swing your coil a lil too fast and be able to pick up a wheat penny but will skip over a silver coin and not even get any kind of a beep.

 

[BillF]

Yea Mark, I think I'm about 3 secs. I consciously try to move slower but its impossible. I will try to go slower but I just am not sure the silver is here. It doesn't seem plausible though does it? To have this many old coins in one spot you would think I would have found more than I have.
Still, I am amazed at how I keep pulling stuff out of here.

 

[mapper65]

It's doubtful with all those Wheaties still in there, that someone else beat you to the silver.

Bik

"If your finding all those wheat pennies and your not finding any silver coins then your doing something wrong".

I kind of have have to disagree with you guys that a place like he is detecting and finding wheats definitely has silver. I used to buy into the saying and still find myself saying "where there are wheats, there is silver". I have one instance that I know this is not true.

We have a site that we were given permission to detect that has been owned by a fraternal organization since the mid 1940's. All of the guys that belong to this organization are now in their 80's or older and this is a locked, police patrolled facility and these guys have never given anyone permission to detect until last year when they let us in. They held big parties at this place with one event every summer that hosted 1000 people or so when it was in it heyday. We are coming up on nearly 200 combined hours detecting this place. I personally have found over 500 coins. My Mom has about 275 to 300 and my brother whom was only there once or twice has a hundred or so. I have a decent size handful of wheats that I pulled out of there and only one 1964 Rosie and a half silver Canadian dime. I even have a bunch of nickels all within the silver era but not even one war nickel.

I have been over this place 3 and 4 times with both 10.5" coils, my stock 9" coil and recently spent two days at about 12 hours or so going over it with the Digger coil. Even though I've found more silver with my Digger coil at other sites than any other coil that I own, not one silver at this site with the Digger coil. Actually I specifically bought it because of the amount of time we had put in at this location and the promise of silver based on the pennies that I found. I figured that the Digger coil would show me all of the silver that we did not find with any of the other coils. As a family, we have a pretty good track record of finding silver but not at this location. When we first started detecting this location it was literally polluted with coins. I said to my Mom, "it's like it rained coins here'. We could not walk more than two or three feet without finding a few coins. My last few trips there I think I struggled to fine 5 or 6 coins in 3 hours or so.

Good luck and keep looking but I really believe that either soil content or just the chain of events at certain locations causes there to be no silver.