Finally... After almost three months and $90 in clad...

[hihosilver]

I found my first silver coin with the golden uMax today, a 1942 merc, in nice shape, and I did not ding it. Was not expecting it at all, thinking it was another penny or clad dime, it was about 4 inches deep.

 

[tabman]

I know finding that Mercury Dime makes you feel great!

How about some pictures and tell us a little about your hunt?

tabman

 

[kaolinwasher]

thats great , say do you use the notch,

 

[hihosilver]

thats great , say do you use the notch,

I mostly hunt with the notch off now ( but not when I first started). I like to hear everything above the iron, when I get the mixed middle tone, I turn the notch on and go over the target to hear how the notch changes the sound, I dig very few zincs this way. Lately, I turn the notch width all the way clockwise so that the notch is narrower. I do this for two reasons, first I like how doing this puts small foil into the low iron tone, second, when I flick the notch toggle over, one or the other, I want to just barely eliminate those zincs and bottle caps so as to detect as much gold as possible. When I get a mixed middle/high tone, I switch the notch on wide, if all I get after this is very short pops and ticks, I ignore it. This technique helps with the Nichels as well. I also noticed that many times, with the notch on, the deeper pulltabs will fool the detector and give off a soft high tone, but switch the notch off and suddenly the sound is not so clean.

For today's hunt, I went to an older school I have permission to hunt around, I have been finding a great deal of clad at this sight and had given up finding any thing old thinking it had already been cherry picked for silver. The notch was off, the notch width adjustment was all the way clock wise, the dime gave off a nice consistent high tone, but was not very bold, I thought it was going to be a 4 or 5 inch deep dime or penny by its sound, but as I said, pleasantly surprised to find the silver.

I was going over an area I had already covered but was going slower and trying to cover a smaller area more carefully. It paid off!

Tabman wanted a photo, I don't take a camera with me on hunts yet and I thought a pic of just the dime was too simple, so I included a couple of interesting finds from some recent earlier hunts. The winged thingy was found at a tot lot and must have just been lost as I only needed to kick round the wood chips to find it, and it was very clean, I doubt it is silver as it sounded off with a middle tone, just costume jewelry but pretty cool. The Miraculous medal is pewter.

 

[mudpuppy]

Congratulations! Clad teaches some good lessons...especially like you mentioned, coins at depth or old ones on edge...takes a lot of coins to be able to 'tell' with the ears...once in a while a guy trips into a place with shallow silvers and all that practice running clad pays off!
Mud

 

[jld66]

nice, when i found my first silver ever, a half dime, it was in a spot id been over before. disced out about where a penny does on my vaq. had a good tone though. feels good. you will find more.

 

[kaolinwasher]

like how doing this puts small foil into the low iron tone, ) using the notch, thats what i was wondering looks like you can use the notch to get rid of small foil , Nice feature. and a really nice silver .