So, I left work early on Friday as most of the company was already off and things were pretty much dead. My headphones had died last weekend, and I had all the parts I needed to remove the old 1/4" jack, and put on a new one. After about an hour of fumbling, I managed to get it connected back on and sealed up nicely. Oh, and it worked great!!! 
My Son was with his God parents, until after dinner, and the wife had my baby daughter so that was enough to get me back over to my neighbors yard to test out my newly repaired headphones! The house dates back to just before 1900, I've found 5 silver dimes so far, as well as a cache of penny's from the 80's.
This time around I put my trusty 4.5X7 excellerator coil on and started working close to the house. Like all older houses it was fertilized with iron nails!! I worked back and forth on the walk up to the front door and managed to find that nice Merc. I worked around the house and near the cellar storm door I pulled the war nickel, as well as those keys. One of which is pretty funky.
I had dug enough holes close to the house so I moved to where an old tree was recently cut down, I found more of those coat weights. I found 6 or so in the same area last time I hunted.
My neighbor came home and we chatted it up a bit. I showed him what I found so far and told him about some of my other finds. He invited me in and showed me a picture of his house when it was first built in the late 1890's. It started off as a 2 story Victorian type house until a chimney fire took out the 2nd floor. After that they trashed the 2nd floor and built a roof over the 1st floor, it makes it now look like a cape. I never knew this, I thought the Victorian house burned down, and they built a cape in its place in the 40's.
That theory seemed to coincide with the dates on the silver I've been finding, mostly from the 40's on. All are very deep 8" + and the signals are a bit garbled. Well, you learn something new every day!
Another thing I noticed was the difference between semi-auto and manual sensitivity on this particular property. The bed of metal has sunk so deep, if I turn on semi-auto, and detect the 10-20 feet around the house I do not get too many nails. The minute I turn semi-auto off, and pump up the sensitivity to 25-28, I hear the massive amounts of nails all over the place. In fact, even moving 50 feet from the house switching back and forth I hear more nails with manual on. I am going to chalk this up to getting more depth, I guess the 4.5X7 is just on the threshold up it's depth capability in relationship to the targets here. Very interesting to me as there are people who argue for and against semi-auto and manual sensitivity.
Anyway, back to the hunt. My neighbor chatted me up and it was soon 7:45 and I was losing my daylight. As always, I keep the detector sweeping on my way back to my house. Just before his driveway, I got a really strong signal. I was able to lift my coil up a good 15" and still get a signal. My previous experience with a penny cache told me to dig, because the signal was still reading between 0-3 ferrous, and 27-30 conductive.
I cut my plug and flipped it up and stuck my trusty X-1 into the hole and was immediately greeted with screaming signals everywhere. I brushed away some of the dirt on the plug and out fell a clump of coins, dimes to be exact. I'm thinking cool. pocket spill, and as you can see in the pictures they were still gleaming. I was sure they were silver. I kept checking the hole finding clumps of dimes everywhere, seemingly stacked as they were buried. Now I'm thinking cache!!!! Meanwhile it's 8pm and I have no light. Thank goodness for the X-1 or I would not have been able to find them all. Another 10 minutes of excavating and I can no longer find any signals in the hole. Now I'm ready to go home and check out all of my silver!!! I flip back the plug, stamp it down, and swing a slightly wider sweep of the area where I found all of the dimes. Not even a foot away, I get another screaming signal!! At this point, I'm thinking it's more silver and it's pitch black. It's not going anywhere, so I note my location in the yard and head home.
Alas, the silver gods were not with me that night and it turns out to be a buried cache of 33 dimes dating from 66-89. Another 1980's kiddie cache? The way they maintained their shine in the past 20 years, I'm pretty sure they were in a roll, so only the outside edges, and the first and last one were really crudded up.
I headed out this morning before the rain and dug that other screaming signal. I had to "creep" the size of my plug wider, but all told, I pulled another 17 dimes out to get my total to 50. So yep, definately a roll of dimes. Pretty sweet, this yard is proving to be a most excellent adventure!!
Enjoy the pics!!
My Son was with his God parents, until after dinner, and the wife had my baby daughter so that was enough to get me back over to my neighbors yard to test out my newly repaired headphones! The house dates back to just before 1900, I've found 5 silver dimes so far, as well as a cache of penny's from the 80's.This time around I put my trusty 4.5X7 excellerator coil on and started working close to the house. Like all older houses it was fertilized with iron nails!! I worked back and forth on the walk up to the front door and managed to find that nice Merc. I worked around the house and near the cellar storm door I pulled the war nickel, as well as those keys. One of which is pretty funky.
I had dug enough holes close to the house so I moved to where an old tree was recently cut down, I found more of those coat weights. I found 6 or so in the same area last time I hunted.
My neighbor came home and we chatted it up a bit. I showed him what I found so far and told him about some of my other finds. He invited me in and showed me a picture of his house when it was first built in the late 1890's. It started off as a 2 story Victorian type house until a chimney fire took out the 2nd floor. After that they trashed the 2nd floor and built a roof over the 1st floor, it makes it now look like a cape. I never knew this, I thought the Victorian house burned down, and they built a cape in its place in the 40's.
That theory seemed to coincide with the dates on the silver I've been finding, mostly from the 40's on. All are very deep 8" + and the signals are a bit garbled. Well, you learn something new every day!
Another thing I noticed was the difference between semi-auto and manual sensitivity on this particular property. The bed of metal has sunk so deep, if I turn on semi-auto, and detect the 10-20 feet around the house I do not get too many nails. The minute I turn semi-auto off, and pump up the sensitivity to 25-28, I hear the massive amounts of nails all over the place. In fact, even moving 50 feet from the house switching back and forth I hear more nails with manual on. I am going to chalk this up to getting more depth, I guess the 4.5X7 is just on the threshold up it's depth capability in relationship to the targets here. Very interesting to me as there are people who argue for and against semi-auto and manual sensitivity.
Anyway, back to the hunt. My neighbor chatted me up and it was soon 7:45 and I was losing my daylight. As always, I keep the detector sweeping on my way back to my house. Just before his driveway, I got a really strong signal. I was able to lift my coil up a good 15" and still get a signal. My previous experience with a penny cache told me to dig, because the signal was still reading between 0-3 ferrous, and 27-30 conductive.
I cut my plug and flipped it up and stuck my trusty X-1 into the hole and was immediately greeted with screaming signals everywhere. I brushed away some of the dirt on the plug and out fell a clump of coins, dimes to be exact. I'm thinking cool. pocket spill, and as you can see in the pictures they were still gleaming. I was sure they were silver. I kept checking the hole finding clumps of dimes everywhere, seemingly stacked as they were buried. Now I'm thinking cache!!!! Meanwhile it's 8pm and I have no light. Thank goodness for the X-1 or I would not have been able to find them all. Another 10 minutes of excavating and I can no longer find any signals in the hole. Now I'm ready to go home and check out all of my silver!!! I flip back the plug, stamp it down, and swing a slightly wider sweep of the area where I found all of the dimes. Not even a foot away, I get another screaming signal!! At this point, I'm thinking it's more silver and it's pitch black. It's not going anywhere, so I note my location in the yard and head home.
Alas, the silver gods were not with me that night and it turns out to be a buried cache of 33 dimes dating from 66-89. Another 1980's kiddie cache? The way they maintained their shine in the past 20 years, I'm pretty sure they were in a roll, so only the outside edges, and the first and last one were really crudded up.
I headed out this morning before the rain and dug that other screaming signal. I had to "creep" the size of my plug wider, but all told, I pulled another 17 dimes out to get my total to 50. So yep, definately a roll of dimes. Pretty sweet, this yard is proving to be a most excellent adventure!!
Enjoy the pics!!
