Nice pictures!
Most of those old parks have had fill brought in so most of the real good stuff is probably deep and hard to get to with all the modern coins and trash sitting on top of them. Try picking the biggest and oldest tree in the park and grid search that baby. Start with a small coil (5" if you got it)with auto sensitivity set at 24, gain at 5, fast on, deep off, and detect in all metal. You have to dig all targets. I mean even all the trash. Your goal is to clean out all the shallow stuff and then start increasing you settings to get deeper. It's better to pick an old tree that is far away from prying eyes because you'll be doing a lot of digging. It's also best to go very early on a Sunday (less people to bother you.) You'll be surprised at what you'll dig up doing this. I've found some nice gold rings, old coins, and tokens with this method. Yes I know it's a lot of work but it will pay off. Make sure you listen well and check the screen on each target. You'll learn a lot doing this.
Another good method is to use lots of discrimination. Select coins only and X out everything else. After you've removed every target you can hear, add pulltabs. After you've dug all the pull tabs you can hear add the jewelry setting, etc, etc, etc.... Just work your way down the list. Sometimes I'll do this until the park starts to get busy and then I'll stop and go somewhere else in the park and detect like I always do, (looking for deep hits only). The next day I'll be back and start where I left off. I'm usually able to work at least 2 hours around a tree before the park starts to get to busy or the maintence people start wandering over. One way to keep the maintenance people from bothering too much is to make sure they see you going out of your way to pickup a piece of trash in the park. They really like that and i've found they become a lot more detector friendly. Just make sure you're as neat as possible and always use a large drop cloth in parks. When you go down the list don't forget iron. Iron is usually the last item I'll try and dig. You mark my words. Using this method will teach you about masking. I remember hitting this tree, I mean I've been hitting this park and around this tree for years, and I was cleaning out all targets. I removed around 4 pulltabs and a crown caps from a very small area about two feet out from the tree. I went to recheck the hole and I got a crappy deeper signal. I reopened the plug and took out about 3 more inches of dirt and when I stuck my X-1 probe into hole I got low iron and a high coin tone. I removed a small rusted bit of iron and when I stuck my probe back in I got a nice soild high tone on one side of the hole. I dug out a nice looking 1916 merc. Too bad it wasn't the one worth a lot money but it could have been. Many times I've been clearing out pulltabs and out pops a nice gold ring. You'll have more days when you'll jsut get clad and trash and no goodies but it's a good learning tool and your old coin count and jewelry count will go up. It beats just wandering around and hoping you'll get lucky.
Sorry the post got too long. I hope I didn't bore you.
New Year Toast for you:
May your Ground Aways be Soft, your Weather Fair, Sounds of Deep Silver, and No Treaspasser's Beware.
HH & Happy New Years!
Randy
