Something to keep in mind when hunting "newer" parks

[JimmyCT]

I had a good friend contact me and was kind of discouraged about a park they found to hunt. This person really didn't want to hunt it because it was created in the 1970's. I explained to them if they were to pull the coins out of their pocket and look through them, there is a good chance they would find coins ranging 40-50 even 60 years in date. I am always looking through my change and at the end of the day, I am amazed at the coin dates. Here we are in 2014 and I sometimes still find wheat cents, nickels from the 1940's and 50's as well as clad coinage from 2000's - 1960's. Granted since silver is king, I rarely ever find any. Point being, if I find this date range of coins in my pocket today, just imagine back in the 1970's what someone could be potentially carrying around in their pocket! SO.... the next time you feel that the area is "too new" to hunt, keep this in the back of your mind. Happy hunting!!

 

[oneguy]

you are correct. in 1970 I was a freshman in high school and hate to even think about what I did to how many silver mercs, rosies, washingtons I pulled from change at that time. It involved heat, casting and molds.....lol

 

[ChicagoJohn]

I found 1900's coins from not too old park but house was there years ago! I look for large old trees and around there is good chance to find old coins!

 

[ironsight]

Sometimes you just never know til you try them.

Two new parks come to mind where i never expected to find silver coins. Found 3 Washington Quarters all at or a little below 1964 in one park. The other park, i found a 1963 Rosie among the clads. Another new park, no silver coins but a cool silver ring.
I even found a Rosie in the change i receive from the local Drive-thru burger joint.

There are people who tap their old piggy banks and just spend the coinage not realizing they're spending 90% silver coins.
Got to talking with a soda pop vending machine guy when detecting a park a while ago. He told me he finds silver coins all the time in those machines.

 

[mudpuppy]

I'm with you on this one Jim! A guy just never knows until after a few passes with the sweeper...imagine a 1970's park thats never seen a coil? it would hold hundreds of dollars in clad, maybe a few thousand in gold/silver jewelry...of course a ton of tabs and crown caps, but those just let you know if its been hunted right or not...so its all good...
Mud

 

[marcomo]

From a strict monetary value perspective, you have to find a whole lot of silver coins to equal the value of one gold ring. And gold can be found at any park, old or new.

But, earthlypotluck, it's a matter of playing the odds if you want to find desirable older coins. Contrary to what you said, the odds of a person in the 1970's having old and desirable coins in their pocket was slim.

You can certainly find clad coins and jewelry at a 1970's era park. Also on the plus side, you are more likely to have a less searched area for finding those types of targets because many detectorists won't search a 1970's park.

You can find nickels from the 1940's and 1950's in circulation still today because they made a whole lot of them and, with a few key date and war nickels as exceptions, they aren't rare or collectible.

Likewise clad dimes and quarters from 1965 on have no collectible value and are readily found in circulation.

It's not impossible to find a silver coin anywhere. But assuming no significant human activity before a park being built in the 70's, your odds of finding a silver coin there is long. By the early 70's, there was very little silver left in circulation. Maybe 1-2% of the total circulating dimes at best in the early part of the decade. And whatever the silver dime percentage was, the silver quarter total would be even lower because they disappeared from circulation even faster than the silver dimes. So the odds of a 1970's dropped dime or quarter being silver are extremely low.

Wheat pennies were discontinued several years before silver, but they lastest longer in circulation because they weren't actively being hoarded as early as silver coins were. But by the mid-1970's, wheat pennies had faded from circulation significantly.

Another good thing to realize is a lot of places that are parks now were originally private properties bequeathed by landowners for use as parks. Sometimes little pocket parks will be former residences where the houses have been torn down and the property taken back by the city for non-payment of taxes, etc.

That point was driven home to me a few years ago when my little niece and I detected a tot lot right on the outside of an interstate highway fence. After she shocked me by finding a 1880's Indian Head about 4 inches down, I researched and realized that where she found it would have been right by the driveway of a house that was taken for the highway.

 

[Larry (IL)]

The park may be from the 70's but the ground has been there forever, people a long time too......you just never know what you will find or where until you hunt it.

 

[bootyhoundpa]

Your point is rather well taken elp... I was a kid in the 70s..wheaties were plentiful and silver change wasnt rare if you took the time to examine your change... that all changed with the silver rush back in 1980 I believe... the same theory of coin dates lagging behind the times also holds true for much earlier home sites... its not uncommon to find coins several decades older than the age of the home... I need only look to my own backyard where I found an early 1800s large cent even though the house was built in the mid 1880s...

 

[JimmyCT]

I understand the whole thing about the land always being there Larry. I was telling this from one angle about being "built in the 70's." I suppose it is the psychological thought of "oh it isn't old because it wasn't "built" til' the 70's." One of my family members has this train of thought too. I tried to explain my point but they just shrug it off. I remember my family member saying to me, "you are not going to find crap there" lol Boy were they wrong! You are correct Larry - the ground has been there forever and who knows what could of been or who had been there. There is only one way to find out!

I agree with you BH - I took the time to look and did find silver. My family must of thought there was something was wrong with me as I would asked them for their change to "inspect it" lol You have even proven this yourself with that early large cent you found in your backyard. For me it was a local park "built in 1920" and some of the coins I found reached into the mid 1800's.

My whole point (with this article I wrote) is even if there WAS nothing there until the 1970's, one would still have a great opportunity to find older coins. HH

Your point is rather well taken elp... I was a kid in the 70s..wheaties were plentiful and silver change wasnt rare if you took the time to examine your change... that all changed with the silver rush back in 1980 I believe... the same theory of coin dates lagging behind the times also holds true for much earlier home sites... its not uncommon to find coins several decades older than the age of the home... I need only look to my own backyard where I found an early 1800s large cent even though the house was built in the mid 1880s...

 

[JimmyCT]

I can only imagine lol

you are correct. in 1970 I was a freshman in high school and hate to even think about what I did to how many silver mercs, rosies, washingtons I pulled from change at that time. It involved heat, casting and molds.....lol

 

[Elton]

The park may be from the 70's but the ground has been there forever, people a long time too......you just never know what you will find or where until you hunt it.

Good point Larry. I was hunting a 80's built park one day and started finding Barber coins. ???????????? What how is this .. A little research found the property was a former Mayors home site.
Large parties of the elite, Easter egg hunts for the kids, and family get together's was a common thing at his Estate. Weddings in the back yard.Ice Cream socials in the summer months.

I was able to find old photos of some of the events.So I could detect in the general area of where people were there in the late 1890's, and early 1900.... Go figure !!

I was able to probe an old dump site in the far corner of the property finding some old medicine bottles with corks still intact. These bottles were 5 inches down and non evasive recoveries..just a little push up with the digger popped them out..

I'm not saying I found a small fortune in old coins..I didn't.I did find 6 or 7 late 1800, early 1900 coins.

 

[Goldstrike]

As previously pointed out, coins, old and new can be found most everywhere people have been or currently frequent which means virtually everywhere except remote spots like remote places in deserts and such. The chances get greater when you go to locations that have been and currently are habitated most heavily. Doing the research is a key to being successful but none of us knows just how heavily these spots have been hunted. I have been an avid fisherman in the past and I would bet money that some fishing holes held trophy fish but have been skunked and left those locations so discouraged because they held no fish!
It's a little like detecting spots. Sometimes they look great but we can sometimes come away surprised that we didn't find anything. So like Larry said, we will never know until we detect those places.

Just as an add on to this, I was a coin collector in the 1960's and graduating in 1966, I was an apprentice auto mechanic at a small shop. I doubled up as a gas monkey when we did not have auto's to fix and I loved to sort through the change that got put in the register from gas sales and cherry picked through the coins. I would simply swap coin for coin but as you can imagine, I let go of many worn out silver coins for better looking silver coins!!! Later on, I armed myself with a detector and got serious about 'collecting'!!!! Ah......if only we could relive our time over again with what we know now!!

 

[richbat]

I remember back when I was maybe around 9 or 10 and showing either my grandparents or maybe my mother or father a penny I had found that had double lines,yep 1972 double die,remember that coin well but as any 9 or 10 year old didn't know squawt about coins back then and eventually most likely lost it. It does make one wonder what types of coins are children will see in their later years in life,maybe it will be fun to sit and tell the grandchildren someday,hey I remember that coin.

 

[GeorgeinSC]

For the past few months I have been on occasion hitting a relatively "New" park. I am not certain just how old it really is but I remember them building the park. I think that it may be as much as 15 years old.

I have only found two silver items in that park. One Washington Quarter and one Silver ring. So far I have not found any gold but I keep looking.

Every time I hit that park I pull out a few dollars in Clad to add to the total. So far I have remover over $170.00 in clad from that park and the donors keep dropping more coins for me to find. When all the ball fields are in use there is no place to park even close to the park.

I am Old and Retired so I have time to waste digging clad.

 

[Digdoggy]

I hit a fairly new park last month and the place was too busy for me with spring baseball. I headed off to the edge of the park to do my usual, wander in the woods. I used the well worn path and not even 100 ft into the path i got a nice hit with my X-Terra 705 and Digger coil. Thought I had an old coin when I saw the 4-5 inch deep target. Then I see the little loop on the back. Dug my first old colonial flat button!!! This just a little ways off the ball field on a clear well used path still in park property. You just never know. Here I was discouraged because the park was to busy for me to hunt clad. Sulking off into the woods. Nothing wrong with research and all but sometimes you just gotta get those feet moving.

 

[Digdoggy]

Was trying to edit that post above. Didn't work.

Anyway what I meant by moving those feet was we just have to give it a shot. Whether it's a new park or schools. I think alot of us judge them too soon. I've been looking at aerial photographs from 1934 and 1965. Wow even in 1965 there were farms right down the road from me and there is no sign of them on the grounds today.

I've been wondering just how they fill and or bulldoze these parks and schools. Don't they move existing dirt around and level it without always dumping fresh fill dirt on. I usually figured most of the schools and parks are filled and therefore burying old coins a foot or more deep. I usually can tell if filled by checking around large trees if they were there when ground work was done. There is no tapering out where the tree meets the ground. If it's straight right in the ground it's fill dirt around the tree. I know alot of places that have boulders in haphazard piles like they were all pushed there by dozers to clear the grounds. Of course me being so fweekin smart,, runs right to such rocks thinking maybe they pushed the old targets along with the boulders. It seems some nice folks must have used these big rocks n da woods for a nice party spot. Yep dozens of rusty beer tops and beer cans. I was really new with the 705 and digging it all. Not an old penny. Trash was all. Thinking too much can get me in trouble. Or waste a lot of time. Maybe I need to just put the coil to the ground more often. Still wonder if they cover a lot of cool coins and stuff when they build these parks and schools.

 

[Johnnyanglo]

Figure that pockets in the 1970`s contained a few coins that were 40 years old but the percentage would be low, perhaps some were lost, but the percentage of lost coins of that age would be even smaller. With the detecting craze in the 70`s the BFOs and TRs would have recovered most of the lost coins from the 1930`s. Any park that is only built from the 70's would not be expected to be a silver producer. If the ground had an earlier history then old silver would be possible, otherwise you are at a disadvantage.