AnOldPro
Full Member
OH HOW THE "MIGHTY" HAVE FALLEN!!! Anybody smell a dead skunk or 5 ?
Well, fellow TNET'ers... I guess it had to happen...
Yea, verily and so forth... the Good Book sayeth... "PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL".
Yers trewlee, after allowing himself a few pats on the back for all the nice feedback received on the winter conference, went forth when good weather FINALLY arrived to "search out and conquer" on all those good detecting sites he had lined up. I expected to enthrall all you newbies with pictures and stories of my most recent finds which I was sure would be plentiful.
After all, was I not the one to tell everyone that the "pickins" were NOT scarce in beau-tee-full old Kaintucky?
Sigh!!! Well... uh..... er.... I, uh.... Ahem.... I mean.... uh..... MAN this is hard to say! Guess I had better just blurt it right out... Uh... the Old Pro went out five times and struck out five times.... thats right.... five big GOOSE EGGS!! Not even ONE coin did I find and I was on sites that should have been producing CW artifacts, Seated coins, Indian Heads, and Barbers by the dozens!
Oh.. it wasn't that I was not getting non-ferrous targets or even that I was missing the deep targets. I certainly dug a number of non-ferrous targets including numerous fired 22 bullets at depths of 6 inches. The problem was that I just could not seem to put my detector over a coin signal. I bet I listened to at least 10,000 metal signals without getting a single coin or even CW bullet! I dug brass shotgun shells, all kinds of modern bullets of various calibers and enough miscelaneous junk to half fill the back of my pick-up truck... but no keepers.
I kept putting off writing this thinking that the next hunt would bring "redemption" and I could post my newly found goodies to make an Old Pro look like a competent hunter again.
Well, thoroughly humbled, I drug myself out to hunt for the sixth time. I tackled the old resort site from the 1800's that had completely kicked my butt 4 times in a row with SEETHING determination to conquer or DIE!!!
It was a bitter battle with the "enemy" throwing all kinds of "metal shrapnel" at me at every turn wherever I went on the "field of battle" that covered many acres.
Finally, after two more hours of "goose egg" hunting with desperation in danger of outrunning determination I got a signal that sounded mighty good.
(I was thinking, though, that if it turned out to be a Vienna Sausage lid that I might just use it to cut my throat and thus sacrifice myself on the altar of "WANNABEE TREASURE HUNTERS".
)
Carefully digging down about 5 inches I saw the unmistakeable green/brown patina of tarnished brass. Completing the recovery I soon held in my hand a shield shaped object with a small slot near the top of it. So..... I says to myself... "Self... this has got to be some kind of insignia from the 1800's no doubt related to this particular resort site". (Name of the resort is left out to prevent any of the rest of you from getting skunked there also. Now see how much I care about you ?
)
Carefully rubbing the accumulated dirt off the object I began to see embossed letters on one side of it. Another minute of cleaning and I saw the words, much to my surprise I might add, CENTRAL 93 HOTEL, MAYSVILLE.
What I had found... what FINALLY "broke the drought"... was obviously a brass baggage check from the late 1800's issued by a hotel in Maysville, Kentucky which is quite a few miles from the resort site where I found it. No doubt the person who lost it had first come to Maysville by riverboat, stayed at that motel for the night and then got transportation to this mineral springs resort that existed from the 1840's to the early 1900's.
I will try to post a picture of the baggage check with this message but never having posted a picture on TNET yet I may not be successful on the first try.
Anyway... feeling a little better about the whole thing... with my determination renewed... I swung fast and furious in the 30 minutes or so of hunting time remaining... sure that I could now find coins now that I had "broken the jinx". Well, sure enough... it was but a few minutes before I got that sweet signal on my Fisher 1266 XB that is almost always a small coin like a penny or dime. Carefully cutting the plug out of the pasture grass I was hunting in and waving a handful of dirt from the hole in front of my searchcoil I heard the signal indicating the prize was in my hand. And sure enough... it was a copper coin... and judging from how old the site was and the strong patina coating it, it just HAD to be an Indian Head at least... right? RIGHT
?
WRONG!!!
Twas indeed a small consolation that it was a WHEATIE.... I think if it had been a new coin I would have gone back and looked for that Vienna Sausage lid I mention earlier in this post.![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
Yes, dear hearts, it was a Wheatie but.... no, it was NOT an "09 VDB" or any other rare date... it was a 1958 - D... the LAST year that wheaties were made. Double-sigh!!!
But at least it was a coin.... my first in 6 hunts! I know its now much but I gotta tell you when you hit a bad run of luck... and thats the point of this whole post... Even a humble wheatie looks mighty good coming out of the ground!!
So here's the lesson for both you newbies and those who are more experienced.... there will be times in your "detecting career" that NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE SITE YOU ARE ON, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PUT YOUR DETECTOR OVER A COIN OR ARTIFACT NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU HUNT and.... even worse.... that situation will prevail on site after site leaving you wondering if there is some kind of ghost moving all the good targets just before you find them.
I remember when I found my first seated coin... took me about 3 years of hunting. BUT.... just as soon as I found that one I went out and found 6 more on my next 3 hunts.... on DIFFERENT sites. How do you figure it
It's simple... YOU CAN'T! No matter how experienced you are at detecting there will be times when you experience a "drought" in good finds. It may continue for days, weeks or even months and when it end... there will be no warning... it just ends and suddenly you start to make good finds on a regular basis just about everytime you go out. In the end PERSERVERANCE is the key to METAL DETECTING SUCCESS down through the years. ALL who persevere eventually do well.... even a beat-up, knocked-down, over-confident, discombobulated Old Pro.
Pass the "humble pie" honey.... I think I can choke down another slice now!
Okay... I've had my say... go ahead and laugh (Sniff!)... I can take it... just you wait... when I post the pic of the 20 dollar gold piece I'm gonna find real soon we'll see who's laughing then!!
Happy trails, Y'all!
DC
PS ~ I think I got the picture of the luggage tag into this post... "check" it out.
Well, fellow TNET'ers... I guess it had to happen...
Yea, verily and so forth... the Good Book sayeth... "PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL".
Yers trewlee, after allowing himself a few pats on the back for all the nice feedback received on the winter conference, went forth when good weather FINALLY arrived to "search out and conquer" on all those good detecting sites he had lined up. I expected to enthrall all you newbies with pictures and stories of my most recent finds which I was sure would be plentiful.
After all, was I not the one to tell everyone that the "pickins" were NOT scarce in beau-tee-full old Kaintucky?
Sigh!!! Well... uh..... er.... I, uh.... Ahem.... I mean.... uh..... MAN this is hard to say! Guess I had better just blurt it right out... Uh... the Old Pro went out five times and struck out five times.... thats right.... five big GOOSE EGGS!! Not even ONE coin did I find and I was on sites that should have been producing CW artifacts, Seated coins, Indian Heads, and Barbers by the dozens!
Oh.. it wasn't that I was not getting non-ferrous targets or even that I was missing the deep targets. I certainly dug a number of non-ferrous targets including numerous fired 22 bullets at depths of 6 inches. The problem was that I just could not seem to put my detector over a coin signal. I bet I listened to at least 10,000 metal signals without getting a single coin or even CW bullet! I dug brass shotgun shells, all kinds of modern bullets of various calibers and enough miscelaneous junk to half fill the back of my pick-up truck... but no keepers.
I kept putting off writing this thinking that the next hunt would bring "redemption" and I could post my newly found goodies to make an Old Pro look like a competent hunter again.
Well, thoroughly humbled, I drug myself out to hunt for the sixth time. I tackled the old resort site from the 1800's that had completely kicked my butt 4 times in a row with SEETHING determination to conquer or DIE!!!
It was a bitter battle with the "enemy" throwing all kinds of "metal shrapnel" at me at every turn wherever I went on the "field of battle" that covered many acres.
Finally, after two more hours of "goose egg" hunting with desperation in danger of outrunning determination I got a signal that sounded mighty good.
(I was thinking, though, that if it turned out to be a Vienna Sausage lid that I might just use it to cut my throat and thus sacrifice myself on the altar of "WANNABEE TREASURE HUNTERS".
)Carefully digging down about 5 inches I saw the unmistakeable green/brown patina of tarnished brass. Completing the recovery I soon held in my hand a shield shaped object with a small slot near the top of it. So..... I says to myself... "Self... this has got to be some kind of insignia from the 1800's no doubt related to this particular resort site". (Name of the resort is left out to prevent any of the rest of you from getting skunked there also. Now see how much I care about you ?
)Carefully rubbing the accumulated dirt off the object I began to see embossed letters on one side of it. Another minute of cleaning and I saw the words, much to my surprise I might add, CENTRAL 93 HOTEL, MAYSVILLE.
What I had found... what FINALLY "broke the drought"... was obviously a brass baggage check from the late 1800's issued by a hotel in Maysville, Kentucky which is quite a few miles from the resort site where I found it. No doubt the person who lost it had first come to Maysville by riverboat, stayed at that motel for the night and then got transportation to this mineral springs resort that existed from the 1840's to the early 1900's.
I will try to post a picture of the baggage check with this message but never having posted a picture on TNET yet I may not be successful on the first try.
Anyway... feeling a little better about the whole thing... with my determination renewed... I swung fast and furious in the 30 minutes or so of hunting time remaining... sure that I could now find coins now that I had "broken the jinx". Well, sure enough... it was but a few minutes before I got that sweet signal on my Fisher 1266 XB that is almost always a small coin like a penny or dime. Carefully cutting the plug out of the pasture grass I was hunting in and waving a handful of dirt from the hole in front of my searchcoil I heard the signal indicating the prize was in my hand. And sure enough... it was a copper coin... and judging from how old the site was and the strong patina coating it, it just HAD to be an Indian Head at least... right? RIGHT
? WRONG!!!
Twas indeed a small consolation that it was a WHEATIE.... I think if it had been a new coin I would have gone back and looked for that Vienna Sausage lid I mention earlier in this post.
Yes, dear hearts, it was a Wheatie but.... no, it was NOT an "09 VDB" or any other rare date... it was a 1958 - D... the LAST year that wheaties were made. Double-sigh!!!But at least it was a coin.... my first in 6 hunts! I know its now much but I gotta tell you when you hit a bad run of luck... and thats the point of this whole post... Even a humble wheatie looks mighty good coming out of the ground!!
So here's the lesson for both you newbies and those who are more experienced.... there will be times in your "detecting career" that NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE SITE YOU ARE ON, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PUT YOUR DETECTOR OVER A COIN OR ARTIFACT NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU HUNT and.... even worse.... that situation will prevail on site after site leaving you wondering if there is some kind of ghost moving all the good targets just before you find them.
I remember when I found my first seated coin... took me about 3 years of hunting. BUT.... just as soon as I found that one I went out and found 6 more on my next 3 hunts.... on DIFFERENT sites. How do you figure it
It's simple... YOU CAN'T! No matter how experienced you are at detecting there will be times when you experience a "drought" in good finds. It may continue for days, weeks or even months and when it end... there will be no warning... it just ends and suddenly you start to make good finds on a regular basis just about everytime you go out. In the end PERSERVERANCE is the key to METAL DETECTING SUCCESS down through the years. ALL who persevere eventually do well.... even a beat-up, knocked-down, over-confident, discombobulated Old Pro.
Pass the "humble pie" honey.... I think I can choke down another slice now!
Okay... I've had my say... go ahead and laugh (Sniff!)... I can take it... just you wait... when I post the pic of the 20 dollar gold piece I'm gonna find real soon we'll see who's laughing then!!
Happy trails, Y'all!
DC
PS ~ I think I got the picture of the luggage tag into this post... "check" it out.
And Yes, incase anyone out there is wondering, I have even tried praying to the coin & relic gods for forgiveness for some past thing I may have done to offend them, as well as swinging a coin under the coil of my machine from time to time while out hunting to make sure everything is in working order 
