"Everything has already been found!"

[Libralabsoldier]

"Everything has already been found!"

I have heard this from time to time by old timers on here.

Yes, I realize that the MD hobby has been going on for fifty years. In that time, there have been advances in tech, sat mapping, and many other ways to hunt for treasure.

People still find things, caches, and lots of coins.

Now I wonder, why would old hands at this tell us new people that "everywhere has been hunted, everything has been found"? First off, I live in very rural Oklahoma. From what I have seen on this site, there are probably not more than a few hundred MDers in the whole state.

We have a wealth of treasure tales, many that have not been found yet there are tantalizing clues.

So, why tell us this? Is it fear of competition? That younger hands, eyes, backs will hit a treasure before they do?

I do not know. I do know that in the spring I plan on hitting ghost and semighost towns, and doing as much arrowhead hunting as I can with my daughter before it gets too hot.

In short, to my fellow n00bz: I am not getting scared off because someone says every inch ground has been gone over, and neither should you!

 

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[White Feather]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Arrrgh Young Feller,
Don't let those evil envious old timers discourage you. There is plenty still out there for everyone who has the tenacity to stick with it and never give up. Hundreds, nay, thousands of years of lost treasure can not be recovered in 60 or 70 years. They are just jealous that you are young and have many years ahead of you to make that big strike. I'm in my late 60's and wish I was a young buck just getting started. It's out there! Go Find It! NEVER GIVE UP!

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

That is pretty much why I wrote this post. Granted, I am staying away from hunting the James Gang treasure tales just up the road in Cement, OK (literally ten miles or so from my house) because those old timers are MEAN.

 

[NHBandit]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

It's not all gone & never will be. But... what I think alot of them are saying is that the days of hitting the local park and going home with a pocket full of silver coins are over. The easy spots that once held the most potential have been hit hard. For example 15 minutes up the road from my house is the site of a huge hotel that burned to the ground in the early 1900s. In it's busiest years (about 1850-1900) there were daily stage coaches that brought tourists from the depot who came up on the train from Boston, New York, etc. It had it's own bowling alley, retaurant,, hiking trails & horse stables. Should be an awsome place to detect right ? It's hard to get to and is in the middle of nowhere on a seldom used dirt road. Well on several occasions I've gone there & either run into others with the same idea or found evidence of them being there such as open holes & little piles of trash they left behind. I've spent hours there in the last couple of years only to go home empty handed. There is surely more stuff there but that place is one of those the old timers would call "hunted out" Because of this if you want to find anything good you have to think outside the box. One thing I'm considering for that particular spot is the main cellar hole from the hotel itself. It's full of trash. Beer cans, bottles (not old), generally all kinds of junk people tossed in there over the years because it's next to the road. Now alot of those beer cans are the old steel cans that had to be opened with a can opener, no pulltabs, so I know they were dumped in the hole before metal detectors became popular. I'm considering attempting to clean out alot of this junk and see what's under it but it will take quite a bit of time and I haven't figured out yet how to do that without someone else coming along and grabbing the goodies before I can get back there short of camping out on that spot for a week. The land is owned by the town and detecting is allowed by anyone with no permission needed.

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

I suppose that may be true back east. But out here? My main issue I keep coming up against is that the ground is hard as a rock summer or winter, it is either hot or cold as hell, and every inch of ground is seeded with pull tabs, bottle caps and nails. I want to build a large electromagnet and pull all the metal out of the ground...

Of course, digging in my yard I have also unearthed fifty or so bricks, and several cobblestones.

 

[CrazySlasher]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

There's always something to be found and there always will.

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

I did a lot of trash clearing with my HF, but now that I have the Ace I am waiting for a good day to start tearing up the yard. I am actually going to get a heavy magnet and drag the yard to get rid of surface ferric metals.

 

[Iron Patch]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

I was told that in 1999, not with bad intentions in mind, but because that person didn't realize all the best stuff to be found was hunting farm fields. So I was a little discouraged, but the same person suggested I hunt the field behind my house for practice. There ended up being a great site where I found my first early finds and it actually paid for my Garrett GTI. Even when we were driving place to place, and not finding much more than a 100 year old coin here and there, something inside me said don't give up, there's more to it... and there sure was.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,277133.0.html

 

[Dano Sverige]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Hundreds of detectorists go out every week in the UK.They scour fields and woods and beaches,parks.schools and forests. Every week Roman,celtic and hammered coins get dug,as do thousands of interesting and valuable items. The UK gets hammered all the time and STILL hoards of coins and gold and silver pop out.
The UK can fit 4.5 times into Texas alone!
Granted there's a LOT more for the Brit's to find over there (I'm a Brit in Sweden) but Never let anyone tell you somewhere is "played out" and clean picked. Rain,sun and frost can all move items in the ground around,and a field/park you found nothing in in summer can turn up a lot of stuff in spring. Never give up on a place, and if you do feel like giving up...always try to do a revisit or two.

 

[NHBandit]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

I was told that in 1999, not with bad intentions in mind, but because that person didn't realize all the best stuff to be found was hunting farm fields. So I was a little discouraged, but the same person suggested I hunt the field behind my house for practice. There ended up being a great site where I found my first early finds and it actually paid for my Garrett GTI. Even when we were driving place to place, and not finding much more than a 100 year old coin here and there, something inside me said don't give up, there's more to it... and there sure was.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,277133.0.html

It's stuff like your posts that give the rest of us hope IP. Just before heading south for the Winter I got permission to hunt a 400 acre faarm in rural New Hampshire anytime I want. It's mostly corn & hay fields that run alongside a river and the one time I went there to do a quick scouting mission I found a piece of brass that was later identified as being part of a sideplate from a Brown Bess musket. I plan to hit it hard as soon as the ground has thawed enough to dig and keep at it until it's planted. Then again in the Fall as soon as it's harvested. I could probably spend many years on that one piece of property and never cover it all. It's also been owned by the same family for a hundred years and has never been searched.

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

I am just wanting to find metal Native American artifacts (Comanche metal arrowheads, especially). There is a lot of space out here. Granted, some great stuff has already been found from some outlaw caches, but there has to be more.

 

[ThTx]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

So, why tell us this? Is it fear of competition? That younger hands, eyes, backs will hit a treasure before they do?

Old age and cunning will overcome youth and skill every time! And remember, unless you're unemployed, we probably have more time to detect! LOL

Seriously, everything found? Not a chance!

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Actually Th, with the exception of selling off VW parts, and dealing with teaching certification issues, I am unemployed.

I also have a tenacious (obsessive) personality and the ability to do research like a madman.

 

[Toby1858]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

It's easy to imagine just how many coins and relics are still to be found. The only problem is alot of it is too deep for your average detector to pick up! I believe it is a bit rare to find a 100+ year old coin at the same depth as clad! Although it does happen.

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Well Toby, I know a bit about the way soil works. It shifts, expands, and contracts, and things within the soil move accordingly. In the winter, the freezing and thawing of soil can bring things to different depths.

 

[RGINN]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Well Libralabsoldier, treasure is where you find it. Make some friends down there, and do research, research, research. You're in one of the parts of the country that has a plethora of treasure tales, but luckily it doesn't draw a lot of attention nationally. I have seen metal arrowheads that were found, but I haven't come up with one yet down there. Maybe they don't last long in the soil, as I did find some partial pieces.

 

[Frankn]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Come on soldier stop moaning, go a few miles down to Cement and pick up Jessie's gold that I told you about!

 

[Libralabsoldier]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Sorry, Frankn...too many people are hunting for that treasure. I think I may creep around and try to find some of the minor outlaw caches. Gives me something to do in the library until the weather warms up a bit. Went out in the yard today, found nails, foil, and some can slaw down at over a foot in depth!

I am starting to love this Ace.

 

[Tuberale]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

Actually Th, with the exception of selling off VW parts, and dealing with teaching certification issues, I am unemployed.

I also have a tenacious (obsessive) personality and the ability to do research like a madman.

Someone recently posted, in another thread, that there were no treasures being found now, and not many in the past.

So ... I went to the Internet and Googled "treasure" and "found": 38,300,000 hits. Just did it again, an got 38,500,000 hits.

So I'm just guessing here. But it apparently things are being found ... all the time.

 

[Rockin Chairs Gold]

Re: "Everything has already been found!"

In 1968 I was looking for a detector and heard about a barber in a little town just south of my home town that had one for sale(there just wasn't any detector dealers around here back then).

It was a old Fisher M-Scope and I can't remember the model #, anyway I bought it from him and asked him why he was getting rid of it. He replied that he had been hunting for a couple years and he mostly hunted at night and everything had already been found.

Well for the technology we had back then he may have been right, but since then as the technology improved so did my finds. Yes the finds are not as plentiful as they once were, but there is still plenty out there to be found and I'm still finding my share.

Don't let them buffalo you, just keep hunting and digging. Rick "IL"