Big Scrape and Construction in S.F. Park! Gold And Silver!

[Cool Hand Fluke]

I drove by this park last night with my hunting partner Ray around 6 pm and saw a big dozer scrape in a old San Francisco park! I told Ray that I would be there as soon as I could on Sunday. Today I hunted it! An area about the size of tow baseball fields had about 2 or 3 inches scraped off, all the grass was gone! As soon as I arrived on the field I saw hols all over the place! Someone else with a detector hit the whole area earlier in the week. Not many coins signals remained, I only found a few clads the first 30 minutes. So I decided to dig it all! All pulltabs, foil, nickels, and just about everything except zinc pennies. I started to get numerous pulltab/nickel readings. One of the pulltab reading turned out to be a sterling silver chain with sterling pendant! It was about 3 inches deep! A few minutes later I dug a buffalo nickel, it was the first of four buffalo nickels for the day! Later another pulltab reading turned out to be a 10K gold pendant with 5 diamonds and a ruby attached to a silver chain! It's a 30 year service award from Lockheed Corp.! I dug 5 wheat pennies and got a foil reading. It was not foil! It was a 1943-S silver nickel! My only silver dime was a 1936-S mercury! I kept going, after 5 hours I received probably my 100th pulltab reading! ( I dug them all today!) Four inches down was a United States Naval Academy Class of 1947 14K Gold Ring!!!! What a day! Silver and Gold!

 

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[TommNJ]

What a dream with the 2-3 inches of dirt removed from the park, good job on the Keepers !

TommNJ

 

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[Saabman]

Wow, what a day!! Congrats!!!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Mike, the guys who already hit that, didn't get a lot of silver or wheaties. Perhaps 3 or 4 silver in a hunt, at most, for any one of them. But the clad was PROLIFIC for them, at first There were several things wrong there at that park. For starters, despite its location, it's not really an old part of SF. It only dates to the mid 1930s, at the earliest. Because that part of SF was sandy soil, un-suitable for building on, till later. And the 2 or 3" scrape is simply not deep enough. As you saw, that didn't even get rid of the zinc and recent clad. And lastly, there was something funky about the soil minerals there, that is skewing TID's. The deeper wheaties and silver didn't lock on nicely or indicate high conductors.

When it became clear that there was still clad, and that the older coins were going to be deeper (no different than a non-scraped park), they tried to go into "park mentality" mode, of passing shallow stuff, surfing for silver, etc... But at first, it just seemed like NOTHING was beyond 4". Only then did they start realizing that coins deeper than about 4 or 5" were not giving "textbook" park/turf signals. So they resorted to digging cruddy non-locked-on signals, in order to finally start getting some wheaties and silver. But d/t the fairly recent age of the park, it was only mercs at the oldest. They even tried angling for jewelry and going lower disc,, since this was an athletic field (as opposed to picnic usage, which tends to be more junky). But all that got them was some silver jewelry, no gold. At least I don't recall them getting any gold jewelry. So maybe you got the "atteboy" in the jewelry dept

Unless they scrape deeper, it's just not going to be a productive scrape for SF. But some other park renewal projects are in the works and on-the-books coming up, in older areas. So stay tuned

 

[allen]

With all of those sweet finds, I hope you go back !!!!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I stand corrected Mike: a couple of other pieces of gold were found there. A 21k ring, for instance. But not without (as you saw) punishing ratios of aluminum to dig. However, being a scrape and just barren dirt, not that hard to dig. And there was one person who got 10 silvers in a single hunt there, but that was the exception, and none of it was anything nice or old, of course.

 

[beachboy]

Great Job!!!

 

[detectahead]

Big time fun there! What a great day!

 

[Cool Hand Fluke]

I'm a little overwhelmed with all the responses! Thanks everyone!

The first people there with metal detectors really cherry picked the coins, thankfully they left the gold ring!

I took notes on everything that I pulled off that field. This is how it breaks down:

The Trash:
2 aluminum screw caps
1 rusty pocket knife
2 pieces of lead
28 pieces of foil
8 beaver tails
3 eraser heads
19 pieces of aluminum can slaw
68 pull tabs (felt like a hundred!)
1 big brass broken sprinkler head
25 misc. pieces of metal junk
42 badly decomposed zinc pennies ( all of them read like pulltabs or foil)

The good stuff:
19 Jefferson Nickels
4 Buffalo nickels
13 clad dimes
1 clad quarter
8 copper Lincoln cents
5 wheat pennies
1 mercury dime
2 gold jewelry items (the 14K ring weighs in at 13 grams!)
3 silver jewelry items

2 brass grommets

 

[chkn]

Doood, you scored!!! Did you have to jump the fence to get in? Do you know what was on the site previously Anyway, awesome hunt. I'll have to remember the hard hat thingy!!!

 

[Ray(Ca)]

Good job on the scrape and congrats on your finds! My wife found a nice 21k gold ring there and I found several silvers there. Not an old area but still fun to hit.

 

[kevkirki]

love the hardhat idea....nice

 

[CoinDigger57]

Very nice finds!!!

 

[dohbart]

The hard hat is such a great tip. You read this posts here in the forum, and there are just so many great tips here and there. The simple ones seem to be the most brilliant too!

 

[lost crow]

Man, you really made a killin.

 

[general]

Great story and great picks!

 

[sniffer]

that was one awesome hunt. congrats on the gold ring. was there a name on the inside of the band

 

[scaupus]

Yodeleyheoooo!!!! Fantastic, it must have been like a dream. Good going. Proud of you, never say die, dig everything, ignore the holes. Object lesson for all of us.

 

[GaRebel1861]

I know its already been said, but that hardhat idea is great! I love it. I'll dig mine out and keep it in the tool box on my truck. Thanks for the idea.