Finding silver coins in Utah

[McKell]

I live in Kearns, Utah. I own an Ace 250. I have found a lot of clad coins but no silver ones. Where do I go for the silver coins, or will my Ace not go deep enough. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Your best bet to start getting the hang of finding silver coins, is to start at a place where the "pickens are good" Because if you simply go to the old tired hammered parks and schools, odds are, they've been cherry-picked over. So start with virgin territory, and then ... after you've dug some deeper easier clean signals, the lights will start to go on. Then you can take those same audio clues, and apply them to the more difficult competitive turfed parks and schools.

The best place to find un-hunted cleaner turf, is to hit yards. Yes it will mean knocking on doors, so that's another subject Don't go to the wickedly old yards in your town either. Because they'll likely just have more generations of iron, etc... For starters, go to the post WWII era homes (late '40s early '50s tract house era homes). Those yards will be old enough to have silver, yet new enough to have been avoided by hard-core aces (who shun silver that new), and new enough not to have oodles of signals to interpret. Once you've gotten some silver and wheaties from these type yards, the sounds and tones will make more sense, on "what is a deep coin sound", when you go to other areas (junkier spots, hunted out spots, etc...)

Another trick to upping your oldie count when turf hunting, is to resist the temptation to dig shallow stuff. Pass all clad. Like .... anything less than 5 or 6". The reason for this is, when you're digging the clad, your ears become subconsciously tuned to look for the loud "bongs". But if you only dig the deeper signal, guess what your ears will become subconsciously tuned to?

There are those who think this tip is silly. In their logic "why not have it all? Why pass clad, when you can just dig all, and thus not miss something potentially good yet-shallow?" But by the end of the day, I can gaurantee you that this person will have 40 to 50 clad, and perhaps 2 wheaties. But the guy who passes clad, and only digs deeper signals will have 7 to 10 oldies and only a few clad. I'd rather have a single silver dime, than 100 news ones.

Oh, and this whole depth thing only applies to turf, where depth and age tend to be correlated. If you find that you simply can't get the depth, in your area, for silver, in any turf anywhere, you may want to broaden your search areas to things more exotic: like old-town urban demo's, ruins out in the desert and mountains (old stage stops long gone, old campgrounds, etc...) where depth and age aren't as correlated.

 

[extractor]

The ace will find silver. I was going to give ya some advise but, Tom in Ca did a fantastic job on the subject!

 

[baylorhall]

I also have an ACE 250 and have yet to find any silver. Even when I dig deeper stuff it turns out to be trash junk. Where does silver show up on an ACE 250? Thanks

 

[Tom_in_CA]

baylorhall, my answer would be the same to you: You need to get to the right hunt spots. I can think of reales, seateds, and gold coins I've found that were so shallow, I could get them with my pinpointer, before I even broke-ground (ie.: less than 3"). Were they in hard-hunted obvious turfed public school yards parks? Of course not! They were in hard-researched balls-of-steel type sites.

But if your pacing yourself against a pro- power-house machine user, then yes, the ACE-250 will get out-hunted by other superior machines. Does that mean the ACE can't find silver, gold coins, reales, etc...? No. But if you are hunting lame worked out turf, and if you're a beginner, then neither too will the "power-house" expensive machine find you the choice oldies either.

If you think you're in sites that should produce oldies, and think it's d/t your machine that you're not finding them, then hook up with someone in your area who's proficient at bringing in the oldies. Not just a sandbox hunter, but someone who routinely finds old coins. Compare signals, etc... If you can hear and correctly "call" the signals he flags, then there is nothing wrong with your ACE. If he flags signals and says "sounds like a deep coin" but you don't hear any signal whatsover, then apparently your machine aint worth a durn. It all just depends on the type sites you hunt, depth, competition, goals, etc... The reason I say to hook up with a pro, is that there's simply no way, in print, to describe things like sound, tones, swing speeds, repeatability, etc... They have to be seen/heard. Once you've "got the recipe", the sounds/tones etc... will be burned into your memory.

 

[deepskyal]

Listen to Tom.

I've been at it over 20 years, currently have a DFX, the 4th detector for me, and I can tell you that we've, and I mean some of us guys that have been around, have hit the heck out of those parks over the years.

He is exactly right about the fainter signals. I still on occasion pop out a silver dime around 4 or 5 inches in some of those "worked out" areas. But they are far and few inbetween. Not a quest for a newbie with a detector. I do it for the challange when someone tells me they've worked a park and with their buddies, cleaned it out. Parks are also an opportunity for me just to play with my detector and use settings I never did before just to see how they perform. I'm not usually finding anything...just playing.

I could point you to a hundred virgin yards of home from the mid 1800's around me. I save them...for when I don't feel like traveling for my quest of finding colonial coins. Haven't found any yet...but I only begun. With a little research, you could find places just like these.

Detecting just isn't the grab and go hobby it used to be, before detecting became so popular. Now you have homework. Find those lost places...if you don't...someone like me will and I'll walk away with my finds pouch jingling with silver.

I'll give you one tip. If you do go to parks....stay away from the shelters. Try the woods around it. There is a guy in a club I go to that won coinshooter of the year with over 3600 coins...mostly from 1 park...this year! The same park I've hit dozens of times and still find stuff. Neither one of us hit the shelters....too much trash.

Al

 

[GrayCloud]

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