Thank you all for the great comments. Here's a little summary of how my find came to be. I live in western PA, just east of Pittsburgh. I never owned a detector before but always wanted to give it a try but budget was an issue. While I was gone for almost 12 months deployed my wife took it upon herself to visit Fort Bedford Metal Detectors and purchased me a Fisher F75, pin pointer and trowel. When I got home she presented it to me and I was excited so to the manual I went then the yard. I practiced on and off for about 9 days clearing out my yard and local turn around of 91¢ in clad and plenty of trash but wanted more. I talked to my neighbor who has been detecting for about 30 years for advice on locations when he pointed me to the location of a local foundation to an old school that existed back in the 1800s that him and friends had hit frequently. Next day I headed out to the woods with expectations of coming home with a bag full of trash. I set up the detector discriminating out all iron, 3 tone and sensitivity on 60. I spent most my time looking around trying to understand the layout of the old stones and wondering where to start, I over analyze everything. I start swinging and digging most targets just to learn the machine even more. About an hour into swinging I got an iffy signal so I dug revealing a piece of tin, having read to always check the whole a second time before filling it in I ran my pin pointer over the hole again and something else was a few inches further down. Next thing I know a coin pops out covered in mud. Not being able to clean it off and assuming it wasn't anything special I put it in my pouch and continued on for about another 1/2 hour. I went home and rinsed it off under the faucet and was shocked at what I saw so I went to Google for some research then headed to show my neighbor who was very happy for me and stated it was the oldest coin found there by him or his friends and still on his list. I can't wait to get out again and hopefully hit some new sites in the near future. I guess I need to make a list of my own. I'll be happy with whatever I find but can't wait to get into some silver...
