HIDEY HIDEY HIDEY HOLE!!!

funkman · Oct 9, 2007

Took yesterday off for the holiday and went to a spot that is across the road from my ATV trails. The atv riders go back here also but they have to cross a busy road to get into this section. A portion of this road was not in existence in the 1800's and ealry 1900's so the area I normally detect in was connected with this new section. I was over here one time before last fall and I only found shell casings from the hunters. There is a long stone wall back here that must have been the boundary of a farmers land.
I went along this stone wall and started to detect in the way that Danimal told us that he detects in, which is keeping the detector in pinpoint mode and scanning the ground. The signal increases as you get near a buried metallic object and when it is at its peak you take it off pinpoint and scan normally to determine what type of metal it is (iron, coin, etc).
Well I started doing this along the wall and got a few iron signals but kept going. Near the stone wall and a tree I got a signal that showed as a penny on the display so naturally I began to dig. Eventually a coin came out of the ground and it turned out to be a wheat penny.
Naturally as we all do I scanned the hole again and got another coin signal. Re-checked it with the pinpointer and found another coin. This one was an Indian Head cent! Re-scanned the hole with the pinpointer and got more signals...I had found me a cache or a hidey hole!

After all was said and done and I had scanned my last coin out of that hole, some were even stuck together, I had:

3 Indian Head cents - 1882, 1905 and 1908
26 wheat pennies - various dates from the teens into the twenties, most modern one was 1929
8 buffalo nickels - dates in the twenties
2 mercury dimes - 1924 and 1925

Also found some peices of fabric and a button that probably came from what was holding these coins. Since the newest coin was 1929, I can only assume that maybe this was a stash that was hidden after the stock market crash and the depression kicked in. It could also have been just hid away for a rainy day but I will never know.

Thanks for reading
and also thanks again to Danimal for telling me about this great technique.

Funkman

MUD(S.W.A.T) · Oct 9, 2007

That's awesome, congratulations !!

Keep @ it and HH!!

Evolution · Oct 9, 2007

Great cache Funkman. That must have made your day

Danimal · Oct 9, 2007

Congrats on the nice find Funky!

Glad that I could help. With the ACE running in pinpoint it really helped me move more quickly and (just like with my DFX I use now) determine quickly a target's size, depth and proximity to other targets.

That number of Buffs in one hole is awesome

poppa19 · Oct 9, 2007

thats an awesome find congrats

desertfox · Oct 9, 2007

Nice stash, too bad we'll never know the real story behind its burial.
Happy Hunting All

Desertfox

Mirage · Oct 9, 2007

Sounds exciting! Nice score!

stevesno · Oct 9, 2007

What a thrill that must have been. Congrats....Steve

aa battery · Oct 9, 2007

Great find.

paul1410 · Oct 9, 2007

Super cache find, funkman!

What a thrill that must have been!

Is there more of this area to search? Perhaps another cache is hiding near by.

Love the avatar.

Thanks for sharing.

EARTHWORKS · Oct 9, 2007

Nice :Got to love them pocket spills!

funkman · Oct 9, 2007

thanks for the replies all. yes paul1410 this area is a pretty big area and the stone wall is a few hundred feet long. This is the kind of area were the pinpointing technique comes in handy. Lots of open spaces between the trees so you can scan the ground without getting tangled up in weeds and stuff.

Thanks again.

Funkman

Arkie John · Oct 9, 2007

Yuup!~ The pinpoint mode is actually the 'all metal' mode.

In the woods, it's always 'all metal' for me.

The find is really interesting. I would be very methodical in my search around there. you just might find some more really neat stuff.

Thanks for posting. I like a good, interesting read. It even reminded me of an old rock fence back in the woods I need to check out.

aj

Danimal · Oct 9, 2007

Funkman (and others)

That's the beauty of hunting in this manner (dense woods, brush etc)

Since you are in non-motion you don't need to sweep the coil back and forth over a target to get a tone ID (or VID). You can scan into and out of tight spots slowly, listening for a tone increase.

ALL machines that issue a tone or tones in motion mode (AC discrim) require the center of the coil (usually) where the field generated is at it's deepest point to pass back and forth over the target. Once the field does so the machine measures the delay of the signal transmitted by the sending coil to the receiving coil. The size and type of metal of the target determines the amount of delay (phase shift) and then predetermined tones and Visual Identification tell you what the probable target is.
The various manufacturers have their various ways of doing this (Minelab and Whites most notebly with their different "multi-frequencies" T/R circuits) but they all operate on these principles (Pulse Induction's another story)

But...if you step back in time...before AC discrim came about... (and Kas touched on this recently in a comment he wrote here) machine were non-motion DC (TRUE all-metal).
You do not need to sweep the coil back and forth over a target to get a response. You listen for a change in the background tone (the threshold tone).
If you get good at this, you can EASILY tell the two most important things (when coin hunting for deeper older coins)
You can tell if the target is small.
You can tell if the target is deep.
If you're hunting in this manner...if it's deep....and small...DIG. Oh yeah...go ahead and switch BACK to normal AC/discrim. and see what your machine "thinks" it is. Just remember...the deeper a coin is...the lower the VDI/TID/VID will read from what you expect (normally). For instance...on my DFX (hunting in dual frequency, best data) a silver dime at say 4-5" will show a VDI# of the low 80s. The signagraph (a visual bar graph that shows the strength of the received signal in all 190 VDI levels) will be jumping in nearly all one band...
But...that same dime at 7-8" might be a broken flutey tone and a VDI of mid 70's and the signagraph will have multiple bar jumping with none peaking). Sometimes when the initial plug of say 5" deep is removed from above the deep silver the VDI jumps up to normal.

I'm rambling now.