Mezrein503 said:
Here's a curious question for the oregon locals. I've been noticing a lot on the today's finds that people are pullin anywhere from 5 to 10 in clad on their hunts. My record so far has been $1.38. Am I doing something wrong or do people just not lose as much money in oregon as elsewhere?
$1 face value (FV) is and has historically been rare for me. I've been hunting this area since 1980.
You have to keep in mind that Portland is the largest town in Oregon, a small-population state that includes Bounty Hunter, Technetics, White's, and Compass. Since 1970 there's been a lot of people out there searching. You have to be better than the ones that already searched. Sometimes that means having a better detector. Sometimes that means digging a lot of trash signals so you can hear the really deep coins.
Here's a thought: try looking for gold nuggets in the old dredge piles around Sumpter, John Day, Baker City, or Susanville.
Check where sidewalks are being broken up and re-poured. It's really amazing what can be found before the new concrete goes in the frames.
If you're looking for silver coins, you gotta go where there were people likely to have lost some before 1970. (As an official old fart, I can verify 90% silver coins were common in circulation even after 1970, but they got scarce quickly thereafter.)
You may come across a lot of old tokens, too, while detecting here. I hunted a friend's home in John Day in 1979, and found several silver coins, as well as a nearly complete set of tokens from another Eastern Oregon town. The town was over 50 miles away, so the token owners never went back to use them: too costly.
Lots of ghost towns in Oregon. I define a ghost town as a place that once had a post office, and then lost it. Good source for that information in Lewis A. McArthur's "Oregon Geogarphic Names".
Maybe you enjoy searching where treasure has already been found. Do a Google search for Oregon treasure found Hillsboro. Then substitute found for lost in your search. The Internet is a fast way to find info: much faster than most libraries.