Hunting in 1974, all sites virgin ground

[gunsil]

My old hunting buddy came by yesterday with his old detecting log from 1974. Here is the head page with total coins for the year 1974. It does not include colonial coins or relics. I hope it is legible, it is faded pencil on paper. I started three years earlier and got my girlfriend a machine, and these totals are what it was like in the good old days here in lower N.Y. state. We all had full time jobs and couldn't hunt in the winter so these totals represent mostly weekend hunting in the summer. Also we were using BFO beep and dig detectors so we had to dig every signal, cherry picking silver was not an option and hunting took much longer due to the time it took to dig all targets. 198 silver dimes in one summer!! The totals seen here were pretty much common for us for about six years. We find hunting tedious these days, thinking a few silvers make a successful hunt, but what a time we had when all sites were virgin! Nobody else around here had detectors, few people knew what we were up to and fewer cared.

 

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[Captain Caveman]

I've often daydreamed about what it would have been like back then. It appears my daydreams were pretty close to the mark. Congratz on getting to experience that time period!

 

[bill from lachine]

I started about 1992 and a couple of guys were at it about 10 years earlier in my area so pretty much all my sites had already been picked over by them.

Just to show you one of the chaps who's 80+ had found about 250 gold rings and he recently sold his silver for melt value and picked up about $2000 for his troubles, that's not including all his colonial coppers, relics, button, etc...

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[Chadeaux]

See if this is a bit better ...


Solution: Photoshop or other photo editor (I prefer PaintShop Pro). Make duplicate layer, choose "multiply" for the blend mode. Merge the layers and repeat until you get working image.

 

[Chadeaux]

Just thought about it ... I was still in High School (senior year) in 1974!

Had an uncle who started metal detecting back then, but everyone in the family just thought my mom's sister had married a kook --- I got started in the late '80s when he brought me a bunch of treasure hunting magazines.

 

[Jason in Enid]

I started around 82, but I collect the old treasure magazine. Back in the early seventies, the articles talked about how many coins people were finding, massive totals. They didn't even talk about "silver" because it was as common to find as clad.

I have been fortunately enough to find a couple old, virgin sites and it's incredible to think that was just "normal" hunting a decade prior to when I started.

 

[worldtalker]

I started in 74 and sites were very plentiful with silver,Fair grounds,parks,ball fields,Boy Scout camps,I never did hunt any schools..to much silver else where. I have hit 3 virgin sites in the last 4 years also.

GOD Bless

Chris

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Thanx for the trip down memory lane. I started in about 1976. But that was about the year that discriminators were hitting the market. So those guys that "held out" and didn't switch over, quickly got left in the dust. Doh!

 

[DizzyDigger]

Solution: Photoshop or other photo editor (I prefer PaintShop Pro). Make duplicate layer, choose
"multiply" for the blend mode. Merge the layers and repeat until you get working image.

Came out nice, but that seems a lot of work.

Load into Adobe Lightroom, reduce exposure by 2 stops (using a slider) and you're all done.



More than one way to skin a cat...

 

[Chadeaux]

Came out nice, but that seems a lot of work.

Load into Adobe Lightroom, reduce exposure by 2 stops (using a slider) and you're all done.

View attachment 1289615

More than one way to skin a cat...

Nice job.

Can do that with one of my other programs (think it's called "after effects") but wanted to make it where most others could accomplish the same thing.

 

[Loco-Digger]

74/75 was my Freshman year in HS. Was too busy going through puberty (began to see girl's in a new light) and didn't want to waste time swinging a coil. Plenty of great memories and a few regrets, it's just that none included a detector. I did dig and collect old bottles and pulled a 3 cent coin by accident along the Miami Erie canal. It came up in the roots of a weed I pulled from the bank. Some of my older patrons on my paper route paid me Walkers and other old coins. I'd take them home and sell them at face value to my Dad. He got a thrill and I headed down to "Solomon's Porch" A local hangout, that served food and had air hockey, pool, & foosball tables, a bowling machine, and a hand full of pin ball machines. Better chance of finding girls there than looking like a geek, swinging the coil at the ball field. IMHO. I chased skirts and parties until I met my wife back in 86. I was an instant father with a 6 & 2 yr old to raise. Two years later my son was born. Now that I am an empty nester, the hobby is more appealing. I have thoroughly enjoyed swinging the coil for the past 23 months and enjoy coming to Tnet daily to participate in the community. I have made many friends here, my kind of people.

 

[lastleg]

One habit I quit in the 70's was telling people all my little secrets.

 

[fyrffytr1]

I started detecting in 73 but back in the 60s we would walk over construction sites in my home town and eyeball civil war relics. We would take the lead bullets down to the creek and see how many times we could skip them across the surface!

 

[mrwilburino]

Bought a Jetco Huntmaster back in 1974, which was followed soon after by an early BFO discriminator from Garrett. Back then at the parks and schools, my silver finds almost equaled my clad finds, and probably would have surpassed them if my machine was capable of going more than 2-3" on a coin. While I probably got my coil over a lot of virgin ground, not sure if any of those sites were completely virgin. There were more than a few hunters in my area even back then.

 

[gunsil]

My non-discriminating Garrett BFO would easily hit coins to about 7-8" and we have a lot of iron (natural) in the soil here. Some areas we couldn't hunt due to the iron, but most were huntable.

 

[NGE]

Gee guys, just think of what I found in 1960. I don't even remember.....lol. But every dime, quarter, half and dollar were silver, and most nickels (war). I still have a bunch of 1912-D cents, many early cents in the San Francisco mint marks, all in the teens. Even have a 1909-S with some mint luster still on it. I am 66 years old now, and am still hunting and I have already gotten 30 pieces of silver this year, and an 1865 2 center. I also have a log book, but that is from 1984-1985...........NGE OOPS, almost forgot....Back in 1979 I scrapped 120.00 face value silver and 5 10k rings, and recieved 4800.00. Bought a 1971 Chevelle SS 396, wish I still had that car.

 

[Mackaydon]

In 1978, I took the summer to grid and search the main field at the Palisades-Brentwood Jr. HS in West LA. By the quantity of coins, etc. I was finding each day, I was convinced I was the first person with a MD on that field. I kept a diary of each days coin count and by the end of the summer I had well over 1,000 coins. The school first opened in 1955. IMO, I was searching a heavily used space that had not be searched for 23 years. I submitted my findings to a treasure magazine and they published my story and results, suggesting that I had a strange obsession to daily grid then search. Bottom Line: When you find a productive place that has never been searched, that feeling is......priceless; and my quest (the excitement) to find another such area keeps me going.
Don....

 

[Jason in Enid]

In 1978, I took the summer to grid and search the main field at the Palisades-Brentwood Jr. HS in West LA. By the quantity of coins, etc. I was finding each day, I was convinced I was the first person with a MD on that field. I kept a diary of each days coin count and by the end of the summer I had well over 1,000 coins. The school first opened in 1955. IMO, I was searching a heavily used space that had not be searched for 23 years. I submitted my findings to a treasure magazine and they published my story and results, suggesting that I had a strange obsession to daily grid then search. Bottom Line: When you find a productive place that has never been searched, that feeling is......priceless; and my quest (the excitement) to find another such area keeps me going.
Don....

That reminds of my start into the hobby. Being a 10yo kid, I had a very short detecting range. My neighborhood was developed about 1970 and had a neighborhood park. I dug enough clad to pay for the first detector from that little park! Everywhere I went was a carpet of clad. Nothing old but I got REALLY excited about several high quality repros of spanish reales that some kid must have lost while playing with them. I was convinced I had found something from the original spanish explorers who passed through the area. My son has those coins today.