Do you have to travel far to get to these places? How do you do your research? I'm having trouble finding spots that's not on private land, and that's not a historic park.
You do realize there's a club in Concord area: "Mount Diablo metal detecting club" :
Home | Mount Diablo Metal Detecting Club
Say hi to Gary Collier for me
So as you can see, you have competition in your area. However, you will find that 95% of all md'rs tend to be rather "tame". Eg.: parks, schools, beaches, planted club hunts, etc.... They're not travelling, or doing risky ... uh .... "discreet" type places. For example: Old town urban demolition sites: When they tear out an old building in old town areas where yester-year board-&-batton district was. There will always be the obligatory fences put up around such sites (so that no one slips on a banana peel and sues). Hence most hunters will not go to such sites (which requires waiting till after 5pm when the workers cut out for the day). Or they might start trying to get permission, which will always net the obligatory "no".
And still others will research out ghost towns perhaps, but get skittish if they're on BLM or NFS , which *technically* has ARPA in place (heaven forbid you find a coin over 50 yrs. old, right ?). So they tend to stick to tame stuff (sandboxes, beaches, parks, etc....).
Thus I have seen that certain geographic locales tend to be less pounded and less researched. And have more virgin (or only lightly pounded) spots, once you get into the boonies. Versus other areas (parts of Nevada, for instance, and my part of CA, for instance) have had all their obvious research and spots pounded to heck. Even if it meant ... uh .... discreet hunting, they have still all been exploited by guys who knew what they were doing.
So I do find myself travelling more than I used to. But old town urban demolition is always going on. In any given geographic area, in any given year, someone's going to be tearing down a building. Or a city going to re-do all their downtown sidewalks (thus tearing out the old ones). Or an oldtown area park is going to install astroturf or renovate their park, thus requiring tractors to scrape off the existing turf (which can be a bonanza !).
The way to keep an eye out for old town urban demolition, and/or park turf scrapes, is two-fold:
a) random google news key word searches for word combinations like "historic" + "demolition" or "old town" + "raze" or + "demolish". Or "turf" + "park" + "install" . Or "artificial turf" + "install" + "park" (or + "school"), etc.... I have stumbled onto to random newspaper blurbs this way, where they were announcing some upcoming project. And then we just put the puzzle pieces together from there, and be sure to be there when virgin ground is being exposed by tractors.
You can choose the election for google news to only report from news sources just in your state (otherwise news hits from around the USA and/or World will be endless).
But not all old town projects, or municipal park renovations will necessarily be in a newspaper story, so here's another method if you want to be hardcore:
b) Join the local Builder's Exchange in your area. It costs something like $450 to $600 p/yr. But it avails you of all the public works bids out-to-bid in your area (or the entire state if you pay a bit more). You can do all sorts of key-word searches ("demolition", or "sidewalks", or "turf", etc....) to see if any sound interesting. Then click to see the blueprints of exactly what they are doing.
Naturally you'll get oodles of worthless hits that have nothing to do with what you're after. So it takes time to find the "oh-so-right" old town demolition or sidewalk or turf-scrape job.
Another way to find out about old sites to hunt, is to join historical societies in your area. Volunteer to be a docent at every single historical museum and historical society in your area. Might require 6 hr. p/month time manning a desk, or sorting archives, etc.... But it affords you back-room access to stuff that might not be readily available historical tidbits. And is a great shoe-in for getting permission at places. Eg.: to show up somewhere, flash your museum badge, and say you're doing research on such & such, for an article you're writing about such & such, etc....
Yeah yeah, fox guarding the hen house
