Mike Moutray
Full Member
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2007
- Messages
- 114
- Reaction score
- 29
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- St. Louis, MO. / Naples, FL.
- Detector(s) used
- Explorer2/Excalibur
I am on vacation this week and thought I'd kick it off with a bang by travelling 2,000 miles up north over the past weekend doing some detecting. I researched some spots online in southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, and western Wisconsin - mostly parks, town squares, and court houses. I have taken several road trips up there over the past several years for 2 main reasons, because I like to drive and sight see and beacause I love finding indian cents up there in great shape, these are one of my favorite coins to find (the ones around here always come up corroded and ugly looking).
I had a rental car to save on gas mileage and fuel and almost wrecked it twice missing deer by inches. There was a ton of dead deer everywhere on the roads up there (you guys up there need to thin out the herds a little!
). I also had fun sightseeing the mountains in S.E. Minnesota - like the ozarks back home but neater.
Now for the finds... The first pic is the silver. 2 Barber Quarters 1901 (no S darn it!), and a dateless slicker (the first dateless barber quarter I've ever found out of dozens). A dateless Standing Quarter, of course. A nice 1875 Seated Dime. 6 Barber Dimes with dates: a nice 1894, 1898, 1900, 1902S, 1906, 1906D in awesome shape. 5 common Mercs including a 1916 with no D. One lone Roosie to round out 16 silver coins for the trip.....
Here's the Indians, many of them nice shape and still brown colored. These are always fun to dig in nice shape, almost better than silver coins.... almost! They range from 1865 to 1907, 27 of them...
The last pic is the other goodies... 1897, 1903 V Nickels. 1924D Buffalo Nickel. 1947 Jeff Nickel. Nice brass token "BRASFIELD & DUFFY 417 WASH. AVE. S." "2 1/2" on the reverse. Gold plated 1919 Modern Health Crusader Pin... I've found other different pins with the same legend - my best guess is they were involved somehow with the 1919 influenza epidemic. School crossing guard pin. Nice old pocket watch - some kind of white metal like german silver or pewter with " FRARY" on it?. A fingerknife for cutting twine... I remember as a lad having one to cut open hay bales when I fed horses... I've seen newspaper boys with them to cut open newspaper bundles too. A beat up cracker jack baseball ring. Some metal thingy with "RUBifoAm for the teeth" on it. And a large silver dollar-sized blank disc.... I got a nice half/dollar hit very deep and my hand closed around this in the bottom of a foot deep hole... had the juices flowing for a minute
Most of the sites I tried were hunted out badly with very few signals to dig. Everyone up there with an Explorer must have made the rounds everywhere. Both of my Barber Quarters came at otherwise cleaned out places where I didn't get a signal to dig. They were both within 10 feet of my car and I found them as I was walking to the car to leave.... I sure know where to park, dont I? At one park, where I found several older coins, I ran into a local who had hunted that park with white's macines for many years. He was astounded that I found as much as I did... he is thinking of upgrading to a different brand and rehunting out there. I of course had a particular brand to recommend...
One courthouse that I hit in the morning didn't produce at first, but when the dew dried off the grass, faint signals popped up everywhere... mostly Indians and Wheats from 8-11" deep. I should have stayed there longer, but the nature of this road trip hunting is not to spend too much time at one spot because you want to at least try out as many places as you can to find that one "hot" spot. Didn't happen this weekend but overall I'm very pleased with what I did find.
Thanks for looking, now it's a week's worth of "honey-do's" for the rest of my vacation!![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
Take care and HH, Mike.
I had a rental car to save on gas mileage and fuel and almost wrecked it twice missing deer by inches. There was a ton of dead deer everywhere on the roads up there (you guys up there need to thin out the herds a little!
). I also had fun sightseeing the mountains in S.E. Minnesota - like the ozarks back home but neater.Now for the finds... The first pic is the silver. 2 Barber Quarters 1901 (no S darn it!), and a dateless slicker (the first dateless barber quarter I've ever found out of dozens). A dateless Standing Quarter, of course. A nice 1875 Seated Dime. 6 Barber Dimes with dates: a nice 1894, 1898, 1900, 1902S, 1906, 1906D in awesome shape. 5 common Mercs including a 1916 with no D. One lone Roosie to round out 16 silver coins for the trip.....
Here's the Indians, many of them nice shape and still brown colored. These are always fun to dig in nice shape, almost better than silver coins.... almost! They range from 1865 to 1907, 27 of them...
The last pic is the other goodies... 1897, 1903 V Nickels. 1924D Buffalo Nickel. 1947 Jeff Nickel. Nice brass token "BRASFIELD & DUFFY 417 WASH. AVE. S." "2 1/2" on the reverse. Gold plated 1919 Modern Health Crusader Pin... I've found other different pins with the same legend - my best guess is they were involved somehow with the 1919 influenza epidemic. School crossing guard pin. Nice old pocket watch - some kind of white metal like german silver or pewter with " FRARY" on it?. A fingerknife for cutting twine... I remember as a lad having one to cut open hay bales when I fed horses... I've seen newspaper boys with them to cut open newspaper bundles too. A beat up cracker jack baseball ring. Some metal thingy with "RUBifoAm for the teeth" on it. And a large silver dollar-sized blank disc.... I got a nice half/dollar hit very deep and my hand closed around this in the bottom of a foot deep hole... had the juices flowing for a minute
Most of the sites I tried were hunted out badly with very few signals to dig. Everyone up there with an Explorer must have made the rounds everywhere. Both of my Barber Quarters came at otherwise cleaned out places where I didn't get a signal to dig. They were both within 10 feet of my car and I found them as I was walking to the car to leave.... I sure know where to park, dont I? At one park, where I found several older coins, I ran into a local who had hunted that park with white's macines for many years. He was astounded that I found as much as I did... he is thinking of upgrading to a different brand and rehunting out there. I of course had a particular brand to recommend...
One courthouse that I hit in the morning didn't produce at first, but when the dew dried off the grass, faint signals popped up everywhere... mostly Indians and Wheats from 8-11" deep. I should have stayed there longer, but the nature of this road trip hunting is not to spend too much time at one spot because you want to at least try out as many places as you can to find that one "hot" spot. Didn't happen this weekend but overall I'm very pleased with what I did find.
Thanks for looking, now it's a week's worth of "honey-do's" for the rest of my vacation!
Take care and HH, Mike.
Upvote
0
jgas
does'nt get much better than that ! congrats !!! 
