The Gold, Silver and Bling of Playgrounds

[Professor of Engineering]

Hello Everyone,

The series of photos depict hunting playgrounds from June 26th – Today: August 28th. During this time I tried a fun experiment. The goal was to hunt only 6 very well used playground areas in affluent communities (some of these playgrounds have 15 rides and over 50 people at peak times) where the kid’s rides are located and had only fine mulch or coarse wood chips as their base. I wanted to see how many things I could find without digging in the grassy areas, but rather hunts based solely on recent or very fresh drops (a few were found a bit deeper). I visited each playground on Monday morning (start time 4:45 am) after the full weekend of children playing and teenagers hanging out. I took about five hours to complete the detecting and travelling per week. The rest of the metal detecting week was dedicated to old coin shooting, relic hunting and researching new places.

In the photos, only jewelry is shown, but rest assured the clad count was extremely high; about $83.00 dollars. During this time I found eight dollar coins around this one ride; a 6 seated spinning horizontal wheel. The trash decreased exponentially as the weeks moved on, since each visit I would remove more and more. By the last few weeks only good targets were found.

The jewelry was mixed with about 95% Bling and 5% Gold and Silver; I’m pleased with the experiment outcome.

Alas, as school opens my experiment has come to an end…cannot wait for next year.

Thank you for viewing.

GL & HH

Doc

 

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[Diggin Dude]

Wow!! Those are some really nice finds!!! WTG ! Congrats and HH

 

[creskol]

That's impressive!

 

[Trezurehunter]

Congrats on a couple of nice months. That looks like a nice haul.

 

[JeffInMass]

Well done Doc- great finds!

-- Jeff --

 

[pepperj]

My hat goes off to you for taking up the challenge of doing tot-lots with some very impressive finds to boot. Now I can rest knowing there's folks out there taking out the riches out of the mulch that lays beneath the slides.

 

[Terry Soloman]

Wow, what a Great haul - Congratulations!

My experience here in New York, is a bit different. Here, the more affluent the neighborhood the less you find in the tot lots (probably because it is the nannies that take the children out). We find gold and silver in the middle-class neighborhoods.

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Hello Pepperj,

The Slides, Jungle Jim and swing sets always yield the most goodies! I have determined that the "night visitors - teenagers" tend to leave a lot of interesting jewelry items.

Doc

 

[Phishfindr]

You really nailed it! Congrats!

 

[TwoYewts]

Wow, what a Great haul - Congratulations!

My experience here in New York, is a bit different. Here, the more affluent the neighborhood the less you find in the tot lots (probably because it is the nannies that take the children out). We find gold and silver in the middle-class neighborhoods.

Agreed. You also don't have the cops called on you as quickly or not at all when hunting the middle class tot lots. My experience is upon stepping foot on a tot lot in affluent neighborhoods the timer starts. The quickest I have been approached was in Plandome. No joke, 15 minutes and this is at 6 am on a Saturday morning. Cop pulls up and says something to the effect of "Sorry bud, I could care less if you are here detecting but we have already received 3 calls from different neighbors saying you are "destroying" the playground". I could only laugh. Nice guy, had a good chat and went on my way to "destroy" some other lots.

Nice haul on the experiment

-TwoYewts

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Hello Terry,

True about middle-class areas...very productive indeed. I have a few suburban elementary schools that are very productive with silver and gold jewelry. I have found the best hunting at these places is the grassy play areas where kids and parents play (soccer, football and general open spaces). Many people I know do not hunt theses areas, they say it's to much work to dig.

Doc

 

[against the wind]

That is an accumulation of sweetness. Congratulations

 

[park pirate]

WTG Doc sweet silver and gold finds. congrats....

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Hello TwoYewts,

You are right about the upper-class areas, that is why I started so early in the morning. I did have the cops called in one town, but they were nice about it and let me continue. Perhaps, because I was dressed fairly decent, worked in the wood chip area and had only my detector (Tesoro Outlaw - killer for tot-lots), pouch, pin pointer and small hand digger, not the usual gear used in my colonial relic hunting.

Also, it didn't hurt that I am a former LEO.

Doc

 

[CASPER-2]

 

[mk4125]

The corporate banker in me likes any sort of an 'analysis approach' to metal detecting. I especially like this one!

 

[pjdentry]

I love your systematic methodology.

 

[trapperart]

Impressive bunch of bling congrats and keep it up

 

[Agent Green]

Congrats on the experiment!

 

[Msbeepbeep]

Sweet tot lot hauls professor!
Congrsts!

I would like to analyze the tot lots i hunt but they put down 10" of fresh wood chips, and i'm pretty sure someone else hunts it....they like leaving just the pennies.

And those deep coin readings get me because they usually are beneith the underlying barrier material. I'm not digging into that.

But it sure is sweet when you find one that hasn't been detected! You practicality don't need your detector, pin pointer will do till the top most is cleared out.

I also go very early to avoid people. I have been "observed" by the local pd but never bothered.

....maybe the wealthly kids are using plastic now.

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