Virgin dirt

[mthole]

Greetings. To get right to the question. I have on several occasions been blessed with virgin dirt. ( 1st time detected ) I find lots of pull tabs and other odd junk. Yesterday I even dug up a rusted 6" length of barbed wire. BUT,,,,,, no coins. The tabs and bottle caps are old and their are many signals but again no coins. Yesterdays property was on private land. It is about 3 acres and has been used for a playground since the 40's. It is at the end of a private driveway so I have been assured that I am the first one there. The owner is very lenient about holes just so long as I continue restoring properly. I am using a new XLT E series. I hunt mostly in "coin mode" Do you have any comments or suggestions??

 

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[radarwill]

It sounds to me like your problem is that your coil has not passed over a coin YET!
Maybe go slower, thats my only suggestion.

 

[flyinguy]

gotta be there friend. is it real dry? try after a good rain. go slow. dig all iffies and some junks to you. if kids were there for 60 years you know they lost some good stuff. keep a positive attitude. the trash metals like to sound off first. loud and screachy. the better stuff is mellow.

 

[cntrydncr1]

Are you using an ACE 250? if so, hunt in jewelry or all metal for more finds. good luck

 

[Eu_citzen]

Are you using an ACE 250? if so, hunt in jewelry or all metal for more finds. good luck

Huhh?! Read that post again:

I am using a new XLT E series.

How new are you with your XLT? After some time it will be easier to tell difference between trash and treasure.
Just give it more time.
Go slower and you might want to try another coil to if it is very trashy.
If your unsure you can try bench testing to give you an idea how different targets give different signals.
Or do a test garden.

Every time I have detected a new site it has been virgin and well I have sometimes been hunting for 8 hours then when closing in to 9 hours the coins start coming because your at the right spot!

Hope it helps,
HH Eu

 

[PALEOMAN]

very trashy areas i use the small black max coil, plus the tips from above. gl

 

[Tom_in_CA]

mthole, how do you know it's really virgin dirt? A "playground since the '40s" will rarely go un-detected, unless you're in a geographic area where there's very few other md'rs, and/or none that do their research. And believe me, even if the current owner says "it's never been detected", he may just not know. I have hit many areas/spots where someone tells me "it's never been detected", and I have to chuckle, because I know for a fact that it's been hit many times by others, and even myself. Reasons for this are multiple: 1) Maybe he's only the current owner, and a previous owner gave the go-ahead, 2) Maybe another member of his family granted someone else permission, but the person you're talking to, just wasn't aware of that, 3) Maybe someone down the chain of command (caretaker, worker, someone else with a key, etc...) gave the go-ahead to someone to detect, but the actual owner wasn't aware, as it was done low-key, 4) maybe it was quite frankly just detected by someone who "helped themselves" at discreet times.

I have seen the above scenarios happen all the time, and in each case, the person you're talking to will be QUITE insistent that the spot has never been hit.

The other possibility is that you need more experience on your machine. Hook up with persons in your area who are proficient hunters (guys that routinely find old deep coins, not sand-box hunters), and learn from them. Have them flag signals so you can trade off and compare what he's hearing.

 

[bakergeol]

I have to agree with Tom on this one. The early detectorists jumped on the high profile/typical coinshooting sites. These were parks, fairgrounds, playgrounds etc. How many people today know what happened on their property 45 years ago?

They also did not have discrimination so they dug everything. You also must understand that finding "old" pull tabs means little. The early high profile sites I detected early in my hobby career simply lacked pull tabs period. They came later. You also must understand the mind set of the early detectorists. We had no rules or codes and as such trash was commonly left in hole and not removed. After all you were not expecting to return to the site as other virgin sites were everywhere. So you are interested in what is beneath the "old" pull tabs. Are they shallow or deep?

George

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Here's another example of "it's never been detected before": Here in my town, there is a particular early 1920s elementary school, that has been routinely detected since the mid 1960s. It was in an upscale side of town, and a big school yard, so it used to give up lots of silver "in the day". Heck, it was our "stomping grounds" when I got my first detector in the mid 1970s. Always good for a few wheaties, a merc or two, etc... And when the first motion machines came out in the very late '70s and into the early 1980s, a lot more silver came out of it.

Anyhow, one day in the early 1980s, I went there on mid-week-day afternoon. I was just getting ready to detect, when a teacher lady came over to me and told me that there was an afterschool function about to begin, so I couldn't be doing this right now. I told her "No problem, I'll come back at a better time". She looks down at the detector and says "Yeah, and you ought to do real good here, because no one's ever detected here before" Doh! See how that works? If I'd told her "No, it's been detected to death", she'd probably have insisted "I've taught here 15 years, and never seen a detector, so it's simply not possible" blah blah blah