1986 marked my 22nd year at swinging a detector. My digging buddies and I were scrambling to find new places that hadn't been dug yet, and we would hit a hot spot every couple of months that would be worked out by us in a few weeks and then the search started all over again. You have to realize that by 86 a large percentage of places had been hit hard for years by guys with BFO's and TR's, myself included in that crowd. The new VLF's with visual and audio ID were like magic to us and we really hit it hard in the Atlanta area with at least one full digging day a week, and sometimes I would dig during my lunch break at work, and always tried to stop and dig on my way home from work. I had a flashlight in my gear and if I was doing good then I'd dig into the night. We also dug sites that had been worked hard with the older machines and still got some goodies. Found mostly coins, but CW relics too. I sold everything I found about as fast as I could dig it, relics, coins, and jewelry and spent the clad coinage as I was raising kids and needed every penny I could get. I get ribbed about the day I dug two nice gold rings out of the same hole in a park we were digging and I immediately went to a pawn shop to sell them, then returned to finish the day digging with my buds, and my wallet swollen with cash.
I was visiting one of my digging buddies from the 80's awhile back, and he was showing me his dug silver from those days and had close to two gallons of silver coins and I probably had about the same amount as we dug as a team for years and our finds were pretty consistent with each other.
So, 1986 was a good year for my treasure hunting, with lots more silver than I am finding now though I still enjoy it as much or more than I did then. There are still silver coin bonanzas out there, just have to keep plugging away, be patient, and use your head.
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