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Just started MD again. I have been MD at a 1813 home, and have not found a lot of old coins with around 20 hrs. of searching. I am using a White 5900 Di Pro with a Deepscan 950 disc. The oldest coin finds are a 1944 quarter and a 1902 Indian Head both found around 4 inches. I am missing about one hundred years of coins mathematically. Should I clean out the yard of trash signals and then go back and then search the weak signals. Or do I need to get a better detector?
I am guessing that you are asking about the possible need for a "better detector", because you surmise that older coins might be deeper, right? D/t the tendancy for older coins to be deeper (particularly in un-disturbed turf, where depth does seem to be correlated for age).
But based on your info. here, I do not think a deeper seeking detector is going to crack this mystery. The reason is: When you say "4 inches", was the depth on those 2 older coins, that is "
telling". Because the Whites 5900 (assuming you are using it correctly) , is already easily capable of doing 7 .... or even 8" on a coin. So that tells me that needing to go deeper than "4 inches", is ALREADY a capability at your finger tips (assuming you are using it correctly).
There is no auto track on that 5900, so it's very important that you balance it to a spot where there's no metal. Even if it means walking across the street to an empty field (where no structures ever stood), and THEN coming back into your yard. (Because ground minerals are not likely to chance just crossing the street). The Whites Eagle was another such machine which .... although it had auto-track, tracked VERY poorly (IMHO). So I would find that my depth would/could vary, just by re-ground-balancing every now and then, to make sure I was dialed in (and hadn't un-knowingly balanced to a small metal object, which the machine now thinks is part of the ground mineral matrix), or drifted d/t minerals change as I go to another end of a park closer to water, etc....
Are you getting junk items deeper than 4"? or is 4" where all items have "stopped".
Is the yard very junky?
Just because a yard is super old, and/or "never been hunted", doesn't mean it'll necesarrily be good hunting. I used to hunt a LOT of yards. I'd literally start at one end of the block of a row of old homes, and go house to house knocking on doors for permission. And one thing I noticed, is that even though every single house on the block might date to the 1920s (for instance), that results could vary MUCH between yards. One yard might be a bunch of clad, and a single wheatie. Another yard might be 7 or 10 oldies, with only a single clad. One yard junky, the next yard not, etc...
So it all depends on the demographics the persons @ the houses in the different eras. Did they have kids? How did they use their yards? For trash burn pits and working on cars pulled up on to the grass (littering the yard with chrome and wire scrap, auto-doo-hickeys, etc...
Example: There's a country yard near me, where it's known that an 1860s/70s stage stop stood. It was very colorful with lots of history and traffic. So you would THINK that it's a no-brainer that coins would be there, right? But unfortunately, the residents that were in the modern home that sits nearby there now, kept chickens in the yard and goat pens and such, all during the 1950s and '60s. And to feed them, they'd often time just take all the kitchen scraps out into the yard, so the chickens can pick at it. That included a lot of kitchen litter type stuff that got thrown out with that (foil, etc...). Also, since it was a country yard, they apparently used burn barrels. Then every once in awhile, just spread the ashes about to get rid of them. All that burnt metal debri is now all over. To find any stage era coins at all, we had to flat shovel out areas down to 8" deep, then turn on our detectors, to detect.
So what I'm trying to say is, yards vary. It might just be that your particular yard, despite the age, just isn't a productive one. Without being there to see what you're doing, what signals your chasing, how you've set the machine, etc.... it's hard to say. I just know that the 5900 can go deeper than 4"
?? You won't, but only very very rarely, if you find a cache or a spill. And what exactly do you mean by old? Hang in there my friend. You need to put 2000 hours behind your tecter to find maybe a half a handful of some oldies, and it wont be "a lot" of them. Post back with your finds after 1000 hours of hard tecting, after you see the light. I bet you could post some oldies then.
