Whats the Secret to Finding Coins in Hunted Out Parks?

[limegoldconvertible68]

I have to admit that I am getting jealous reading and seeing the finds people keep pulling out of hunted out parks, fairgrounds, etc. How do you people do it? I hunt for days on end at these kind of places and can barely find clad coins let alone the coveted silver. How do you search?.......tiny 10'X10' area and dig every single piece of metal?.....Roam aimlessly about and wait for solid coin signals?.......Hit the park with dozens of detectorists and post the one coin that 300 man hours of hunting found?........I think I am pretty decent at this hobby but the one area I suck at is hunting the obvious places. And yet time and time again amazing finds keep coming from these very places. Is this some sort of conspiracy where posters just say they find the goodies at places like this because they don't want to risk revealing the true place and the research resources they actually use?

 

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[MEinWV]

People are creatures of habit. We have all read the stories and learned the "secrets" of the pro's, so how come we always have more questions and doubt our abilities. Along the way I asked the same questions as yourself. My conclusions are that in any given area, such as a "hunted out" park, folks who have detected it over the years have virtually retraced everyone else's steps. When we go to a given spot, we all are drawn to the same desireable spots, the big trees, the pathways, the grassy areas, the easiest spots. I was seeing myself do this over and over again. In today's world, those that are successful in the obvious areas are those that use the latest, deepest seeking units that the industry offers. They are literally cleaning up the deeper objects that have been passed over. I started to think that if I was to be successful, I would have to approach this from a different angle.
I would scan an area and visualize the habits of most hunters. I would then deliberately go where it was most uncomfortable for me to go, such as in the overgrown areas and steep spots. I have done well in areas that most folks will not swing a detector. In overgrown spots you have to go slower and work in and around small saplings. I found my only Morgan Dollar between two saplings close to some ledge. I know people had detected over the spot many times in the past, and even I had made two trips past the spot before carefully working the tight stuff. I actually positioned my coil flat against the rod to get it in between the saplings, getting the signal with the edge of the coil. I some cases, as along the edge of boulders or ledge, and even bushes, I tilt the coil to send the signal in toward the edge or underneath the object. Most people run the coil flat around a tree or along an object and the signal is missing the small, wedge shaped area between the coil and the object. I have found goodies under small trees and up tight against ledge that way. I could keep going on, but hopefully I will get you thinking a bit differently the next time you go to a "hunted out" place.

Good luck! HH.....and let me know if any of these ideas work for you.

 

[Nick A]

Secrets to Finding Coins in Hunted Out Parks

Secret #1 - Minelab Explorer or E-Trac. I have never found as much silver as I have with Minelab machines. It's unreal what I've literally walked over for years with other machines. If you look at the serious hunters who find tons of old coins in hunted out parks 9 times out of 10 they have Explorers. In my first 15 or so years of detecting I found 200 silver coins. In the past two years with Minelab machines I have found 150, from the SAME sites I was hitting years ago.

Secret #2 - Go slow, be patient, take a deep breath, keep your overlap tight and listen for every beep.

Secret #3 - Dig anything non-iron that registers deep on the depth meter. Around here a pulltab signal at 6" is rarely a pulltab. Indian head pennies read all over the meter, but are usually not iron and are deep.

Secret #4 - Go detecting... a lot. Some weeks when the weather is ideal in the spring, I will be out detecting for 20-30 hours a week. My average hunt is 3 hours.

Secret #5 - Give up on a site. If you're not finding anything and getting frustrated or tired you're not going to do your best. Know when to take a break or move on to the next site. Many days I will hit 3-4 sites before I find one that I'll stay at. You can always go back another day.

Secret #6 - Research. Go to the library and read histories of the area, find old photos, look at Google aerial maps and the old Sanborn maps. Have a visual in your mind of what the place looked like 50 years ago.

Secret #7 - Try anywhere and everywhere. Even if your intuition tells you there was nothing there or should be nothing there, get over it. It doesn't take much time to check out a site and see if it's worthy of more time. I roam until I find a hotspot. Many of the parks around here have been bulldozed and backfilled so finding unmanipulated ground can be tough. In the old days, I used to work the edges of sites, but others have caught on to that. Under and around bushes too - those bushes weren't there 20 years ago, and they sure as heck weren't that big.

Secret #8 - Once you have a hotspot, rework it at 90 and 45 degree angles.

Secret #9 - Cherrypick. I don't dig shallow zinc cents in parks. I might miss gold, but I'd rather have old coins anyway. I also tend not to dig pulltab signals from 2" to 4". This seems to be where the carpet of tabs falls off. I dig tabs, but they are 4" or more in depth.

Secret #10 - Retrieval - Sunray Inline Probe and good digging tools - fast recoveries mean you can cover more ground. I watched one guy chasing a signal around a hole for almost 10 minutes. I would have had it in 30 seconds. That gives me 9.5 minutes more detecting time.

Secret #11 - Positive attitude and confidence in your machine and skills. If you know you can find it, you will. If you doubt yourself or your machine, you'll probably fail.

 

[Seamuss]

I follow the crowds. When picnics and carnivals and the fair is over, then I know there must be some new items to find.

Also use a detector that your very familiar with.

Secret #1 - Minelab Explorer or E-Trac. I have never found as much silver as I have with Minelab machines. It's unreal what I've literally walked over for years with other machines. If you look at the serious hunters who find tons of old coins in hunted out parks 9 times out of 10 they have Explorers. In my first 15 or so years of detecting I found 200 silver coins. In the past two years with Minelab machines I have found 150, from the SAME sites I was hitting years ago.

Secret #2 - Go slow, be patient, take a deep breath, keep your overlap tight and listen for every beep.

Secret #3 - Dig anything non-iron that registers deep on the depth meter. Around here a pulltab signal at 6" is rarely a pulltab. Indian head pennies read all over the meter, but are usually not iron and are deep.

Secret #4 - Go detecting... a lot. Some weeks when the weather is ideal in the spring, I will be out detecting for 20-30 hours a week. My average hunt is 3 hours.

Secret #5 - Give up on a site. If you're not finding anything and getting frustrated or tired you're not going to do your best. Know when to take a break or move on to the next site. Many days I will hit 3-4 sites before I find one that I'll stay at. You can always go back another day.

Secret #6 - Research. Go to the library and read histories of the area, find old photos, look at Google aerial maps and the old Sanborn maps. Have a visual in your mind of what the place looked like 50 years ago.

Secret #7 - Try anywhere and everywhere. Even if your intuition tells you there was nothing there or should be nothing there, get over it. It doesn't take much time to check out a site and see if it's worthy of more time. I roam until I find a hotspot. Many of the parks around here have been bulldozed and backfilled so finding unmanipulated ground can be tough. In the old days, I used to work the edges of sites, but others have caught on to that. Under and around bushes too - those bushes weren't there 20 years ago, and they sure as heck weren't that big.

Secret #8 - Once you have a hotspot, rework it at 90 and 45 degree angles.

Secret #9 - Cherrypick. I don't dig shallow zinc cents in parks. I might miss gold, but I'd rather have old coins anyway. I also tend not to dig pulltab signals from 2" to 4". This seems to be where the carpet of tabs falls off. I dig tabs, but they are 4" or more in depth.

Secret #10 - Retrieval - Sunray Inline Probe and good digging tools - fast recoveries mean you can cover more ground. I watched one guy chasing a signal around a hole for almost 10 minutes. I would have had it in 30 seconds. That gives me 9.5 minutes more detecting time.

Secret #11 - Positive attitude and confidence in your machine and skills. If you know you can find it, you will. If you doubt yourself or your machine, you'll probably fail.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

At1cad give good advice I too have never done as good for deep silver, in worked out turf, until I got the Explorer

I will add that there are some "worked out" parks that not even the pro's will mess with anymore. For example, I can think of parks that I pulled silver (barbers, mercs, etc...) out of back in the 1970s and '80s. And now, in 2009, I would have a very hard time finding any additional silver (unless I intended to strip-mine all the foil, screwcaps, zinc, etc... out, and that's not an option for manicured turfed parks). So admittedly, some parks that gave up fabled amounts of old coins 25 to 30 yrs. ago, are definately not the same today, ESPECIALLY someone who isn't already excellent in this venue of hunting.

But if the park does still have deepie old coins in it, a tip I can suggest is to not dig clad. Pass up anything less than 6". The reason for this, is that ..... of course .... in un-disturbed turf, the oldies are usually shallow and oldies are usually deep. If you think you'll get the "best of both worlds" (both shallow clad and jewelry) AND the old coins too, you're mistaken. Here's what will happen: if you start digging the shallow loud clad (and/or jewelry or whatever's shallow), you'll eventually subconsciouly be "tuned" to *just* those signals. You'll subconsciouly rove from "bong" to "bong", and not hear the deep whispers. Because of course, the "bongs" are so much easier to hear, that your ears become tuned to those, NOT the deep whispers that are potentially old. I find that when I pass up all targets less than 6", that pretty soon, I really not even hearing the shallow stuff, and my ears are subconsciouly solely looking for the sweet little tooty-fluty silver deepie tones.

I hunted with a dealer in SF, who was convinced this was fool-hearty, to only go for the deepies. He reasoned "you might miss a gold item", or "an oldie might be shallow", or "afterall, the clad adds up after awhile", etc... But sure enough, at the end of every hunt, he'd have perhaps 1 oldie, and I'd have 8 or 9 oldies, because he spent all his time digging shallow stuff, rather than less holes angling for only deepies. Sure, if you want jewelry from the turf, then yes, go dig all the shallow foil/tab signals till your hearts content. But be assured, you will probably not find deep oldies.

 

[gleaner1]

Apocalypse is near. Mankind has brought himself to the beginning of the end. Long gone are the glorious days when you could find 1 or 2 silver coins per year. The world's huge demand for resources along with decades of relentless detecting have RID THE GROUND OF ALL METAL.

Or so many thought. But (using long forgotten special tactics) I just recovered an 1851 LC and 1883 Brit half penny, same hole, 4" deep at my favorite beat-down local park in one of the most detected patches of turf in the park. (take it easy on me folks, no pics, still workin on that).

Here's how I did it.

Search site: Crown cap/nail/foil/pull tab littered, miserable, beat-to-death turf in my favorite 1920's park.

Equipment: Arguably the world's best detector ever made, the award winning hall-of-famer, my 1984 Garrett Freedom 2 Coin Commander (complete with original "Official Metal Detector of the 1984 Olympics" sticker, for sale, willing to sacrifice, (2) 6" coils and radio shack headphones included, need money for new machine, but too scared to buy new machine, so I'm hoping it doesn't sell too quick, just saw one on Ebay for $5850.00, $2800.00 firm gets you the world's best metal detector ever. No, really).

Settings: Scrimmed out total max. Sens. set at rock bottom. (NOTICE: You did not just read this. Relax and forget that you read any of this at all. Do not go back and read any of this again. You do not know what metal detector settings are. You do not know what a metal detector is. We have assumed control).

Technique: Work slow and concentrate knowing that anything remotely copper or silver will almost beg to be dug up.

I worked for about 20 seconds before I hit on those coins. The site has been pounded again and again and again so you never know. Just keep trying.

 

[ivan salis]

hunt deep --listen for faint sounds and be willing to dig em --hunt otherwize unwelcoming looking areas as well.

 

[TORRERO]

I have to admit that I am getting jealous reading and seeing the finds people keep pulling out of hunted out parks, fairgrounds, etc. How do you people do it? I hunt for days on end at these kind of places and can barely find clad coins let alone the coveted silver. How do you search?.......tiny 10'X10' area and dig every single piece of metal?.....Roam aimlessly about and wait for solid coin signals?.......Hit the park with dozens of detectorists and post the one coin that 300 man hours of hunting found?........I think I am pretty decent at this hobby but the one area I suck at is hunting the obvious places. And yet time and time again amazing finds keep coming from these very places. Is this some sort of conspiracy where posters just say they find the goodies at places like this because they don't want to risk revealing the true place and the research resources they actually use?

I found this to be such an interesting comment that I wanted to say something.
I've been hunting for about 25 years, and know what your talking about, but I've also been on the other
end of the quote when I have found a dime or quarter where you might think nothing is left.
The truth is, you go out looking for clad and maybe a ring and luck out and pick up a silver dime in the
process....

A few things to consider here, (and maybe I am giving away my secrets )
There are literally thousands and thousands of parks and school yards so forth and so on....
I spend a 1/2 hour or 45 minutes maybe an hour walking around and if something that seems old
comes out of the ground, I stay and keep swinging....
If I am not getting much of anything I like to pack up and try somewhere else...
(wheat cents only count a little as they were still in circulation in the 70's after silver)

I have been on many sites that just seem to say ... "SILVER IS HERE COME AND GET IT"
But after an hour of walking I / we (my partner) have not found much more than 1-2 wheat cents
then I figure its not worth the "pound it for hours" "for the one dime that's left"

On the other hand, you never know..... In my own neighborhood area I was driving around one day and spotted a small park I had never seen before.... maybe less than an acre...
me and my buddy stopped, it did not look very old so we were hoping for a "bonanza" of pocket change.....
Can you imagine what I thought when withing 15 minutes I had turned up a silver Roosevelt dime ?
We stayed in that park maybe 2-3 hours and I ended up with I think 6 silver dimes...
and maybe 3-4 wheat's cents...
along with maybe $ 1.00 in pocket change.

My point being that you may have to hit 30 to 40 different places before you find several good pieces
of silver...
Also I tend to like "Open" area's like the grassy area's in front of the house, or an open ball field like
area that may have an acre or more of open flat grassy space,
I believe that its a lot harder to find everything in a really open space, than it is to find everything in
a small parking lot in front of a Church for example....
So I walk these open area's first, then the smaller spaces next...

But the truth is, NOBODY gets something great out of every park they go to....
what you are hearing is the one park in 40 that gave them that nice Mercury dime or Barbar Half...
What you don't hear about is the months spent walking around hopeful parks with their pockets full
of dust and clad... hoping for the off chance of something good that never materializes...
(there is no story in that)

Richard

 

[gmanlight]

Every park is different , change approach , diagonal instad of east west
Hunt when ground is dry then when its wet . Not all silver is deep.
I hunt one park with little trash and wont dig any target less than 6in
I hit a trashy park the other day about 75ft x 150ft. Three of us hit it a few times a year
and have not hit silver in 2 years there Went there yesterday with 5in coil got a hit
My hunting bud swung his 9in coil over it and got nothing diggable at about 5in deep
i got a merc dime with a nail next to it . that was merc # 2 in two hunts there . HH Mike

 

[gleaner1]

The offending metal things mentioned previously.

 

[Nick A]

But the truth is, NOBODY gets something great out of every park they go to.... what you are hearing is the one park in 40 that gave them that nice Mercury dime or Barbar Half... What you don't hear about is the months spent walking around hopeful parks with their pockets full of dust and clad...

I do manage to get silver almost every time out. I think I have been skunked only 3-4 times this year. So, I beg to differ some with the 1 in 40 park comment. But finding old parks and old schools is the key. Even a late 50s-early 60s school may have silver. One late 60s school I have been hunting has produced multiple silver dimes every time I've gone there, and you'd certainly never guess it by looking at the place. But as Richard says, if a site isn't pleasing you or not producing, move on. I was at three well-hunted parks today in six hours. Two mercury dimes and a silver medallion at the first one (the two guys I was with each got two as well), another silver Roosevelt dime at the second park and three silver rings at the last one. Since I started using Minelab machines, I rarely come home without silver. But I also try really hard to make sure I don't get skunked... working hard and keeping going when the going gets tough to get at least one silver coin every time out.

 

[TORRERO]

But the truth is, NOBODY gets something great out of every park they go to.... what you are hearing is the one park in 40 that gave them that nice Mercury dime or Barbar Half... What you don't hear about is the months spent walking around hopeful parks with their pockets full of dust and clad...

I do manage to get silver almost every time out. I think I have been skunked only 3-4 times this year. So, I beg to differ some with the 1 in 40 park comment. But finding old parks and old schools is the key. Even a late 50s-early 60s school may have silver. One late 60s school I have been hunting has produced multiple silver dimes every time I've gone there, and you'd certainly never guess it by looking at the place. But as Richard says, if a site isn't pleasing you or not producing, move on. I was at three well-hunted parks today in six hours. Two mercury dimes and a silver medallion at the first one (the two guys I was with each got two as well), another silver Roosevelt dime at the second park and three silver rings at the last one. Since I started using Minelab machines, I rarely come home without silver. But I also try really hard to make sure I don't get skunked... working hard and keeping going when the going gets tough to get at least one silver coin every time out.

Of course Silver is always nice and if you can find it everytime you go out, your doing better than most...
I think the original poster was implying that he is frustrated with ...... well... people like you who find silver everywhere they go, and he says he can't seem to find any, anywhere... in the parks he hunts.
My point is that although there will be exceptions to any rule, I think for the most part, most people
on average do not find silver everytime they go out hunting and its just because there is not that much
silver left in those commonly hunted places...
The point I was making to the writer was that, well we all feel this way a little bit (well most of us)
and that the scenario he describes is really not all that uncommon... just most guys don't write and say that they went to 5 different parks and did not get any silver... (I sure don't tell anyone that)
(ha ha ha)

Richard

 

[LI Tom]

If you want to find silver coins,then you must hunt only the spots that could have them,pretty simple.Parks,schools,homes,lots from the late 50's back.My own house was built in 1959 and I picked up 4 silver coins.Be aware that some older spots have had fill brought in and it will be hard in those area's to score,but even those spots there will be spots on the edges and hills ,woods that have not been filled that you can score in.There is a park near from the early 1900's that has been almost all re-done,but I found one hillside that produced over 20 silvers,including 14 Barbers,IH's and a nice 1749 George II copper.Also remember no old producing area is ever hunted out.Oh,and I recommend a Minelab Multi Freq. HH

 

[dneyedli@res1.mts.net]

Although I could write a long page as well, I will be as brief as I can. DIG IFFY SIGNALS! Once you have dug up an old coin mixed with a bottle cap and a nail you will see what I mean. These are the signals that are left behind in the "Hunted out" parks. If you get a half signal, work it from all angles slowly and sometimes that half signal will turn solid on the right angle. Bushes may have not been bushes a hundred years ago. GO SLOW! Have the attitude that "nothing is cleaned out until I get there!" Play a game with yourself......Let's see what all those hunters missed. It's a great feeling coming home and saying "I pulled out 7 old coins from a really hammered park"
Best of luck to everyone.
Dave

 

[gmanlight]

Dave your right . Go slow and rotate . Now i would love to hit a house and get 20 silver [Who wouldnt ]
But to grab a silver or two from a hunted out spot is sweet .

 

[gleaner1]

Iffy is good. I played around on those two coins for about a 30 seconds... they sounded iffy but leaned toward pretty good, but I just couldn't force myself to dig. Then I walked away. After another minute, remembering my settings and the response, I went back and dug the damn things. A couple were walking by and came over to see what I was doing and I showed the guy the first coin, the Brit. I thought it was the only coin. As he was looking at the first, I found the LC in the dirt pile. I said "here's another one". He looked at that and mention he was gonna get a detector. I thought to myself "good luck dude". Then I showed him how to properly fill the spot back in and explained the importance of not leaving holes. He thanked me.

Going back soon.....

 

[steve from ohio]

Get an E-trac, learn how to use it and then go real slow. There is no such thing as a hunted out park. Just a park that has been hunted enough to allow for only the best to be successful.

 

[MEinWV]

You observations are correct, this is the end of metal detecting. The precious urban silver has been mined, the last dirty wheaty pennies have been found, and the hordes of Minelab users will soon grow restless and violent.

I suggest you build some kind of subterranean bunker, buy lots of Dinty Moore, and prepare to outlast the cockroaches.

You are so "right on" here pleb, in spite of your funky post.

After the Mlabs have gone over it all again, they really won't know what else to do with themselves. You almost have me feeling sorry for them now.

I know that with my 35 yrs of detecting history, an E-Trac in my hands might be down right dangerous. Maybe I will have to get one as a last hurrah for me and maybe bring back some of those old memories of finding dozens of silver coins and all those gold rings with my antique machines, back in the olden days.

Good luck! HH

 

[Goes4ever]

I think the digging iffy signals has gotten me most of my nice finds at previously hunted hard spots. I think a lot of guys will not dig a lot of targets assuming it is trash. I go a lot by depth when it comes to iffy signals. If I am at an old home or school, and I get an iffy signal at 6" I am going to dig it. What do you have to lose??

The school I was at the other day had no "good" signals, every coin I dug had trash either in the hole or right by it, all were "iffy" signals that others passed by assuming it was junk. I walked away that day with 8 wheats a silver rosie and 2 silver quarters.

And yes I will add my good finds greatly increased last fall when I upgraded from my ace 250 to a minelab.

 

[done dug it all up]

The secret is to get lots of buddies together and hit the park hard with the best technology available. Somebody will find something good, but most of the time everybody will be inspired to get a piece of the pie. Works for me.

done dugit