Full Metal Digger
10-09-2011, 07:51 PM
This weekend I drove up to Decatur, ILL to meet Tony and do some MDing. We met at a Burger King and after introductions, I followed him to an older park. But first, we had to stop and wait 15 minutes for the world's longest and slowest train to pass by.
For those who don't know Tony, he is a very nice and easy going guy. He was so cool, he didn't even ask me about all my prison tats. +1 point for Tony. The park was obviously quite old and had some enormous trees. It took us at least an hour just to find where in the park the old coins were hiding. Once we found the spot, we started popping wheaties and silvers on a regular basis. I found very few clad coins. I think the park has been hunted a lot (Decatur is a fairly large town) but they didn't have e-tracs! Pretty much all my coins were coming in 6 inches or deeper. Many had odd signals and might have been overlooked by lessor machines.
My first good find was a 1901 Barber quarter at about 7 or 8 inches deep. The ground was so hard, I practically had to chisel it out of the hole. A little later, I got an odd signal at only 5 inches. It was reading more like trash or borderline wheatie on the display. The sound was not all that impressive either. I dug my hole and after scooping out the dirt, I could see the edge of a silver quarter! I called Tony over and had him sweep it with my detector and asked him if he thought it sounded like a silver coin. He swept it from all directions and agreed it did not sound all that promising. Then I showed him the silver edge in the hole (see the pic on his thread). After I removed the coin from the hole, I reswept and got a very big NULL from the chunk of iron that was below the coin. I was pumped as that's only the second time I found 2 silver quarters in the same hunt.
We ended up hunting about 4 hours and did pretty good. I was tired and headed out to find a hotel room. I told Tony I would be back out first thing in the morning and I hoped he could get back out also. We did meet up Sunday morning and hunted for about 3 1/2 hours. We each found another merc and a couple more wheaties. My total haul for the weekend was 15 wheaties, 4 silvers, and a very nice old lock.
Thanks again Tony for showing me such a good time and for buying me a steak dinner! I look forward to meeting up with you again after the rains come. Best wishes and HH, Dave.
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0169_2.jpg
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0170_2.jpg
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0182.jpg
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0181.jpg
For those who don't know Tony, he is a very nice and easy going guy. He was so cool, he didn't even ask me about all my prison tats. +1 point for Tony. The park was obviously quite old and had some enormous trees. It took us at least an hour just to find where in the park the old coins were hiding. Once we found the spot, we started popping wheaties and silvers on a regular basis. I found very few clad coins. I think the park has been hunted a lot (Decatur is a fairly large town) but they didn't have e-tracs! Pretty much all my coins were coming in 6 inches or deeper. Many had odd signals and might have been overlooked by lessor machines.
My first good find was a 1901 Barber quarter at about 7 or 8 inches deep. The ground was so hard, I practically had to chisel it out of the hole. A little later, I got an odd signal at only 5 inches. It was reading more like trash or borderline wheatie on the display. The sound was not all that impressive either. I dug my hole and after scooping out the dirt, I could see the edge of a silver quarter! I called Tony over and had him sweep it with my detector and asked him if he thought it sounded like a silver coin. He swept it from all directions and agreed it did not sound all that promising. Then I showed him the silver edge in the hole (see the pic on his thread). After I removed the coin from the hole, I reswept and got a very big NULL from the chunk of iron that was below the coin. I was pumped as that's only the second time I found 2 silver quarters in the same hunt.
We ended up hunting about 4 hours and did pretty good. I was tired and headed out to find a hotel room. I told Tony I would be back out first thing in the morning and I hoped he could get back out also. We did meet up Sunday morning and hunted for about 3 1/2 hours. We each found another merc and a couple more wheaties. My total haul for the weekend was 15 wheaties, 4 silvers, and a very nice old lock.
Thanks again Tony for showing me such a good time and for buying me a steak dinner! I look forward to meeting up with you again after the rains come. Best wishes and HH, Dave.
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0169_2.jpg
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0170_2.jpg
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0182.jpg
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af95/daddydigger1/IMG_0181.jpg