future
Jr. Member
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2016
- Messages
- 28
- Reaction score
- 72
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Boise, Idaho
- Detector(s) used
- Whites MXT All Pro, Whites 6000 DI Pro, Whites GMT, Whites Surf PI Dual Field......want a Minelab e-trac
- Primary Interest:
- Metal Detecting
I have been metal detecting off & on since 1971. Most of that time was spent in Alaska were I hunted gold nuggets....at which I was very successful! But in 1982 and 1983 I attended college out in the "lower 48" and spent lots of time looking for old coins in the local parks. I used a Whites 4000 D Series 2 detector, which was really good for the time. I found hundreds of Mercury dimes, wheat pennies, and even dozens of silver quarters during those years because the parks were not so hunted out back then. But I never found a coin cache. Time warp ahead to 2015, when I was fortunate enough to acquire a new Whites MXT All Pro detector. After hitting city & state parks hard for a year, I only had 8 silver dimes and some silver rings to show for it. Silver coins are getting VERY hard to find anymore. So, I decided to head to the desert area of the state and do some detecting around old abandoned farms and houses in the country. Its very dry over there and any coins are always in excellent shape, unlike the coins dug at the coast or the wet Cascade range. I had detected several abandoned houses with good results, finding several old Mercury Dimes and even a couple Barber Dimes in excellent shape. I was busy detecting in the hot sun when a pickup stopped and a man approached me. I thought "oh great....here comes trouble!". But he was very nice and suggested I hunt an abandoned farm (he called it a spread) not too far away. So I loaded up and headed over there. It was certainly abandoned and there wasn't a "no trespassing" sign anywhere. After walking the "spread" and not seeing any recently dug holes by other detectorists I started detecting in earnest! I'll never forget this day, August 20th, 2016! After finding the usual wheat pennies, horse shoes, tin, and scrap iron I decided to hunt in angles as seen from the living room window of the old house. I figured that if there were any elusive caches around, their location would have been where the owner could have seen them from his favorite rocking chair in the living room. After hunting out about 200 feet I had found little. Now the address of this "spread" was 249 East - - - - Road. So I put on my thinking cap and decided to go 249 feet due east of the living room window. After detecting about 5 minutes I got a very weak signal which indicated it was deeper than the 12" that my detector reads. I marked the place and went back to my truck and got my clam shovel that I always carry. Going back to the target place I started digging and got down about 10", which took almost 20 minutes in the rock hard dirt. The signal was still there but I couldn't get my pinpointer to read anything. I dug another 3" of hard packed dirt and tried the pinpointer again, and this time it sounded off. Carefully digging a little further I exposed a small white lid and thought, great just another scrap lid. But it was attached to something & wouldn't budge. The lid was 14" deep! After digging around it for 10 more minutes I had it loose in the hole. When I pulled it out I about fainted! It was an old bird seed jar filled with coins! I tried opening it but the lid was stuck on solid! It was getting late in the day so I put it in my bag and headed home. After I had carefully cleaned the jar I saw that someone had applied wax all the way around the lid, apparently to keep moisture and water out. The lid came off with some effort and revealed Buffalo Nickels clear to the top of the jar. Dumping them out onto a towel on the table I as stunned to see 7 silver dollars at the bottom! The coins were very clean and looked like they had just came out of circulation. The wax job on the lid had really worked! There were 108 Buffalo Nickels and 7 silver dollars, 4 of which were the old Morgan dollars. The oldest silver dollar was an 1880 and the newest a 1922. The oldest Buffalo Nickel was a 1918 and the newest a 1937, and one had a key date of 1931-S. I wish I would have had a camera with me that day, as I would have loved to photographed the jar in the hole and just after recovering it. I'll always have a camera with me from now on! I can't wait to get back to that "spread" and see what else might be waiting for me!
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