Now I understand why I am having so much trouble finding the old coins where I live

[dirtlooter]

I am searching in yet another spot in the town closest to me, it is an older (for Arkansas) small town, it is called Hatfield. As I swing on the grounds in front of the church that I go to, a man stops in his truck to talk to me, I recognize the man, I knew him and yet I didn't since I had met him over 30 years ago. He asks if I have found anything good yet and I tell him that I haven't found so much as a wheatie and he starts grinning then he starts talking. I had heard recently that he had been really big into detecting and that he had even wrote a book about it or something like that. He begins telling me how he and his brother had acquired their first detector in the early sixties and that they had pulled buckets of coins out of the whole area by gridding. Then how as the better detectors would come out, they would up grade and go back through and get more and more, the silver, the IH, and all of that. He told that they gotten a vast portion of what was there to find and considering that back then there was absolutely nothing to do here, very poor TV reception at best, they detected everywhere hard. I actually felt better after he left, that I wasn't finding the older coins here because most had been already picked and picked hard, especially after he informed me that quite a few others had followed him and his brother over the years. Some of you may have heard of this man, I found out a lot more after I got home and looked him up and his book, His name is Bob Brewer of Hatfield Arkansas and he has found a boat load of coins over the years, like $200,000! Now I know that there are still hidden coins and goodies to be found, just may be a lot tougher than I first realized and I have to find access somewhere to places that they may not have had. This is harder to do in a small tight knit community where people are related as far out as third and forth cousins but you never know. Anyways, I feel better about things in that regards, there is nothing like getting your eyes opened! I'm not giving up hope, just having to rethink how I go about my searching, these guys had acquired the old maps of all of the old home places in the area and hit them as hard as they could (twenty years ago I would have done the same thing). So, to think outside of the box... whatever! LOL

 

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[gleaner1]

Oh yes the old guys got tons of goods back in the day they filled coffee cans with silver and feed sacks with copper. But they did not get it all. Try to get permish for old lawns and private properties that have not been worked. Try to dig all targets in the old park, rusty or otherwise, this will pop goodies, but you gotta put the time in, and you literally have to dig hundreds and hundreds of targets, hoping for a masked one that the minelab guys missed. It is what it is.

 

[jamey]

there sure are some good looking arrowheads that come from ark.

 

[gleaner1]

Hell yes and Illinois too. I'll take a point over a murky any day. You should see the flint coming out of the banks and shallows of the Oswego river way up here in NY after the floods this spring. Those goodies will be around for generations to find. They're not metal.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

dirt-looter, thanx for sharing that story. Yes, some parts of the USA got pressure in the old days, earlier than other parts of the USA. And while it's true that the old machines on the 1960s could probably scarcely get 3 or 4" deep on a coin , yet figure silver wasn't as deep then. Heck, it was probably still even in circulation on top! Also some places aren't necessarily prone to having the old coins go super deep (if you have a drier climate, harder packed soil, etc....).

But if your soil type is such that the older=deeper, then yes, those old machines could/would miss the older deeper stuff. But you specifically say this fellow and his brother kept up with the technology. Well then that tells me that your "obvious spots" might indeed be pathetically worked out to a frazzle. Sure, "no one gets it all", but .... let's be honest: If someone's working a place that hard, then it just stands to reason that there's less gimmees as the years roll on.

By the mid 1970s, there were already machines that ...... if you cared to go all metal, that you could do a respectable 7 or 8" or more. And by the '80s you could do that while discriminating. And by the mid 1990s you could do 9 or 10" on coins while discriminating. Thus yes: there are some parks, schools, church lawns, etc... where it's just not worth anyone's while to knock yourself silly at these days.

I can think of parks where ....... back in the late '70s and early '80s we mined silver easily. But pity the poor soul who goes there now. They'll find it awash in zinc, foil, wino caps, clad, etc....

 

[Helix]

How about this.. Here is a great tip. Look for areas that might of been covered with heavy brush or bushes, areas that previous mders couldn't get to. I was hunting a park once that dated to the early 1900's. Totally wiped clean of anything old silver ect. I noticed they had just removed a load of evergreen bushes and shrub bush. So I hit that area and sure enough found some old silver and a bunch of wheat's. I am always looking out for heavy brush removal, large dense pines just cut down things like that which have been there for many years.

 

[Msbeepbeep]

Well at lest you know it's not you or the detector!

Like you said gotta think out side the box now, you should find out places he wanted to hunt but couldn't , off limits couldn't get to, tear outs, denied permission, ect. Also the hard to search ares by fences buildings, grass strips next to sidewalks, sledding hills, if all else fails hit the water! GL. HH!

 

[VERDE]

Hey dirtlooter!! Interesting story and depends on who has been in front of you!! I have a very good friend up in Mena, whom I went to Med School with!! Dr. Richard Calleton!! Tell him VERDE said Hello if you ever run into him!! GOOD LUCK and GOOD HUNTING!! VERDE!!

 

[dirtlooter]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement, (just got back from the big city of Fort Smith, about 115 miles from the house). The biggest thing was always wondering what I was doing wrong not to be finding the old stuff and I did pull out a nice silver ring out of one of his old spots but it wasn't that deep and nearly at the edge of the pavement. This was one of the reason's I was trying out the all metal mode, so now when in those places, I will try to dig as many of the iffy signals as I can. I know that the metal doesn't always read correctly when it is say 6 to 10 inches deep... it is just another part of the learning curve that I have to adjust to for my area. Again I know that it is almost impossible to totally hunt out areas but these spots can become very stingy. One of the things I have been forced to learn as a result of previous major health issues is that one has to focus on what you can do and not what you can't do. when a person focuses on the past or the past abilities too much, you can get very depressed! Life's just way too short for that, our blessings are where we find them and sometimes we can't see them for our nose being in the way. Most of life is a perspective thing and it always could and can be worse and when you get to feeling really bad for yourself, just take a slow walk through a Children's Hospital and you will see that you don't have any problems! anyways, thanks a lot, there is a lot of great people out there!

 

[liftloop]

sounds like he read a lot a spun you a tale.....

interesting tho thanks for shareing



liftloop

 

[dirtlooter]

actually, you can pull his name up for yourself..... Bob Brewer of Hatfield Arkansas, He and his late brother Jack were big time detectorist around here as I am finding out from the locals.

 

[Jeremy S]

I find almost all silver and old pennies on private property, very rarely on public property unless it is a recent drop.

As others have said, look at old maps or areal photos. Hunt overgrown areas that may have been something else years ago. I recently hunted an old school that was built in 1912. This place must have been hunted hard for decades and most areas only contained newer trash and clad. I found an area up close to the building that started producing some wheat pennies and older relics. Looking at older aerial photos, the area that was producing once had large shrubs growing in it for many years.

Even on private property most silver coins that I find are masked out by nearby trash and require some low and slow swinging to find.

In this day and age, the chances of finding a "virgin" area are becoming less and less. The good stuff that is left out there is going to be deeper and harder to find (in overgrown area of park, masked out by trash....).

 

[piper247]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement, (just got back from the big city of Fort Smith, about 115 miles from the house). The biggest thing was always wondering what I was doing wrong not to be finding the old stuff and I did pull out a nice silver ring out of one of his old spots but it wasn't that deep and nearly at the edge of the pavement. This was one of the reason's I was trying out the all metal mode, so now when in those places, I will try to dig as many of the iffy signals as I can. I know that the metal doesn't always read correctly when it is say 6 to 10 inches deep... it is just another part of the learning curve that I have to adjust to for my area. Again I know that it is almost impossible to totally hunt out areas but these spots can become very stingy. One of the things I have been forced to learn as a result of previous major health issues is that one has to focus on what you can do and not what you can't do. when a person focuses on the past or the past abilities too much, you can get very depressed! Life's just way too short for that, our blessings are where we find them and sometimes we can't see them for our nose being in the way. Most of life is a perspective thing and it always could and can be worse and when you get to feeling really bad for yourself, just take a slow walk through a Children's Hospital and you will see that you don't have any problems! anyways, thanks a lot, there is a lot of great people out there!

That's so very true, Dirtlooter.

 

[dirtlooter]

By the way, new area produced my 1st gold ring and silver coin today... still looking for the old stuff!

 

[piper247]

By the way, new area produced my 1st gold ring and silver coin today... still looking for the old stuff!

That's kool! still haven't found any good stuff yet, but I'm going to the beach this weekend!

 

[Ocean7]

hmmm well that makes it difficult but I think your luck is gonna change, and you're gonna find something great that they missed! I love heavily hunted spots that yielded old coins because I'll find stuff that is much deeper than previous hunters and machines could find. Sometimes they are not as deep as I expect, and you wonder why? But trash could have laid there and then been removed, freezing and thawing could have pushed coin closer to the surface, and not every square inch of any area is ever covered by a coil. So good luck - hope you find something real old that ole Bob missed!

 

[dirtlooter]

Oh I am not giving up on this area, just not going to hunt it as hard, I am finding that I have a lot to learn about the deeper signals... the heat kind of dampens how much of it I am doing right now.

 

[TheCoinKid]

If you're talking about Hillbilly Bob Brewer, from Hatfield, then he wrote about doing quite a bit more than just metal detecting. I read his book "Shadow of the Sentinel" several years ago. A decent read, Re: KGC treasure.

 

[dirtlooter]

yep, same guy... pretty nice guy in person too.