Treasure Hunting

I get a lot of emails from beginners who are searching for “the best places to use a metal detector” or “where to metal detect in (insert your town here).” The only answer I have is this: Research, research, research. Check the local census records, find out if there were any revolutionary or Civil War battles fought in your area, and look for records of old settlements, homesteads, stores and such.

Now, most people try to avoid buying books about possible hunting locations because their theory is “if someone wrote about it, chances are it’s probably hunted out already.” My answer: yes and no.

One that I whole-heartedly recommend (this is the second post I’ve included it in) is “Buried Treasures You Can Find” by Robert F. Marx. It has over 7,500 locations listed around the U.S. that are rich with history, and while it might not have all-original ideas for hunting, it is an excellent jumping off point for research.

Another great book to go hand-in-hand with “Buried Treasures You Can Find” is “Metal Detecting Previously Hunted Sites” published by Whites Electronics Inc.

Also try to snoop around online for hints. Anywhere people lived and traveled to is great for metal detecting. One interesting blog is Travel, Highways and History which focuses on U.S. History and Highway projects. It’s a great place to get ideas.

Furthermore, check out U-S-History.com, which has easy to reference information on the various eras, old maps and informative tables.

And while you’re at it, go to The History Channel Online - You wouldn’t believe how well they’ve organized and cataloged history. I recommend starting off with a search for “Metal Detector” on HistoryChannel.com, you’ll get a lesson in gold mines, civilizations, types of money, and early monetary regulations.

The internet brings millions of facts and tons of data to our fingertips, so it should come as no surprise that it’s hard to dig through. Just keep looking, learning and researching.

- Adam in St. Cloud

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In case you haven’t noticed, the price of gold is skyrocketing. There are many reasons for this, all of which are too long to discuss in this blog, but there’s no denying it - Gold is going up, up, up! And the more us detectorists find, well, the sooner our machines are paid for!

So it’s no surprise that a question I’ve gotten a lot lately is: “Do I need a detector specifically made to find gold?”

The answer: “Yes, if you’re looking for gold nuggets. Not necessarily if you’re just looking for gold jewelry.”

First, you’ve got to understand the difference between your regular metal detector and one that’s made to search for gold - Don’t worry, it’s easy.

You see, gold detectors like the Garrett Scorpion Gold Stinger, the Minelab Eureka Gold or the Fisher Gold Bug II are made specifically to find natural gold - That is, gold nuggets, completely untouched or changed by man. They’re optimized to be more sensitive to natural gold and traditionally have much higher frequencies.

For example, the Minelab Eureka Gold metal detector features three frequencies for you to work on. The 6.4 kHz frequency is for locating targets at their maximum depth, it goes deeper to find the larger nuggets. The 20 kHz frequency is more sensitive, perfect for finding small nuggets and general detecting. Finally there is a 60 kHz frequency which detects the smallest gold flake with super sensitivity.

In addition to higher frequencies, gold-specific detectors also have better ground balancing circuits and special coils that are optimized for the highly-mineralized soil that is predominate where gold nuggets lie (think of ‘black sand’). For example: The Garrett Scorpion Gold Stinger features 15kHz ‘Groundhog’ circuitry which gives you the power to detect treasure within heavily mineralized soil and sample ore as well as those dreaded ‘hot rocks.’ And when you’re looking for pure gold nuggets, a more sophisticated circuitry is crucial.

So what about your regular, all-purpose metal detector? Well, there’s good news!

Coin detectors can pick up gold jewelry because it has a much greater mass then gold nuggets. Gold jewelry is also easy for all-purpose metal detectors to pick up because of the other metals that are used to make a specific piece. And while just about any machine will pick up gold jewelry, some of the higher priced models will have twice the sensitivity for gold jewelry - the Minelab X-Terra series, Explorer series and Fisher’s F-75 and F-4 are just a few off the top of my head that are excellent for finding gold jewelry. The Garrett GTI 2500 and GTP 1350 are also well-known for their gold jewelry capabilities.

Meanwhile, if you have a submersible machine like the Minelab Excalibur series, Garrett’s Sea Hunter Mark II or Infinium LS, you’re even better off. These machines are made to balance through salt water and highly mineralized ground, so they’re highly effective at finding gold jewelry.

So the moral of this story: Gold prices are going up and chances are your all-purpose metal detector will find all the gold jewelry you could want! But your best bet is getting an all-purpose machine that costs around $350.00 or up. Check out our sponsors for more information on specific metal detectors and get ready to cash in your gold!

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As usual I spend the majority of the Winter browsing the internet; researching and educating myself about our hobby. Of course the purpose of this blog is to share what I “dig up” online with other people as into treasure hunting as me and today I wanted to revisit one of my favorite sites.

Sergei, an avid treasure hunter and metal detectorist from upstate NY, has his own webpage at MetalDetectingWorld.com and he has packed his site with useful tips; my favorite of which is Halo Effect & Test Garden Construction. I’ve featured his discussion of the Halo Effect in an earlier blog post and I think the steps to making a Test Garden are important enough share also.

If you’re asking yourself “Why would I need a Test Garden? There’s plenty out there to find!”
Sergei has an excellent answer: “Construct a Test Garden to help you learn the capabilities of your detector and educate yourself about what you intend to find. It can help you better understand the effects of ground minerals, moisture content, target angle, oxidation/rust, trash proximity, target defects, surface textures and provide practice in target pinpointing.”

Here are some steps recommended by Sergei to help you create a Test Garden:
1. Create a test plot as soon as you purchase your detector (Remember: You want the Halo Effect to happen. So the sooner, the better!)
2. Select an area for your Test Garden and detect it with no discrimination to remove all the metal that may already be there.
3. Pick targets to bury. Include various coins, a bottlecap, a pulltab, other objects of different metals and a few nails. Also select a pint jar filled with scrap copper and a gallon can.
4. Bury all these objects in rows about three feet apart and make a map showing where and at what depth each item is buried. Coins should be buried at varying depths - 2 inches deep for the most shallow, 10 inches down for the deepest. Be sure to bury a coin on its edge about 2 inches down. As for the jar - bury it at 12 inches down, to the top of its lid. The gallon can with the lid should be buried about 2 feet below the surface.
5. Mark the target locations with colored, nonmetallic objects. A golf tee works great! And be sure to map it out (no need to get fancy, just a sketch is fine) so you know where you buried what object!
6. Wait for a little while (gotta let that Halo grow!) and then start going over your garden! Reference your map and listen to the sounds.

A Test Garden can help you learn a lot and improve your chances of making better finds. But believe this - a Test Garden is well worth the effort!

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Finding old coins is certainly rewarding, but most metal detectorists walk away with more “clad” then anything else. Thankfully About.com has give us keepers-of-the-clad some hope and provided a list of the most valuable U.S. coins still in circulation.

The article describes 10 coins that could be jingling in anyone’s pocket right this moment, or buried just beneath the first layer of soil… waiting for a metal detectorist to come along and scoop it up. The majority of the coins are valuable due to errors in die varieties or mint marks, and they’re often overlooked by people because their distinguishing characteristics are small. The price of these mistakes range anywhere from $50.00 to $35,000.00 - so I highly recommend you take a look at this list, take a closer look at your change, and keep picking up that clad in your quest for treasure. And if I find a 1969-S Lincoln cent with a doubled-die obverse… well… you folks will be some of the first to know.

And here’s the link to the rest of the article and the complete list of top 10 most valuable U.S. coins in circulation.

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I just stumbled onto a new website that is managed by the folks over at TreasureQuestXLT, - one of the many metal detecting forums online.

It’s called MetalDetectorResource.com and is a brand new website, certainly worth your attention.

It looks like they’ve put together an online resource for metal detectorists that provides reviews, tips, and techniques for specific machines. Users write reviews for metal detectors they have experience with and rate them on a five star scale.

My favorite part of this website is the organization and ease-of-use. With a blog style not too dissimilar from TreasureHunting.com you can easily write a review, search reviews by a brand or name, find information and background on any manufacturer, or hop over to the forum to chat.

I’ll happily track this websites progress as it grows and gets more content. But I do believe MetalDetectorResource.com is mandatory reading for first time metal detectorists as well as those of us that have been swingin’ the coil for awhile now.

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Lately I’ve dug up quite a few articles about ancient finds and consequently I’ve seen some pretty amazing pictures of coins and jewelry. It seems everyone has a great story to share about how they found something, who they first showed it to, and even how much the piece sold for. But no one addresses whether or not they cleaned the piece and if they did clean it, what they used to get it done.

So I started poking around some of my favorite websites and came up with a few pages that focus on the controversial topic of cleaning really old and really dirty coins. Take a look at these pages before you start cleaning or just file these away for when you’ll need to know!

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Radio Prague, Czech Republic is reporting the story of a young relic hunter who tragically died two years ago in an apartment fire. When fire fighters arrived at the scene they saw an apartment “chock-full of strange looking metal objects.” There were more than 3,000 items in the man’s one bedroom apartment and with the help of experts from the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Archaeological Institute, the public is now realizing the man was an “amateur archaeologist,” maybe just another metal detectorist like ourselves.

On the black market these items, some of which are prehistoric, are worth millions of dollars. But as they have been found with no documentation or records about where they were found, they have almost no scientific value. There are bowls, cups, clips, bracelets, pins, rings, axes and more.

Miroslav Dobeš of the Archaeological Institute lamented lack of documentation over a spectacle-shaped pendant, one of the oldest copper objects found in Central Europe that dates back to roughly 4,000 B.C., has zero scientific value, and leaves historians baffled as to where it came from.

I’m not too crazy about the anti-metal-detectorist stance this article takes, but I do agree that it’s important to log where you’ve been and what you’ve found. And with today’s accessibility to digital cameras there is no reason us metal detectorists can’t keep good track of our relics and hunting grounds - if for no other reason than to show ‘em off!

The thrill of metal detecting, relic hunting, and coin shooting is about finding something significant to history sharing it with others. When you find that CSA belt buckle and see it lying in the same place a solder fell over 100 years ago you should preserve not only the metal object out of the ground, but the story of the solder that wore it - where it places him on the battlefield, among his troops and beside his friends.

I think now is as good a time as any to learn from someone else’s mistake and document your finds. Good luck and happy hunting!

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Treasure hunting in the Philippines has been an exciting, promising hobby since World War II. Booty is supposedly scattered across Southeast Asia, hidden by Japanese occupation forces before the U.S. liberated the country and the exotic caves provide endless hope for treasure hunters and metal detectorists alike.

But as of early 2008, only Filipino citizens are allowed to conduct any kind of treasure hunt - meaning all booty is off limits to treasure hunting tourists like you and me! But it isn’t easy for the citizens either as they’ll need a one-year permit from the government and they’ll have to post a “surety bond” if the caves are on public or private land.

Why now, you ask? Well, their government has declared “all caves of cultural, palaeontological and historical value, with ancestral domains” and significant caves are off limits completely! This prompted all caves to come under government regulations to protect the country’s heritage and all items found and determined to have historical or cultural value will now revert to the government, while a committee will determine the share for the finder of other items of value.

The moral of the story - Look up the latest laws before you take your metal detector on vacation with you and stay up-to-date in order to stay out of trouble!

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We all know parks, schools, and beaches are fantastic locations for metal detecting. Here’s a list of the top 5 places you may NOT have thought about hunting:

#5 - Farmers’ Fields - Farmers are usually willing to give permission to hunt their fields once the crop is off. Even though your finds will generally be less in quantity, they should yield higher quality. Many of the farm fields played host to Civil War battle activity, especially in the South, and East.

#4 - Construction Sites - Anytime dirt is being moved around, it opens the opportunity for you to explore what may have been previously unreachable. Old houses and buildings that are being torn down are also great spots.

#3 - Recheck the Hole - It’s been said, the best place to find treasure is where it’s been found before. You might be surprised at the number of coins or relics that are in the hole you just dug, so take a few minutes and recheck the entire hole, and the plug of dirt you’ve set aside. You might also consider using a pinpointer.

#2 - The Sidewalk Strip - The grassy area between the sidewalk and the street is commonly overlooked. Many times, these areas have never been hunted, and have been walked past for years.

#1 - Your Own Backyard - The number one misconception in metal detecting and treasure hunting is that there’s nothing to find in your backyard. You don’t need to travel to a far off, exotic location to find buried treasure - just go out into your yard. Keep in mind, wherever people have congregated, there’s treasure to be found!

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Searching through a few sites today, I stumbled across one that I almost passed by, but something made me dig a little deeper, and man am I glad I did. VirtualParks.org is one of the best sites I’ve seen for learning about new parks, which helps find new places to metal detect.

The home page offers seven choices to help you find your next metal detecting outing:

• Geography - Use maps to drill down
  to a park you want to view scenes of
• Theme - Scenes with a common theme i.e. All Lakes, All Mountain Passes, etc.
• Best Of - A gallery of the best scenes. A showcase of the 100 best panoramas on the site
• Alpha - Panoramas listed alphabetically. Look at all scenes whose names start with A, B, C, etc.
• Trips - Narratives of the trips. The story of how the scenes were shot
• Newly Added - Most recently added panoramas. Sorted by time
• Full Screen VR - High-res FullScreen panoramas. for a more immersive experience

I decided to try out themes. Clicking on themes gives you a large list of ….well, themes. I selected Ghost towns and ruins thinking it would be a good start, and have good potential for finding relics. There are links inside this theme, and each one has a virtual tour to show you the terrain. I’ve wasted about three hours so far, and will be going back to it when I’m done with this post. The virtual tours drop you right in the middle of the location, and you can almost imagine the areas you’d search if you were there.

If you’ve been planning a metal detecting trip, VirtualParks.org might be the inspiration you need to select a location. Give it a try, and tell us what you think. If we find anything else really interesting on the site, we’ll be sure to let you know.

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