The Rewards of Diggin' in The Dirt

"There's an old adage that says 'gold is where you find it,' and that's certainly an apropos sentiment for a guy like Mick Burney.

Gold, silver, bronze or brass, Burney is apt to find it as he runs his trusty metal detector over the grounds at places like Greencastle's Robe-Ann Park.

On Friday afternoon, a sunny, almost 60-degree January day, Burney was out enjoying his hobby, getting some fresh air and pocketing some loose change.

Stopping along the old sidewalk that borders the bandshell area to the north, Burney's metal detector beeped and he dropped to his knees with a handheld detection gadget and hand trowel. Digging about eight inches deep right next to the sidewalk, Burney finally pulled a rusty six-inch piece of wire out of the dirt."

Read more HERE.

Image Credit: Banner Graphic

FL Man Denied Pursuit of Treasure

"A would-be treasure hunter searching for pirate gold can't dig at a Palm Beach County park, county officials decided Thursday.

Concerns about disturbing a historic site — and the possibility of metal detector-wielding copycats flocking to county parks wanting to dig — prompted the county to quash plans for the dig at DuBois Park in Jupiter.

Just last week, the county was working on a proceeds-sharing deal with a local man who proposed a small dig to find out what was setting off his metal detectors at the park.

The size and location of the unknown buried object, as well as the history of the area, convinced him it was a chest of riches, possibly buried hundreds of years ago by shipwreck survivors or even pirates passing the Palm Beach County coast."

Read more HERE.

MO City Overturns MD Ordinance

A victory for hobbyists everywhere as a Missouri city official actually contemplated the "real" repurcussions of the hobby and realized it's trivial to try and govern a harmless hobby.


"Carthage Mayor Mike Harris said 'exaggerated and erroneous information' led the council to give preliminary approval to an ordinance controlling metal detecting in city parks.

At Harris’ request, the Carthage City Council tabled indefinitely final consideration of the ordinance that would have required anyone wanting to use a metal detector in a city park to sign a request sheet and turn any artifact that was older than 100 years over to the city.

The vote to table was unanimous."

Read more HERE.

Cheesman Ring Hunt

It has seemed like forever since I've been able to get out and hunt. This morning around 10a I got a call from my hunting buddy Troy regarding him heading out towards downtown Denver in search of a lost wedding set he had been in contact with a woman about. I agreed to tag along and by 1130a we were on the case.

We met up at Cheesman Park and my first thought was, wow... this is a lot of real estate to cover. Turns out it is about 80 acres worth of old trees and nicely groomed grass that had been a park since 1907, and was previously a cemetery that opened in 1858 (they even have modern-day ghost bus tours through the park).

The hunt started by hitting the area along the southern side of The Acropolis and fountains. As initially all we had to work on was that the rings where lost roughly in front of the structure on the southern side. We hit the area pretty intensely for a couple hours, and besides a couple dollar or more pocket spills I came across, there wasn't much to be said for the area.

Troy got on the horn and contacted the lady to get help narrow down the search. Sadly, the area was still a good 2-3 acres of land to cover, and after an hour or so of no luck, a thunderstorm rolled in and rained us out. Throughout the entire hunt we saw at least four other hobbyists scouring the area, likely searching for the same rings as a Craigslist ad was posted on the subject.

It was a great few hours of swinging the coil, really happy to have gotten out, especially since I don't so often anymore. I did manage $3.49 over 38 coins though, so the day wasn't lost. A '57 Wheatie, small pile of keys, pulltabs, broken sunglasses, and other miscellaneous metal scrap rounded out the afternoon.

One last thing to add. Today was the first time I've actually used my new Garrett ProPointer on a hunt. I've been a true blue Vibra-Probe 570 guys since I started the hobby. I REALLY enjoyed the Garrett, but did have one negative to throw out there. Apparently this is a known issue, but it's something that on my Vibra-Probe it wasn't an issue. I'm very used to jamming the VP 570 into a hole and being pretty rough with it, even slightly bending it in tight spaces to get the direction of a target. With the Garrett, you can't do this. Well, you can, but it causes the thing to false. I added a little video illustrating the point.

Finding Old Loot in PA

"Red Craft and Harry Niemeyer don’t have to dig deep to find out what makes them happy, but they will.

It’s money — not making it, finding it.

The retirees spend countless hours searching for silver and gold coins, copper pennies or a valued piece of jewelry someone lost yesterday, decades or centuries ago. Mostly, they find bottle cups, pull tabs from cans, copper clad pennies, junk."

Read mroe HERE.

Image Credits: Lucy Shaly / Beaver County Times

Ohio Hunting Buddies

"On any given day, one might find neighbors Ron Swisher and Jim Kenney roaming through Marietta or another local community with metal detectors in their hands and ear phones on their heads, bound and determined to find a treasure buried deep in the soil.

'I got started in this about the late 60s, early 70s when metal detectors first came out,' said Swisher, 57, of Marietta. 'I started out coin collecting - it's less expensive to find them than it is to buy them.'

Swisher and his neighbor, Jim Kenney, 67, hunt for treasure for a few hours just about every day, so long as the weather cooperates."

Read more HERE.

Image Credits: Michael Dickenson

Upstate New York Town BANS Hobby in Parks

A very brief article from the Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York shows where an unskilled, or just lazy hobbyist has now ruined it for everyone else in the area. Shame!

"Holes found in Village Green Park caused collective concern and a new local law at the Town Council meeting June 6.

"We found someone was up there with a metal detector and was digging around," Councilman Thomas E. Stewart said. "It just wasn't right."

Local Law No. 2 includes restrictions other than digging the park grounds, taking artifacts and using a metal detector.

Included in the 11 activities prohibited in the park are operating or parking an all-terrain vehicle, horseback riding in areas not designated as driveways and using glass containers."

Ticonderoga to Ban Hobby?

"It's been 12 years since Ticonderoga tried to restrict use of personal metal detectors.

Now, concerned that treasure-hunters may flock to the community rich in 18th-century history, town officials are going to try again.

The town has scheduled a public hearing for 6 p.m. Thursday in the Ticonderoga Community Building on a proposed local law to ban the use of metal detectors on public property in the town."

JUNE 20th UPDATE: It was voted NOT to ban the use of metal detectors. They may still be used for surface finds, and NO digging is allowed.

Read more HERE.
Another article HERE.

Image Credits: Town of Ticonderoga

Hit Up a Few Lakewood Parks

Started off the morning quite abruptly with an early wake up and getting the smoker ready for the two pounds brisket I had marinating all night. Come to find out, not enough coals, so had to make a quick run to the store to grab some more with just an hour left before Troy was meeting me at the house.

With the meat smoking, we grabbed some joe and headed out to our first haunt of the day, Morse Park off of 20th in Lakewood, CO. The hunt started off quite promising, I was up over a dollar within the first 30 feet of my starting point landing two, two stacked penny hits as well as a $0.45 spill consisting of one nickel and four dimes.

The park was plenty busy with a few dozen people playing tennis, part of some club I'd assume.My last dig of the park was a neat little FILA Pisces pendant and ended up with $1.68 across 44 coins.

Stop number two was O'Kane park off of 1st St. in Lakewood. This park is really big. It had two huge sports field that you'd think would be ripe for the picking. Sadly, the pickins' were slim here, but I did manage 3 recently dropped RTD tokens along with $0.89 over 14 coins.

The last stop was a small out of the way park in Lakewood off of Garrison called Holbrook Park. This park had a lot of odd-shaped area to cover. We started on the far end of the park near some old looking trees, but we really fell short on the finds here. My first decent signal ended up being this Armitron All Sport watch, probably a couple years old since it doesn't match any of the newer models.

Troy was having some issues with falsing and possibly some EMI, and after I had dug $1.02 over 6 coins, one dig being a double-quarter spill, we packed it up for the day and headed home.

Finished the day with some awesome brisket, baked beans, mashed potatoes, and the 2011 NFL Draft. I'll leave you with a pic of the days haul, including Troy's take.

The following is a cool find Troy had of what appeard to be a little stamped piece of aluminum with Arabic script on it. I could only read the numbers, which read 1213, and converted come out to about 1798/9. A member of FMDF came back to say that the writing appears to say "Minted in Misr (which is Egypt) 1213 (this is the AH year)" and that it's a "It's a copy of an Ottoman empire coin. Most of my Ottoman coins are bronzes, I think that the Misr mint would have been easier for the copier to make than the Constantinople mint"

Kansas Trip - Diggin' It With Friends

Day 1: The Drive (04/08/2011)

Picked up Brea's G'ma and was on the road by about 830a. About three hours later we had made our first stop in Goodland, KS to drop G'ma off and ate a delicious Fried Chicken Buffet at Hank's Cafe.

After lunch we were back on the road and made it to the Cedar Court Motel there in Clay Center, KS just before 5p. After unloading the truck we walked out over by the pool for a brief meet and greet with the handful of folks who had shown up already (Harold, Dave, Rhonda, Vlad, Carol, Bob, Jason). Dave and Harold answered my call on FMDF for a few of the remaining slots I had open ion my 50 State Quarter book... it's now finished, thanks guys.

Most of the group headed over to El Puerto, the Mexican restaurant. Me and Brea where still full from the trip, but did take a ride over to grab some alcohol for the next two nights. Around 9 we finally migrated to El Puerto, and though the food wasn't bad, we were totally disappointed that there were NO MARGARITAS!!!???

Day 2: The Hunt (04/09/2011)

Started the day off by meeting everyone up at Huntress Park by 8a. We spent the next four hours or so scouring the park (which had obviously been hit before).

The day was spent digging pull tab after pull tab for me, resulting in $1.58 in clad over 36 coins and not much else in the way of goodies.

But a few folks were able to grab an Indian Head penny or two and even a Mercury dime while two other hunters landed a gold plated ring and a delicate necklace.

Around noon it was time to head on over to Utility Park where we had our lunch planned. On the way over, Brea and I stopped by the Clay Center town square and took a few pics of their old courthouse and a neat pic of the marker for a time capsule.

Over at the park everyone gathered up as the food was cooked and set out. It was a great little feast full of burgers, dogs, ziti, 7 layer dip, potato salad and loads of cake. After the eating, it was time to dish out the goods. Raffle tickets were sold for a chance to win a Minelab Explorer SE Pro donated by New England Detectors with all the ticket proceeds benefiting Brian Duvall's Clad 4 Kids Charity.

There were a few other prizes handed out (all of which were generously donated by New England Detectors) for categories such as "Oldest Coin", "Best Jewelry", "Silver Coin", "Weirdest Object". I ended up bringing home prizes for "Most Pull-Tabs" with a winning total of 31 for the morning, and also for "Farthest Drive" which we trumped the 2nd place people by almost 150 miles... as Denver was a good 455 mile drive. One of the prizes, an 1864 2 Cent donated by Harold was the 3rd of it's kind now in my collection.

After all of that was said and done, most of the group followed Dave up a farm field he had gotten permission to hunt (Pictures HERE). In the meantime, since Brea and I had a dinner appointment with my cousins John and Susan later on in Salina, we opted out and visited the small, dilapidated Clay Center Zoo. The animals all looked miserable and the larger ones, like the bear and wolves just did not have the space to do much more than pace back and forth.

That evening after dinner at Logan's in Salina with my cousin John, whom I hadn't seen since around October 2003 when we were both in Scania CSC in Iraq, and then my cousin Susan of which this was our first time meeting each other... ever... but anyhow, right, so on the way back, around 8p and just turning on to Route 24, I was pulled over by a Sheriff. HE said I was doing a 51 in a 35 and a construction zone. He didn't give me a ticket, but I swore the only posted speed was 65 MPH. Sure enough, the next morning on the way out... there was no 35 MPH zone posted on my side... so WTF!?

Day 3: Back to The Farm (04/10/2011)

We said a few goodbyes and left the Cedar Court Motel around 11a. Having seen a wind-farm that stretched for miles, we decided to see how far it really went... turned out to be 15 miles along the interstate... that's a lot of real estate.

Our first stop on the way back to the farm in Goodland was one of The 8 Wonders of Kansas... the St. Fidelis Church, better known as "The Cathedral of The Plains" in Victoria, KS (a fun fact about Victoria.. the first Black Angus steer in the US were raised here).

Wanting to add to our pressed penny collection, our last stop before the farm was at the Oasis Travel Center in Colby, KS where we picked up our lovely "Kansas Oil" pressed penny.

Day 4: The Hunt Continues (04/11/2011)

Started the morning with some delicious homemade biscuits and gravy just before we were out the door and headed out to "The Smoky Gardens", otherwise known as Soldier's Memorial Park. This park has been here and been in use since at least when Brea's G'ma was a child, so we thought it might be a good place to metal detect. We didn't leave with too much, and with all the trash it just ended up a big disappointment. Even the water that was once here was dried up, but the bed was so littered with trashed, finding anything good would have been a yearlong chore.

We drove back to the farm and I got to thinking, I'm gonna boost my pre-amp gain on my XLT up to 4 and see what happens. So I started hunting around the old farm house (which used to be a one room schoolhouse way back in the day) and started consistently pulling clad around the 6" mark. Sadly, I was getting any deeper. I ended the day with a multitude of finds, and the oldest coin being a '52 wheat.

Day 5: On The Road Again (04/12/2011)

We were to leave and head back to Denver by noon, and we were right on time... but not before we stopped by Main St. in town and picked up an antique 1919 C19 Edison Disc Phonograph. Why? Well because we could I guess, and it was free.

Our only stop on the way home was in Genoa, CO to check out "The Wonder Tower". This place is just wierd. The guy who runs the place is an eccentric old fellow and he has SO MUCH STUFF. It's definitely worth checking out and paying the $1 to climb the tower for the view.

So that was the Kansas trip. Hope you enjoyed the read and pictures.