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.

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"

Troy Lands Some Goodies

Tomorrow morning was supposed to be the morning that I was gonna be picking Troy up at his place and get out for my first hunt of 2011. Unfortunately, the powers that be at work decided they needed to change my flights and made it so I am flying out to work tomorrow instead of Thursday.

But that didn't keep my buddy Troy from landing some goodies today at a park he frequented as a young boy. I met up with him tonight at the bowling alley and talked hobby for a good few hours while we both shared a few pitchers and I bowled four games (257, 224, 200 and 220, not bad if I do say so myself).

Anyhow, I got to see the goodies first hand. The little 10K gold ring he found was pretty nice, but just remarkably light when you held it... looks beefier than it is at only 4.4g.


He also found a nice sterling St. Mike's... and of course the obligatory clad. A real nice hunt, glad he was able to get out, and a shame I couldn't join him.