The mission

Our first assignment and I am so excited!!!

Our friend Wendy's sister had lost her silver necklace when she was a child in her mother's backyard. Tonight we planned to meet with them and our metal detector. As we drove up there was quite a crowd awaiting curbside to watch us pull out our sleek metal detector. They chatted and followed us around the yard looking over our shoulders at the numbers on the display.
I was detecting and Mary was digging.
I wanted to be cautious to not to instruct her to dig too many holes as their mother watched us with great anticipation.
But I was having problems.
The readings just weren't happening.
I checked the knobs and road the threshold hum listening to each blip and crackle.
Re-checking the metal types and purity of the signals I was finding.
I was discovering nothing but iron, low foil and scattered metal readings.
I checked the machine with a fire hydrant - Yep! That had a strong,true signal.
Aluminum ladder - Wow! Aluminum is '94' on the detector scale.
Old lawnmower - had a good signal too.
Why could I not find anything else?

I only have had a couple hits on the whole property (I strayed onto the neighbours property too).

I wanted to do well.
I wanted to be a hero.
I wanted to accomplish this mission and prove that Mary and I are worthy metal detectors.

Besides clipping of metal sideing, the picture below is all we found.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home

We have noticed that the places that we are most excited about finding exotic treasure usually have nothing to reveal to us.
Today we decided to do our back-up plan first and go to a juicy public school to bring in the change. Mary had picked a nice one and off we went. The school was good giving us over $2 in coins, a key and a dinky car.
We continued to a second school but we shortly left after no hits and a gang of teenagers started gathering to drink bottles of beer.
On our way homes we stopped at building ruins where we found nothing but scraps of metal.
We went home and I was ready to call it a day. Mary wanted to scan the front lawn again to try to find a gold earring she was missing. Our lawn is in terrible shape with all the dry weather so a couple more holes couldn't really hurt.

We had more metal detector activity in our front lawn then we had all day. We found another couple dozen coins. giving us a daily total of 38 coins equalling $4.10.

Our new Sunday Night Mason Jar total is now $29.95.
(I'm going to need another jar soon)
Home is where the hard cash is

The Stairs to Nothing and the Secret of the Monkey Bars

We woke and went out for our favourite breakfast.
The "Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day" song seemed to have worked blessing us with beautiful sunshine and blue skies for as far as the eye could see.
Today would be the day that we would get to go south to the ruins. I consulted with the aerial maps and entered co-ordinates into the GSP to make sure we found the exact spot after our 1km hike through dense bush. We only got mildly disorientated as we found the concrete steps of the old building.

Well.... and that is all that we found.

I think the build must have burnt down with metal siding for all we could find was hunk of melted metal around the house. We also found a giant bee hive 20 feet away.
The sun was blazing hot so we continued to the second structure that we had marked with the GPS. We found an old axe head still embedded in a tree (Not what you would consider metal detecting). But nothing us or interest was found. It is had to get good sweeps of the detector with the high weeds and grasses.
We had only brought 2 bottles of water and I had begun to get tired and dizzy from the heat. We managed to get back to the car but the water bottle inside were boiling hot. We drove to a Tim Horton's to get 2 "Ice Caps" (made with chocolate milk) which turn out to be our best find for the morning.

After cooling off we decide to detect where we do the best - at apublic school. We went back to the "legendary ring school" to scan the rest of their school yard. We scanned the baseball field and soccer field before we saw the had a second playground (there was a third but we didn't think toddlers in the nursery playground would carry lots of money) The monkey bars surrendered a sterling silver necklace, a return the baseball field brought forth $2.64 in change.
The sandboxes added a heart charm and a ring. Soon after we began finding a dinky car and a pile of change. Why is it the last places we look always brings the best items?

The Blue Fur Trader Expedition

We had planned to head south after work to scan old building ruins but a big twisty storm loomed around us. Instead of risking walking a kilometre through dense brush only to get hit with a downpour we created plan 'B'.

Mary confided in me that her new goal was to find school ring. She had read in the forums that people had found spectacular rings in high school football fields, so off we went to try to get her one.

We started at the nearby high school scanning the football field, running track and tennis courts but came up with nothing.

We headed west to find some public schools. After stopped at a school that didn't have a gravel playground we continued on to another one.

We found nothing at that school either but lucky it was connected to another school and a public park. We scanned under growing clouds.

I don't know how our luck changed. I was half asleep from a hard day at work of eating cake, donuts and drinking beer (Co-worker's birthday party).

Somehow found an army man that looked like a fur traded and a $1.80 in coins.

On the fifth day of x-mas my true love found for me....

Santa isn't the only one who is red and white today. Check these pictures out! I guess you still need sunscreen even on an overcast day.

Mary and I both took today off of work. We stopped off at Tim Horton for breakfast and the total came to $7.77 (2 extra-large coffees and 3 cheese croissants... try this yourself). The cashier said, 'This is going to be you lucky day. You should buy a lottery ticket). Mary was excited by this while I remained skeptical.

We decided to head north to do some swimming in a park. Of course we brought our metal detectors and the GPS.When we entered the park but there was no one at the front gate. We drove through to the concession stand to pay admission but were greeted by the beach decorated for a wedding. Girls in blue dresses and men in Hawaiian shirts.

We changed into our swimsuits and headed on to beach with our underwater detector. While we were floating around the wedding photographer asked us to get out of the way because the bride was coming across the lake in a canoe. I'm still worried that our Captain Highliner towels might have remained in the shot.

The lake floor was covered in a black ash like sand that could easily be whisked away with your foot to reveal the bottom without digging. We used our underwater stash container to place our finds in so no one could see what we had.

We must have been in the water for about 3 hours with ducks swimming by, sunfish nibbling our toes and then hiding in the holes we created.

Was this our lucky day? Well... this is what we found.

1 Greek coin, 3 loonies, 7 quarters, 5 dimes, 7 nickels and 12 pennies giving us a total of $5.67 our biggest to date!

Mason jar total is now $21.41 in less than a month)

... but wait.... there's more....

5 RINGS!!!!!

A gold men's wedding band, a women's gold wedding band, a 10k gold ring with cameo, a sterling silver ring with a small diamond and a junk ring that says I love you.

I freaked every time a ring was revealed underwater. I tried to remain calm on the surface not to attract attention. I kept my bathing suit pocket filled with the bottle caps, pull tabs and junk in case anyone asked what we had found.

This was our most excited day yet!!! I can't wait to get out again!!!

The fishes and the bent penny

I fell asleep of the couch after dinner.

Mary woke me and said she had just thought of a great place to metal detect.

I got on my shoes and we were off.

She proposed a spot by a creek at an abandoned bridge that went nowhere.

But when we got there the water was jumping with fish, so instead of pulling out the metal detector, we grabbed the fishing rods. We had numerous bites and a couple that got off the hook before we landed them. I was able to pull in two bass.

Mary briefly scanned the area but found nothing. So we packed up the gear and headed back.

We past a public school with two playgrounds so we stopped to scan them. In the first gravel playground we only found a bent penny. (not a very good sign)

We were crossing a big field to get to the second playground when the detector went off again, and again, and again in the middle of nowhere.

We dug up all the hits and found a Toonie($2), a loonie($1), a quarter, 2 dimes, 9 pennies, a amusement park token and a button. $3.54. (Biggest find yet!!!) Once we got to the second park we found nothing else. I guess you never know where you'll find treasure.

Two strike-outs, a double and a homerun.

We met my parents for breakfast this morning at J.J.Kapps (super breakfast!!!). After telling them of our past metal detecting adventures we were ready to create new ones. It was a beautiful day and I was excited about scanning in Queenston so we grabbed the equipment.

The first place we stopped was at the end of York street where the old trolley line went over the Niagara River. From the aerial photography I thought it was a dirt path from the end of the road to the retaining wall where the old customs office stood. I thought this would be a great place because it has history and people would be going on and off the trolley.
I was wrong and the whole area was paved over with broken beer bottles and garbage scattered everywhere.

Our second thought was Laura Secord public school in Queenston. It was empty of metal as well. We noticed the back window of the school had been forced open. There was a sign giving a phone number to report damage so I called. The operator said they were sending people over right away to investigate. I decided standing around with a metal detector might not look good so we took off.

We hit another school on the way back to St.Catharines and found a toonie ($2 coin), 2 quarters and three pennies. $2.53. I also found a big green magic marker buries 4" below the swing set.

We didn't have much more luck so we continued on.

There was a place that Mary really wanted to detect so we changed course to check it out. The way in as jungle like as we followed and old creek bed to find the ruins of a house. Locating their bottle dump first we moved up from the creek to find the well and foundation (I forgot to bring my GPS to mark the exact location. But I think I could find it again).

The metal detector hits were not promising pulling up a plow blade, lead tool tip, a gear, small lightbulb, a stamped piece of metal and an old bolt.

Until in a clearing we pulled up this small ring. We thought it was silver but the white metal rubbed off . There is a seam on the inside where the ring was re-sized.

I became hot and tired from the hot sun so we packed it up and came home to do further searches at the site another day.

I forgot to mention the Mason Jar is up to $13.21 and we have found 5 rings

When the wrong spot for finding money turns right

I still want a coin from the 1800's.

I spent the day at work dreaming up places where we might find it.

I came up with a plan.

A brilliant plan that would hopefully get me the coin.

When I got home from work I told Mary and she agreed. But the weather forecast showed a big storm was coming towards us. We decided to go down to Michigan side of Port Dalhousie to try to take pictures of the storm over the lake. We took the detector out to scan the area with a plastic bag over the controls to keep them dry . The rain came but the lightning and cool clouds did not. We also didn't find anything with the detector. We realized driving east to my planned destination would only follow the storm. We decided to kill some time while the storm passed. Mary suggested we go to Port Dalhousie beach.

I have never wanted to scan Port Dalhousie beach.

Everyone metal detects there.

There is no chance of finding anything.

But we went anyways, with just the intention of watching the storm and seeing if I could still get a great storm photo.

I had the detector and decided to go for the obscure hits - the foil, pull tab and bottle caps readings that I normally try to avoid. I figure we are on sand, it is easy digging, and Mary was willing to dig up anything.

So I sent her on some wild goose chases to find junk metal. But to my surprise, she wasn't pulling up junk at all.

We located 5 quarters, 3 dimes, 4 nickels, 9 pennies and a foil ring.

This makes we wonder about all the possible treasures that I passed by in previous weeks because I didn't want to get my hands dirty. Just because the machine that tells you it's garbage, doesn't always mean that it is.

This added another $1.89 to the mason jar (a tie for second place for value of money found. The most silver found yet!!!) We have $10.68!!!!!

Quest for the ancient coin

We met our friend Wild Willy through geocaching. He has a metal detector too and we have been trying to convince to go detecting with us but haven't set up a time yet.

He was out detecting by himself and phoned us the next day saying he found a strange old dime with stars around the edges. After looking it up on the internet he informed us it was a dime from 1801!!!

Now, remembered how I said before that all I really wanted to find was a dinky-car... well I have a new goal now.

I WANT TO FIND A COIN FROM THE 1800's.

Mary agreed to join me on my quest and off we went to the same site in Niagara-on-the-Lake to repeat his discovery. Using the Fisher underwater detector we combed the water and beaches but found nothing but a grill someone chucked into the lake. We traded detectors and began to scan the grass areas. Soon webegan finding brass items. I became quite excited since we are near historical territory where the war of 1812 took place. Maybe these were buttons off 1812 soldiers uniform. .

But what we discovered were stray bullets from the nearby shooting range (What they are doing in a park used for walking dogs I'm not sure).
We re-tuned the detector for money as the sunset and everything became dark. But all we could find were a couple of pennies, so we went home.

Mary has always wanted to detect the grass boulevard in front of our house. I was very tired but I agreed to help. With a flashlight we began to search. And wouldn't you know it, she began pulling out money from my front lawn!!! (Why did we drive all the way to N-O-T-L to find money?) She pulled up a dozen pennies and a quarter adding 42 cents to the mason jar.

I also realized that I didn't add 26 cents we found the very first time we went metal detecting. All this give us a new grand total of $8.79

The legend of the ring.

Mary's mom had heard on the radio, a long time ago, that someone had lost their engagement band is a public school park. Mary's mom went there with her metal detector and sure enough she found a ring. She called the owner but when she described the ring discovered that it wasn't the one they were looking for.

Mary wants a ring. She wants one bad.

Don't get me wrong she is ecstatic with the engagement ring that I gave her. But her metal detecting goal... the thing she wants to find more than anything else is a gold ring (Hopefully one with diamonds.) I wanted to find a dinky-car but since I already found one earlier in the day I guess need to get a new objective.

After dinner we started out in the park across the street from us. Mary was on the detector and was unsure what the readings meant. I gave her my all the knowledge I had acquired so far. But she wanted a ring. So for all the foil and pull tab readings that "might" be rings she made me dig. I like digging so we make a good team.

We did poorly except for a cheap frog ring but we didn't even slow down to celebrate it's find.
The rain from the north scared us out with a huge downpour. (the new metal detector and pin-pointer are not waterproof) We got into the car (Yes, we drove the car to get to the park across the street) and headed south to...

THE LEGENDARY RING PARK

When we got there there was a couple of people gathering for a baseball game. The playground looked excellent to detect in so we got started. Mary instructing me to dig at remotely possible ring hits and it payed off.

She located a heart charm, heart ring, metal bead and a pewter necklace pendant. She also came through on the cold hard cash. 1 loonie, 2 quarters, 1 dime, 4 nickels, and nine pennies. equalling $1.89 giving the mason jar a total or $8.11.

The baseball game got into full swing as more people arrived and I realized that Mary, I and my car could quite easily get hit by a baseball. We decided to call it an early night.

Robot goes back to school

Though it was a late start, we got out to look for metal this morning. It was very hot and sunny today. It is a good thing we brought water.

We started off a one public school but only found a dinky car.
It was a batmobile and I was excited because this is the first dinky car we have ever found.



We continued on to a nearby school but as we got out of the car we were hailed for a vehicle on the street. It was Mary's brother Will, his girlfriend Marnie and his son Dawson. They were driving by on their way to lunch. Little Dawson was more excited about our metal detecting so they left him in our care while they retrieved food. Dawson was a great digger. And we were bringing up pennies in no time. He asked me to scan a worm hole for coins and to our surprise that brought up a penny too. Will and Marnie returned with sub sandwiches. They ate and left leaving us to keep scanning. It was long hot work but we managed to pull up 25 coins including a loonie, a quarter, a nickel and 17 pennies totaling $1.57 bring our total in the mason jar to $6.22.

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

After watching the 6 o'clock news, the rain had stopped. Mary said we could detect anywhere I wanted. So I said I wanted to start at St. Denis School at the corner Lake and Carlton. I have driven past there and seen the pea-gravel under the playground equipment and thought that would be a great place to look. Apparently someone else thought this was a great place to detect as well. The playground was stripped of all metal and the field was litter with holes unreplaced divots. (So don't go there! It's not worth it!)


I named another school I wanted to check out. Mary had never heard of it before and was unsure where we were going. She was reluctant when we saw a couple of boys playing basketball in the playground. But I assured her that everything would be fine.
Her arm was sore from swinging the detector earlier in the forest so I grabbed the controls. This was my first opportunity to spend quality time behind Mary's new machine. My controls were a little off but thankfully this one had knobs to tweak. Soon I was on a hot streak of finding pennies left, right and center. (I guess I could have picked a better coin that I had a natural ability to find but I wasn't complaining). I could find pennies like no other person could find them before. Mary was more than happy to dig up my pennies.
But than I got greedy and tried to be able to find nickels as well. This was very bad at doing. Mary had to dig up dozens of pop pull tabs and pudding lids before I figured out which readings (that might have been nickels) were definitely not money.

But still we did amazing!!! We found 28 coins in total: 1 loonie, 2 quarters, 2 dimes, a nickel and 22 pennies making a grand total of $1.97!!!! (Almost broke the $2 mark)

I have started a mason jar for all the coins that we have found. It now contains a grand total of $4.65!!!

Mary wants to go out again tomorrow. I had better get a good night sleep tonight. I think I'll put the jar of coins under my pillow to give me good dreams. Mary says she wants to curl up under the blankets with her metal detector (... hopefully that still means me)

The day we're been waiting for

I woke-up late today. Mary was up at 6:30 excited to try out the new detector but gave me another 2 hours of sleep. We had breakfast at J.J.Kapps which has become out favourite place for a fabulous and cheap breakfast (Super-breakfast - $6.99).





After we went across Ontario Street to the golf store to pick-up tees. These we plan to use to mark where we had scouted out metal until the digger can get there.
These worked out really well and showed up great in the forest.
We decided to use the "treasure map" again to find new homesteads. The first area we picked was bulldozed over and re-enforced concrete junk made finding the old foundation impossible.

We continued to the other homesteads we had found before to give them another sweep in case we miss something with the Fisher 1280X detector. We discriminated against iron which severely cut back on the amount of digging. We did pull up other items that had different metal content.

We found a saw blade, metal stirrup, part of a metal wheel, an angle with bolts, the blade from a ground till as well as mason jar lids, can pull-top, metal brackets and some foil balls that registered as possible gold rings on the detector (Had to at least try)

Now we did find 2 treasure today the we didn't leave behind in the woods. The first is a metal shoe from a doll. The child's initials "V.C." are scraped into the bottom of the shoe.

The second is a lock with a fancy keyhole cover.

Not exactly cold hard cash today but we could always go out again after the rain stopped.

New metal detectors!!!

The day has arrived...
The new metal detectors are ours!
After weeks of comparison shopping across North American we finally made a deal with our local Dan's Dive Shop to pick-up all the equipment we were looking for.

Mary got her White's MXT (pictured right) metal detector with carrying case, headphones, detector cover and books.
This unit can distinquish between different type of metal so we can tell the difference between an American nickel, Canadian quarter, gold ring, pull tab or a rusty nail. It can also tell us the depth in inches we need to dig to get to the metal. (The Fisher 1280x only has a flashy light and a beeping sound).


I got a Bulls-eye pin pointer. This handheld unit indicates the exact cubic inch of dirt the metal is located in. This will be invaluable to the person who is digging to reduce ground area disturbed. The digging can hand blistering work in hard, rocky soil. With this tool, the digger doesn't need to call the detector back from scouting to verify location of the target.


I also got a new hand shovel and a scoop. The hand showel has a sharpened tip and a serrated edge for cutting through roots. The scoop will be used on sand loose dirt and mud to sift for items larger than a dime.
The scoop is perfect for the beach whether in the water or on the shore.

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES... OUR FIRST FINDS WITH THE NEW DETECTOR!!!

We went to my sisters for dinner. My neice and nephew were excited to see the new metal detector. We went to a soccer field behind my sisters house to try it out. We were able to find a looney and four pennies in very little time. With the detailed display we were able to walk past all the foil wrappers, iron nails and other junk metal. The earth was extremely hard but the new shovel was up to the task. Though it grew dark the kids (Mary included) didn't want to give-up looking for MONEY!!!!

Mary wants to go out again tomorrow which means you can look forward to another blog detailing our finds.

New Camera

Earlier this week we made the trip to Best Buy to get a new camera. The camera I purchased was a 'Canon SD800IS' (pictured left) which is the same size and shape as my old 'Canon S400' (pictured right) Notice the size difference of the displays. The old one is about 1" across while the new camera is 2 1/2" (most of the back of the camera)

I had researched dozens of cameras at work and knew I wanted this one for 3 reasons:

1: Easily fits in my pocket. Photo opportunities happen fast and at anytime. A small camera I can keep in my pocket beside my wallet and there is no assembly required to get the camera set-up. I'm afraid my life has been reduced to point-and-click

2: ISO1600. This means the camera can take a picture faster and with less light. With the added image stablization I can take better photos inside with less blurring. (the picture above was taken on the highway by Mary as I was driving 100km/h. The MacKay transport truck is doing 100km/h the other direction. That is a 200km/h difference and the truck looks like it is stopped!!!!

3: Shutter speed can be slowed down to 15 seconds. Which gives my the ability to do cool night photos (pictured right is a photo from my back porch last night).

So I am very happy with the new camera!!! I carry it with me whenever I go outside just incase.

We are still looking for another metal detector to help us find less rusty nails and more valuable metals.

Big find, bigger loss

There are no pictures to this log. No sketches, no stick figures, nor diagrams. My 4 years old digital camera is now in critical condition - unable to be resuscitated. I will have to go shopping for another tomorrow.

After dinner we decided to go to a school playground. I started detecting and Mary was digging where I discovered a reading. We pulled up lots of parts of tin cans, foil wrappers and pull tabs. She became tired and refused to dig any further. I traded her hand-shovel for the detector and became to dig at our last location. From that spot I pull up a looney. We moved on and found a penny, then a Casino Niagara token, quarter and another penny to make our total $1.27.

A strong wind settled on us and a dark cloud came looming over the houses, Mary didn't want to quit (since we were now finding money)but I assured her that we had a good detecting day and it was best that we left before the storm hit.

The storm never did hit. We will have to try this again soon

For richer or poorer

This morning Mary had sent me a link to a metal detecting forums:

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/board,35.0.html

We met for lunch together and she highlighted the best finds from other metal detectors. Now, up until this point, I was really happy to be finding rusty nails, but now I hear stories of people finding gold coins, silver cups and police bullet proof vests in the ground!!!!

Mary has also been sending me lots of links for used metal detectors. She thinks if we had a second detector with depth guage we could find things easier.

After work I took her to Dan's Dive Shop to look at their detectors. I never realized how much of a celebrity she is in 'underwater diving circles'. The owners, Mat and Dan were super nice and they came extremely close to making a sale.

Tonight after dinner Mary wanted to go back to the beach to look for coins. I wanted to find more rusty nails.

One of us came up empty handed.... and this time it was me!

I only find one rusty nail, a couple dozen beer cap and various shards of glass on the beach. (No pictures. I just threw them staight into the garbage)

Mary on the other hand found 37cents and part of a cheap necklace. This is the most money we have ever found. I don't think I'll be bragging in the metal detecting forums. But if we do get a second detector maybe we could discover better finds.