Why is there lipstick in Nadine's bush?

We got together again with Steve & Nadine at their house for a little detecting.
On a neighbouring property they were starting to build a barn and had dug a lot of earth and piled it in a large pile beside the property. We were detecting the piles and only finding junk metal. We ended up finding 1 penny. It was discussed we were going to go into a nearby bush that when Steve was younger would occasionally go into to play. We followed a trail and Steve & Bob went down to where there was a cave but the water was too high and they had to turn back.
Nadine & Mary were looking around and found old smashed bottles so we knew there would be a bottle dump somewhere but we never located it. We started detecting the trial and found an old Lipstick case -- strange place for that to be.

We continued down the trail but Bob started to feel shakey (lack of food) so we sent Nadine back to the house to retrieve some chips and pop while we continued detecting -- we found two horse-shoes and a pocket knife.

We continued down to the creek and Nadine caught up with us for a snack break and we continued on to another path where Steve remembered seeing pine tree's in the middle of a Maple forest, which was weird -- maybe there was a building there at some point, we didn't find anything though. It was decided we would head to a local school. There was another family playing in the playground equipment, so we headed for the baseball field / soccer field. We found some loose change in the field and a lot of pop tabs. Steve and Nadine moved to the playground equipment and came back out. It was getting dark so Bob and Mary headed to the playground equipment and collected $7.00 in Loonies (How did Steve & Nadine miss those?!)
LOL As it because too dark to detect we headed to a local pizza place and grabbed some slices and came back to our house to detect.

The Black Donnellys

Mary and I wanted a weekend away so we took a trip to Lucan, Ontario to visit the Donnelly Homestead and take the historical tour.

http://www.donnellys.com/

We arrived in town early so decided to tour the cemetery where the family is buried. In the gateway we found a penny and a nickel laying on top.
Six.
Mary's favorite number.

We made our way to the tombstone to find it decorated with melted candles, flowers and coins. It is said that if you place a coin on the the Donnelly tombstone and make a wish the spirits of the family will grant it for you. Six cents - easy come/easy go. I gave Mary the nickel and I used the penny and we both quietly made a wishes.
After we finished looking around we exited the cemetery to find another penny and nickel in the gateway of the cemetery.

We had more time to kill so we decided to explore the countryside and do some Geocaching. As we walked through the forest Mary started talking about the wishes and whenthey might come true.
"Crap!" I said, "I think mine already did"
"What did you wish for?" She asked.
I explained that with the wedding coming up, we have been spending a lot of money. I am hoping that the wedding gifts will offset the costs.
I wished that the money we give away we will receive back. All that is what happened with the 6 cents I gave away I received back again.

Mary wished to win the lottery.
We are still waiting for that to happen.

Another visit the the Quarry of Treasure

I don't know if people remember our visit to the swimming hole up north last year...

http://robot4metal.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-fifth-day-of-x-mas-my-true-love.html

...where we found 5 rings, almost $6 in coins and 2 terrible sunburns.

Having such a good time detecting the quarry last year we have been looking forward to doing it again. We scheduled to have Monday and Tuesday off from work to get away. Monday we went to Canada’s Wonderland to ride the Behemoth. So we decided to use Tuesday to go detecting.

We got to park before 11am and we slipped into the water with our detector. The park supervisor was very interested in what we were doing. After collected a bunch of nails and bottle cap I left the water to put them in the garbage. He walk out to greet me to see what I had and took they items from my ‘junk pocket’ to throw them away for me. We had to be careful to pocket our treasures underwater and speak in code so no one could tell how we were doing.

One of the first things we found was a sterling silver belly button chain with glass stones. As we waded further out we discover a big costume jewellery ring with a large yellow glass stone. Mary refused to let me hold onto it fearing I would lose it or the park supervisor would frisk me next time I left the water. Further down the shore we pulled up 2 matching hoop ear rings. The day became cloudy and the wind was quite cool. I left the water to warm up a bit in some dry clothes and I grabbed the beach detector.

As the rain clouds descended after 3pm we left the park to grab some lunch and count the coins we had found. They totalled $9.12!!!!

No word on the sunburns yet. Though we both got a lot of sun I think we are going to be o.k.

Another visit to the Gold Mine

Woke up late on Sunday and we weren't too sure what we were going to do with the day. I suggested that we call Steve and Nadine after breakfast to see if they wanted to metal detect somewhere. As we were starting breakfast the phone rang and it was them wanting to get together with us.

We went over to their house to see their new driveway and to detect their yard once again. It was an overcast day with big storm clouds moving in and out bring intermittent rain showers. We wrapped the electronics of the detectors in plastic bags and scanned through the light rain hiding indoors for the heavier showers. We turned up the sensitivity of the detector as well and the discrimination to try to find deeper coins and we didn’t do too bad:

Found 2 musket balls
Mechano Dinky Toys Made in England button.
6 modern pennies
Twoonie and a loonie
1920 penny
1913 dime
1909 penny
Ended the day with a fabulous corn roast with sausage on a bun.

Queen Victoria pays a visit

Steve and Nadine had their front yard ripped up to put in their new driveway. After the topsoil was cleared Mary and I were invited to come back to see if any new coins were uncovered. But, we have been getting hurricane amounts of rain everyday making detect almost impossible.
While walking in her yard, Nadine did notice a shining circle in the newly dug soil. She pulled out a 1891 Queen Victoria penny. I am insanely jealous. I saw the coin yesterday but didn't get a picture of it yet. I want a Queen Victoria coin so bad now. I guess I have something to look forward to finding.

Where is a five dollar coin when you need it?

After a fabulous dinner of Thai food we went out with Steve and Nadine again. We decided to go to a new school we have never been to before. As we parked the cars a bunch of minivans pulled up and a bunch of women with their kids piled out to practice soccer.

Mary and I decided to check out a giant tree stump while Steve and Nadine headed to the playground. Instantly all the children flocked to Steve and Nadine to see what they were doing. Mary and I only found garbage at the stump so we went to the edge of the forest but only found more wrappers and beer caps. Even behind the soccer posts and along the fence we found nothing of interest until we met up with Steve and Nadine on the other side of the field. They had found a toonie and a couple of pennies. At the time we had a nickel and a few pennies. Being competitive I wanted to beat their total so I became determined to find some toonies of our own. That didn't materialize. We did find a bunch of pennies, nickles and dimes. Since we couldn't beat there monetary total I was expecting that we found more clad pieces than them . As the sun set we met up again to discover they had found more toonies and loonies.


Nadine had found another money pit pulling their total over $5 with a couple dozen coins. Reluctantly we had to give up. As we were packing up I scoured the edge of the tarmac to try find the elusive $5 coin.

The gold mine goes bust

Mary and I have a membership on the Canadian Metal Detecting website:

http://canadianmetaldetecting.com

Mary occasionally posts items there, but I seldom visit because I get discouraged by hearing how well everyone else is doing. I feel really good after finding $3 in a school yard but then I go on-line and hear stories of people finding gold diamond rings and it gets me frustrated.

After posting our finds from Steve and Nadine's yard I finally felt like we belong to the metal detecting community. In the forums we have been getting lots of kudos and advice from others on how to continue our investigations. It was stated that we have discovered a gold mine of treasure and we should follow up with a deep and meticulous scan of the whole area and to dig all signals.

Sunday we had all day to scan their property before the construction crew started work the next day. We read up on-line on how to fine tune our detector. We got over there at 10am and stayed past 4pm. We scanned deep, we scanned meticulous, we dug everything that made a sound and we walked back and forth covering the entire property the best we could. This time we discovered 7 pennies, 1 nickle from 1960, a quarter and a toonie.

We also found a toy motorcycle, a police button, a musket ball and a 'Hammond, Turner and Son' deer embossed sporting button. There was no half pennies nor pennies from the late 1800's nor early 1900's.

Steve and Nadine found a tiny nickel from 1920.

We were happy to spend that day with them but I was hoping that we could live the life of rock stars in the metal detecting blog for just another day.

Never thought I'd see your face again

It was another hot night. Mary and I weren't too sure what we were going to do with the evening. Mom was out at the casino with her friends and we had to find supper for Jeff, Will and Dawson. We went to Jordan Pizza because I have heard they have amazing wings and pizza (Who says I don't give out my treasure locations?) I had planned to catch up on my metal detecting blog and practice my violin after supper when the phone rang. Cousin Nadine called and said they wanted a re-match on detecting their yard. Of course we were up for it but I hadn't updated my list on what I wanted to find next. I settled on adding a...

1910 King George penny to my list. When we arrived we decided to use a more systematic approach to detecting. We started going back and forth until Mary got distracted by Steve finding a...

1911 dime and veared diagonally across the lawn resulting in a hit.

I dug up another 1844 half penny and walked over to Steve to give it to him ('cause I knew he really, really wanted one too).The night got better after that (as if it could) as we pulled out a a toonie,

'Granted Superoir Temptler' hand saw medalion,

1914 American penny,

1956 quarter,

1929 King George penny, and a

1902 King George penny.

Steve and Nadine found...

two mini Lesney England trucks and a...

Konkletanks badge.

Good old King George

Mary's cousin Steve and his wife Nadine found a 1918 King George penny on his property a few weeks ago.

Instantly I felt a jealous excitement of his find. His house and property are hundreds of years old, so there is no telling what could be hidden there. Mary put-in the word that we wanted go over to help metal detect their yard. We called them after dinner to see if we could visit with our equipment. They agreed to tape their favorite shows to detect with us.

Steve and Nadine are getting there whole yard ripped out to put in a new driveway so we brought our big shovel. After visiting their cat "BOOTS" and seeing "the penny "we were inspired to find one of our own.

Steve and Nadine grabbed their own detector and we set out to explore their yard. Using our patented "walking willy-nilly" technique we soon had our first interesting hit. Digging down 4" I pulled up a loonie sized coin with markings I'd never seen before. We showed it to Steve who wanted to stop detecting to clean it up right away. I knew it was good find but wanted to keep going until the sun set. Digging large holes in their yard we pulled up a mini toy gun, a metal toy truck wheel, a dinky car boat trailer and what I want to believe is a musket ball.

We retired to the house to clean up our finds only to discover that the large coin we found was in fact a 1844 Canadian Half-penny. Mary looked it up on the internet and in it's condition it is only worth $2. I wouldn't sell it anyways. It is the bestest thing we found. I just don't know what I want to put on my "I'd love to find list" since we checked off - 'an 1800's coin' and - 'a musket ball'

Found a toy gun & dead at 40

It is weird having spare time after such a long stretch of being busy with selling the house.

It was Sunday afternoon and we were both sitting around on the edge of boredom when we decided to detect a nearby public school. We tried to scan this school last year but were scared off by teenagers. Not that we're generally scared of by teenagers. I just don't like answering questions and stopping for idol chit-chat.

We started detecting in the swing set pit. But found very little. We continued around the back of the school to the soccer field. Starting between the goal posts and walked center to center across the field.

Mary wanted to know why I preferred digging over detecting. As the big fluffy clouds soared by I knew the reason. Too many hours locked in an office and when I do get out I'm too busy watching traffic while I drive to enjoy nature around me. I love being outdoors and having the time to appreciate it.

Mary got a hit that was dead at 40 on the VDI scale. Normally metal jumps around through different numbers depending on its alloy. This was 40 and stayed at 40. We dug to reveal a brass scalloped shaped earring. Between the soccer field and the old baseball diamond is a shallow ditch. As we entered into this swale that our luck began to change. We pulled out a black metal cap gun missing it's barrel. Then we started finding a bunch of scattered coins including a 2-pence coin from England.

It was getting hot and we were starting to get burned so we returned to the sandpits and a big oak tree. There we found a metal buckle and a yellow dinky car deciding to call it a day after finding $1.04

School at Mud Bridge

This school isn't really at Mud Bridge. We just call it that because the last time we were here we then took the car to a place that is nicknamed "Mud Bridge".

It has been a long time since we detected. The sale of the house and moving out in less than a month occupied all our time. We are now living at Mary's mothers awaiting to get our new house this fall. Things have just started to settle down so we decided to get the old detector out and walk a school yard.

The grass was wet from recent rain and soon our socks and sneakers were soaked through. Mary was detecting as we walked around in the high clover that blanketed the soccer field. The ground was very quiet. We mainly walked only stopping a couple dozen times to dig. The earth was crumbling mud and made it hard to dig. My equipment and I soon became covered in mud.

Beside the baseball field I was digging and Mary went ahead to find the next spot. I had to call her back to re-scan my hole. This caused her to misplace where we wanted to dig next. She knew it was by an ant hole but we soon realized that the ant holes were everywhere. It was only a 12 reading on the detector indicating metal foil, but I was desperate for things to dig so we kept looking until we found it again. It paid off with a 10K gold ring with an ellipse shaped amethyst and 6 tiny diamond-like stones. We also found 58cents so you could say the ring was the biggest find (If you don't count the culvert Mary tried to get me to dig up).

Oldest coin yet

I've been craving to find an old coin from the 1800's. Our oldest coin so far is a quarter from 1956. Mary's mom Pat's friend Shelia's mom has property in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Through a series of phone calls we gained permission to detect her property. Mom picked us up in her van and the three of us went over. The yard was smaller than I hoped for but undaunted we systematically scanned that yard while mom talked to Shelia's mother. We found six things scanning both the front, back and boulevard: Nails, beer caps, bits of aluminium siding, chicken wire, a 1989 penny and lastly the OLDEST COIN YET!!!
I knew when I first plunked it from the ground that it was exceptional. As I wiped the dirt away I was greeted by King George's face. Recognizing the size of the coin as a nickle I cleared the other side to discover the date of 1938. Now perhaps we've received and older coin in our change from Tim Horton's in the past but to us this is a major find. Though our daily total is only 6 cents this was a great day and I glad we could get out.

Outing with Jeff and Wendy.

We're been wanting to metal detect with our friends Jeff and Wendy for quite some time. I was quite jealous when they found a coin from the 1800's outside of Welland. I'm hoping their luck and skill would rub off on us when we go out with them. We set up a play date for today after Jeff and Wendy returned from church so we got our equipment together in anticipation. They picked us up in their van and we were off to our first location containing an old house foundation. Jeff and Wendy had separate detectors, pin-pointers and shovels and double teamed the site while Mary and I worked together. We stayed close to the ATV trail away from the tall grasses, pricker bushes and bumble bees. We mainly found metal bullet casings while Jeff and Wendy pulled up strange pieces of metal. Our best find was a 1950's quarter and a large rock that is metallic. I'm going to try to break the rock apart at home to see why it makes all the detectors go crazy.
We joined up and went back to the van to try another location. We went to a public school that has been torn down. Jeff had a theory the the boulevard in front of the school is where the children would have waited for the bus and probably drop things. Jeff said their four year Ian gave them the idea and it had payed off for them in the past. Jeff and Wendy teamed up and we left our big shovels in the van. As we hit the boulevard we started pulling up pennies. After awhile we found a loonie we decided to check out the empty playground stone beds. The only thing we found was the saw-cut pipes from the swing-sets.
We followed the path towards the overgrown baseball diamond where only a couple rotten players benches remain and the diamond was overgrown with dandelions. Digging was difficult through the strong grass roots, compacted pea-gravel and dry patches. We only pulled up a couple of pennies. Someone had a barbecue going and we quickly became hungry. We noticed that a resident had cross the street to talk with Jeff and Wendy digging on the boulevard. Soon after the two residents were crossing field towards us. We quickly recognized it was our friend Geocaching Mike and his son coming to see how we were doing. It turns out that we parked right in front of his house without knowing. After a brief discussion they returned home and Mary and I headed back to get Jeff and Wendy. We found a break in the fence at the far end of the school and decided to detect the boulevard that we missed before on our way back to our friends. We found a couple pennies as we returned to our starting point. I asked Mary to detect right behind the curb thinking that children might sit there and we were rewarded with a sweet spot that I pulled dozens of pennies from the surface. After we found a quarter we decided to pack-up. It was a great day of detecting especial to be able to spend it with friends.

New pinpointer at the school

For the past couple of times we've gone out, I've let Mary detect while I used the pinpointer. I've been noticing the pinpointer hadn't been preforming too well. The unit wouldn't turn on when I pressed the button, it didn't stay on while the button was press or when there was metal in front of it, the sound would whimper before it stopped working. I assumed it needed new batteries considering I haven't changed the battery that came with it. But after putting a new one in, none of the problems went away. It became clear that the 'on' switch wasn't making contact. I had to wiggle it around the right way to make the pinpointer turn on, now it hardly turns on at all.

Mary had I great time teasing me about breaking it. I'm quite handy at re-wiring things but I would have to get a special switch and the free time to work on it. We are both quite busy working on the house and have little time to detect let alone drop everything to take on a small re-wiring project. On the other hand, we can not detect properly with the Pinpointer and I enjoy the escape from house work to detect. I had to make an executive decision, so I bought a new one while I try to fix the old one. We have couple of friends that detect, so once I get this one fixed we could lend it out when we detect together. Maybe I could improve the first one with a big 'Frankenstein' switch on the side, a giant flashlight strapped to the top and a Swiss-Army knife that pulls out from the bottom!!!

But I digress...

We had noticed on Saturday when we were driving around that a soccer tournament taking place in at a public school we like to detect at. We were intrigued that the spectators were not sitting on the hillside nor on the edge of the running track where we had detected before but on the white line right on the edge of the soccer field. The next day we came back and detected where we'd missed before and found absolutely nothing much new (except some electronic circuitry. No new switch for the Pinpointer though).

We moved to the playground equipment after the small children left. Mary's mom, Pat and nephew, Dawson came out to visit us. Dawson was very excited about digging so we gave him a shovel. The only problem was getting him to stop digging.

Our friend Debby was walking her dog Saddie in the school yard and I stopped to chat with her while Mary and Dawson began to scan the playground. Between me talking to Debby and Mary waiting for Dawson to stop creating a tunnel with his hand shovel we didn't do very much. This should be Dawson's metal detecting blog, he did all the work. At the end of the day we had 4 dinky cars, 2 capacitors, a mechanical pencil, couple of zippers and buttons, too many pull tabs to mention and $1.22 in clad.

p.s. It seems strange that Dawson has used our new pinpointer more than Mary and I combined.

Gangs, bullets, skulls and smoking 'J's behind the public school

It's Friday again and you know what that means... we survived another work week. And this was a hard one to get though... but you must already know that yourself.

We ordered in Thai food which cut down on our cooking and cleaning time so we were able to get out to do some metal detecting before it got dark. We loaded the equipment into the car and drove to a public school in which had some luck last year.

When we arrived, there was a gang of teenagers hanging out in the playground equipment. Mary was concerned about their presence but I knew I was bigger than them. We started detecting in the soccer field and Mary picked up two coins embedding in the surface of ground between the goal posts. It wasn't long before the teens creeped over to see what we were doing. I told them stories of pull tabs, bottle caps and balls of foil. They were quite impressed that our metal detector could pick-up foil. (I've never been impressed about how much foil our detecter discovers). They left the schoolyard and we moved to the playground equipment. We found mainly pennies and zippers amongst the climbing equipment and under the swing set we found a metal bullet caseing.

We moved over to the baseball diamond when another group of kids approached us. Again I told them stories of pull tabs, bottle caps and balls of foil. But they had no idea what foil was. I showed them a piece. This confused them and they left. Shortly after we pulled out the letter 'J" and a silver coloured skull charm. The sun had set and we started to walk back to the car since a baseball game had started up. On the way back I spotted a shiny toonie in the grass. In all we found $3.98

Bob and Mary get schooled

It was another beautiful day and Mary wanted to go for a hat-trick (metal detect three
days in a row). She wanted to go back to our toboggan hill to scan it one more
time, but I wanted to go somewhere different. I decided we should go to Charles Daily Park. I thought it would be great location with it's own toboggan hill and it is frequented by visitors year round.

We parked and started to scan at the bottom of the hill, then the side finishing off at the top to discover that we had found not one single thing. no garbage, no iron nails... nothing!!!!

It started to rain for some weird reason though it didn't rain anywhere else in the Niagara Region. We scrambled back to the car and came up with a plan 'B'... which was to go to Tim Hortons. I had definitely learned my lesson, that if people frequently go to a spot that you are thinking of going to... chances are someone has already been there with a metal detector.

After picking up coffees we decided to detect a local school. We decided to concentrate on the soccer field since there were children in the playground and we always try to stay away from children. A runner on the track stopped beside us and was interested in our progress. At the time, we had only found two bottle caps and some foil. I showed them to her and she no longer took interest in what we were doing for the rest of the day.

It was another beautiful day in the sun instead of cleaning house eventually netting us another $1.53.

Anyone for tennis?

Today we were very busy doing chores around the house. We had a couple of hours before I had to get ready for my violin concert tonight. Again it was a beautiful sunny day outside and Mary really wanted to metal detect. It was decided that we could go across the street to scan around the tennis courts in the park.

Leaving the big shovel at home we wandered over with a couple of Tim Horton's (coffees) to do some light scanning. I dialed down the sensitive of the detector to only to pick-up valuable metals a couple of inches down. The park was littered with broken beer bottles and jimmie hatz and realized we had to be carefull what we touched.

As we finished our coffees with used the cups for trash containers and cleaned up the park while we were there. The prospect of finding money in less than 2 hours in this filthy park was beginning to look grim but we persisted.

Cutting the smallest holes necessary, we made our way around the tennis courts replacing our divots to hide our intrusive digging. As we finished our circle we had exactly $2 in our pockets (and two overflowing coffee cups of garbage)