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).