First Seated Dime of the year

Like everyone else I’m sure, the rain has limited our metal detecting time.  Rain is good, but too much rain is not good.  Soggy soil, high grass just makes MD a bear.  Still I managed another first for this year!  I went out of town to a place where I found a seated dime last year.  I’ve thought about going back constantly since my last trip.  Its an hour away and not a place I can go frequently.  When I pulled up to the place, the grass was freshly mowed putting a large smile on my face.  The fairly large field is behind a school built in the 1940’s, but something else has gone on there since we’ve found much older coins than the 40’s.  I crawled around for 45 minutes not finding a single coin.  Since I know I passed on shallow coins before (it was super cold and I stuck to digging the deeper coins) I knew someone else had been there.  Finally I hit a target in the silver dime range, mixed in with constant iron numbers.  I dug a 1916 mercury dime with three nails with it in the hole.  Wow, a testament to the Etrac again!  Hunted another 30 – 40 minutes and I dug another Mercury dime, a 1920D also in a hole with nails.  I hunted another hour or more and hit a target with silver quarter numbers and found a silver ring.  I was really hoping for a silver quarter!  Then I came across a target with numbers not like anything I was hitting earlier, 1-39, 1-36, 1-31 pretty constantly.  With the 1-39, I thought it was going to be a deep old wheat.  Then I saw a thin sliver of silver, really, a tang of a pull tab!?  Nope, it was a super thin, very worn 1854 seated dime!  Definitely the thinnest dime I’ve found to date.  I hunted another hour before I had to leave.  I hope I can get back there soon, I’m sure there must be more.

A Few Hard to Find Mercs

Finding silver has really slowed down for me here.  Most silvers are gone at my sites, so I decided to work on my techniques and see what I’ve missed.  I was surprised to find four Mercury dimes and one was only four inches deep.  The difference was they were mixed in with a lot of trash (I mean a lot!).  Only a crawling swing speed would allow a tiny squeak of silver and a brief glint of a silver number.  I dug a lot more nails doing this too, but it shows there is still silver there.  I’m still not a 100% confident I’m finding all the large silvers.  I refuse to believe all the deep large silvers have been found.  I may be proven wrong, but I haven’t found many large silvers mixed in with trash like silver dimes.  Since the trash affected dimes ring up really off on sound and numbers, I think the large silver does too.  If any one has suggestions, I’m willing to listen.  Best of luck and happy hunting………