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Ok here is a good subject. It might sound nasty but............ 

Lets Talk Dirt A Little. 

The dirt we hunt in can mean the difference in finding old coins or clad coins. If you are out looking for them old Indian Head pennies or old silver coins then you need to hunt in dirt that has them type of coins in them. Finding that dirt can be tricky at times. Just because the park or where ever you are at is 100 years old it doesn't necessarily mean the dirt is that old. Now I know you are thinking that dirt has been here since the beginning of the earth, and you are right, but when I say old dirt I am talking about dirt that has been around and had lots of activity by people on it. So it should hold a few nice older coins and relics for us to dig up.

Fill dirt is usually hauled in and spread on the ground to bring up the low spots and keep water from pooling up in the rain and causing problems in the park. Now if you spend hours researching a place, find out it is old, then you spend the time to drive there. You get out and start your hunt. OK now if that dirt you are hunting in was brought in by dump trucks to spread out over the ground where you are swinging then actually you have wasted a bit of time researching and hunting ground you know nothing about! Don't really make sense now does it?

I am not saying that you can't or won't find older coins in fill dirt, because you can!! But you darn well better know where that fill dirt came from or you could be in for a long day of digging deep clad dimes, and memorial pennies, not to mention all kinds of deep junk. Two points here. If you say, " well I like to find clad." OK that's fine but let me ask you this. Why dig 6 inch holes all over the place to get some when you can go to another part of the park and pick it up all over the place right on top of the ground? Make sense don't it? Saves time?

The other point is people say, "I have found old coins in fill dirt right along side the clad coins." I agree you have and can. But here again what I am trying to stress is finding older coins CONSISTENTLY! If you hunt the fill dirt you might find coins consistently but most won't be old ones. Unless.........

You know where that fill dirt came from. I have actually followed dump trucks loaded with dirt that came from digging up sidewalks, roads, and other places where I KNEW there could be older treasures. I found where they took that dirt and I went and hunted in it! And I did find some nice coins and relics. But still going back to the fact if you are hunting in dirt you know nothing about, or where it came from, and how much activity it had you could be in for one of them long days of finding a bunch of junk and very little older stuff. I can't say you won't find anything but there is a saying that fits this attitude perfectly. " A blind hog will find an acorn if he roots long enough!" And some of us don't have that much time to root.

Now lets talk about "pushed around or turned dirt". This can be very productive, or can leave you very frustrated. A good example of this kind of dirt is. Around the outsides of tennis courts, basketball courts, sidewalks...any place where they have excavated to do work. Usually they don't haul in dirt for this, they end up with extra dirt where the concrete or asphalt takes its place. So they tend to spread it out across the ground. Which can leave a coin that was 8 inches under the ground and it ends up now being 2 inches. Right there among all your clad coins. I have hunted in this kind of dirt and found them aluminum screw on bottle caps 8 inches deep, and then walked another 5 foot from that spot and dug a barber dime at 3 inches!! Then you can go on farther and find an old Indian head penny 8 inches deep. The coins are scattered all over at different depths. Makes it hard to know what to dig. Sure you can go in there and dig all targets which I recommend, but if you have just drove and hour to get there, then you have an hour drive home, and only a half day to hunt you won't have the time to dig all targets! So like I said turned around dirt can be frustrating to find. Hopefully if you do encounter it, it will be at a park close to your home where you can take the time to clean it out. Even if it takes a few trips.

The best way to determine if you are in a good spot with good old dirt is by what you are finding and at what depths they come out, and the "consistency" of the depth and the age of the coins you are finding. Notice that word "consistency" again?? It will make a difference trust me in the way you start thinking about your hunting.

What to look for is the copper you find, which there is usually much more of than silver. You start digging Lincoln pennies at lets say around 4 inches......what are the dates of them? Lets say out of 5 of them 4 are dated in the 30's and 40' OK you can pretty well determine that if you start to hit some silver that it will most likely be your Mercury dimes. You are probably looking at activity around the same dates. Nothing deeper, or nothing shallower in the ground should mean that the activity stopped or was very light after that time. If the park or where ever is still used, then you will probably find some 3-4 inch silver Roosevelt dimes, Washington quarters and so on. Even some older Memorial pennies.

Now what I really like to find and gets me excited is to go to a spot and start digging up the older Lincoln pennies and Indian Head pennies. This is a great sign that the old silver is in there!! I usually find that on the average you will dig about 5 to 6 coppers to every silver you dig. This is not always true but on the average. Especially when the Indians are starting to pop out consistently. That can mean the seated coins could be there!! You find yourself some dirt like that and take your time you will be rewarded with some nice things to take back home with you.

The thing we need to remember is. What we are trying to accomplish is to get you to a good spot to hunt and find some nice older coins and things consistently. I don't care if you spend $2000.00 on a metal detector and extras, if you don't know where to use them you are going to get frustrated real quick. A metal detector can not find a silver coin if it isn't there to be found. Remember there is much more to being a good detectorists than buying a metal detector. 

(Reprinted with permission)

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