This was one of the last four articles I published in Lost Treasure, it was also one of the four I did not get paid for or get copies of the magazine. This may have been because of Postal improprieties, the Democratic Party of NM, and the Hachita Mayes political wheels. Postal employees at Hachita Bella Flores and Regina Balthazar were directly involved in this identity theft from me, and were also individually rewarded for their actions. Still nothing from the postmasters about this use of federal facilities to try to disappear people into Mexico.
This was also my last cover, and the last cover of the magazine.
How To Metal Detect Yards
By Bill Gallagher
1450 Words
Most metal detecting enthusiasts begin their career in their own front or back yard, and I too was one of those people. In the beginning it is not so much hunting for treasure, as it is a quest for privacy where one can become acquainted with a new way of listening, without being distracted by the world at large. Even so, there have been many surprise finds made by beginners while they learn their metal detectors in their own yards, and thats because yards are great places to hunt.
There are very few places that get as much foot traffic as the front and back yards of privately owned homes, and even though their sizes may vary considerably, there are spots within any yard that will produce better metal detecting targets than the rest of the area. The trick is to know what you are looking for, and to zero in on those spots first, so that they can then be reworked later on if the early targets are worthwhile.
Most older yards are real good examples of the cardinal rule of treasure hunting, which is The Deeper The Better. This means that even though you think you have hunted an area out, its probably not so. It just means you have reached the effective depth of your metal detecting apparatus, and you will still find things, even BETTER things, if you screen the dirt in selected spots, or use a more powerful machine.
The two most prime metal detecting areas of a house are the entrance/exit points, most usually these are in the form of front door/back door. The back door gets a lot more traffic, and most caches are found within a close proximity to the back door, but the front door can produce better finds because it is a more elite traffic, if you will. Some cache and other accumulated valuables have been found under front porches, and sometimes front porches were also of the type with a slatted wood floor, which allowed some coins to fall through on occasion, or even jewelry.
Children are some of the heaviest depositors of metal detector targets in yards, and that sometimes included things surreptitiously acquired, which means mom and dads stuff which was not supposed to end up in the yard but did. Some sewing collectibles are now metal detector targets because of this happenstance, alongwith many other things, especially cutlery.
Anyone who has regularly helped people find lost adornment knows well how much valuable jewelry is lost in yards, and the selection runs from class rings all the way up to diamond rings of many carats and fine quality. Just the amount of costume jewelry recovered from sites should clue any searcher to the fact that people lose jewelry all the time, and not just the cheap stuff either.
Where I grew up in Hialeah Florida (571 East 56th Street) the neighborhood existed for quite some time before we moved in, and many times during landscaping operations or while sliding into home base at our makeshift baseball diamond out back, we uncovered silver money, and in some quantity. Our baseball diamond was over the site of the old clothesline, and many coins were dropped there. Clotheslines are great places to metal detect, and many yards possess more than one clothesline site.
Another place I have done well is the site in a yard where dad or brothers worked on their cars. This is sometimes under a large tree, but not always. Also, trees are regularly removed, and sometimes old tree sites can be discerned by the footprint left once the stump was removed. Tree sites many times meant swings too, another nice thing for metal detectorists. The automobile work sites in yards can be trashy, but a lot of pocket spills happened, as well as other loss.
Many older homes had actual outhouses in their early days, and some of the outhouses were located away from the house, as depicted in many popular accountings, though the wealthier a family was the more apt they were to have an outhouse which was attached to the house, at the rear wall. The oldest and best bottles of northeast America come from such outhouses as that, in spite of the fact that many of those outhouses were emptied regularly by people who paid for the composted sewage, to then be used as fertilizer.
One outhouse I heard of around Washington DC was quite deep and brick lined. The diggers, a married couple, were given permission to dig the outhouse out while the property was in transit during a sale. The top twenty five feet was only dirt, because the outhouse had been scooped before being filled in and sealed. But that last ten feet! The scoopers had never been able to touch the bottom ten feet of the outhouse, and many very early hand blown bottle types were manifest there. Needless to say, the diggers perseverance was rewarded in a big way. Outhouses which were away from the house, and even some that were right on the back wall, usually leave a depression in the dirt, their footprint, after they become defunct and the earth settles. Sometimes just the broken glass is worth money in these things, say nothing about the occasional perfect and whole hand blown bottle which will also occur from time to time.
Fences and fence lines are definitely worth searching and probing, many a small dump will be located this way, and even post-hole banks. While we are on the subject of fence lines, it must be said that many metal detectorists have been known to ignore alleyways behind or even alongside some backyards, and that is not a good idea. Alleyways were repositories for many things including all kinds of trash, and some alleyways can even produce very old bottle dumps as can be found in Savannah Georgia and other places like it. The old story goes that the early diggers in Savannah would throw the black glass away, onto their back-fill piles, because they were only interested in the Cobalt John Ryan sodas below.
Another hot spot in backyards, or even front yards, especially in older areas of town, is where someone built a brick patio over a pre-existing feature. Lots of times homeowners will salvage brick or natural stone to enhance their living areas, and when this ends up over an area of the yard it can mean virgin territory below. The first time I experienced this was in Hyde Park Tampa Florida. I had permission to hunt an old house which was slated for demolition, so I even pulled up the bricks from a home made patio in the backyard. Underneath I noticed some very dark dirt, which is always nice, but it was much too trashy to detect, so I screened it and was handsomely rewarded in old coins and other items of interest from at least a century before. The brick had covered an area that had been an old wooden building, possibly dating back to the fort period of Tampa. Coins and buttons and even bottles and figurines were found there over a few weeks time.
.
Another time, while hunting downtown Tampa with #2 and #3, we came across a yard which was part of several blocks of overgrown city land. Those old homes had been really ornate and housed very wealthy business people from early Tampa. We found one backyard which had once contained a small workshop of a very experienced jeweler, and the things we found there were unbelievable. The best find was an ancient engraved seal in agate which was slightly damaged but brought big dollars at an online auction. There were shell cameos, jet carvings, and more at the jewelers shop site.
Also, at that jewelers house, we hunted the old curb and walkways in the front yard very earnestly, and we found old silver coinage like we wanted to, because we had a pretty good idea the silver coinage was there. #3 even got a small ring which was unrelated to the other deposit, or so it seemed then. Curbs are as much a part of a front yard as alleyways are a part of the backyard, remember.
Even though most of us begin our metal detecting careers in our own yards, that should be just a beginning, when considering the best sites to hunt. Never overlook the possibility of finding treasure in your own area, because its there, I guarantee it. Lost, until you find it. Good luck always, and I will look for you in the neighborhood.
Bibliography
Authors personal experience
Successful Coin Hunting, Charles Garrett
Various bottle price guides
Various historical maps
LAMARTIN.com
Photo Explanations
1-2: Costume jewelry can be found in profusion while metal detecting old yards, and is an indicator that there is probably even more valuable jewelry there.
3. Toy cars are just one type of collectible that can be found where ever children played in their back yards.
4. Harmonica parts are ubiquitous at old sites; the hunting of yards will produce many of them over time.
5,6. It is a rare yard indeed which will not produce a good coin or two.
No comments:
Post a Comment