<p><strong>Every day we are able a co-worker and I go out during lunch to metal detect for about 45 minutes or so around town.</strong> We are very limited due to the time we have but it's better than spending the day in the office with no break. I started doing this with him back in October of 2010. In February of 2011 I finally took the plunge and bought a "real" detector. I had been watching my co-worker use his E-TRAC for months and was very impressed with it.</p> [split] <p>Since that time I had made some decent finds for our area however, I had yet to find a nice silver pocket spill and had only twice before found two silvers in one day. Until 14 September 2011 that is.</p> <p>Like most other days we set out shortly before noon to do a quick hunt. We had gotten a little tired of our standard parks we were hunting and had tried to expand our horizons by doing a little research and finding nearby vacant lots, sidewalk strips, etc that we could hunt. We had found one inparticular that looked promising. In the 1920s it had houses on each of the lots. A couple of the lots now stood vacant and owned by the city and others were parking lots of nearby businesses. We decided to hit up some of the vacant lots. The first three days we hunted there turned up 3 silver coins. The forth day was by far the one to remember though.</p> <p>We had been hunting for about thirty minutes or so and time was running out. We were both hunting alongside the road in the grassy strips between the road and the sidewalk. I had managed to pull out several copper pennies, an older clad quarter and three 1940s Wheat Cents. Each of the three wheat cents had been iffy signals even for the E-TRAC but were worth digging. I had slowly been coming to the conclussion that like so many other places in our area, someone had already been through here and cherry picked most of the good coins out. The E-TRAC was certainly showing why it is one of the top detectors out there by finding those hard to find targets.</p> <p>I ran my coil over another one of those iffy signals that was reading as a faint 12-41/42 and at about 8 inches deep. I figured it was another wheat cent and dug the plug. After pulling the plug I stuck my pointer down in the hole and saw that the target was still a couple inches straight down in the center of the hole. I gently dug a little more dirt out and that was when I saw the silver roll through the dirt. I picked it up and could tell it was a dime by it's size. It was worn badly but with a little gentle rubbing I spotted the words "One Dime" on the back and knew I had gotten a Barber Dime. I got my hunting partner's attention and had him come over and check it out. We could make out that the date was 189? something. This was my oldest coin find to date.</p> <p>In my excitement I filled the hole back in and replaced the plug. I even walked a good 15 feet away from the hole I had dug while talking with my hunting partner. After another couple minutes or so we both got back to detecting. Out of sheer luck I turned and headed back to continue along the path I had been detecting and on a back swing of my coil it passed back over the hole I had just dug the Barber dime from. The E-TRAC immediately sounded off with that all too familiar high pitched silver bleep. I looked towards my partner and told him that there was something else still in the hole.</p> <p>I pulled the plug back out and stuck my probe back into the hole and it sounded off with a target close by. As I rolled the dirt away I spotted a silver quarter and pulled it out. We could tell that it was a Standing Liberty Quarter but couldn't make out the date. I went into the hole again and pulled out two Mercury Dimes. After checking the hole again I found another target which was yet another Barber Dime. I scanned the hole a last time and found no other targets. I as I was checking the pile of dirt beside the hole however I did find a Buffalo Nickel that I had dug out and missed. After filling the hole back in yet again and checking it thoroughly we decided it was time to head back to work.</p> <p>The end results of the days hunt for myself was $0.31 in clad, a 1941, 1944 and 1947 Wheat Cent, 1895 Barber Dime, 1909 Barber Dime, 1917 Standing Liberty Quarter, 1919 Mercury Dime, 1920? Mercury Dime and a 1923 Buffalo Nickel.</p> <p>Of all my hobbies, metal detecting is one of the most rewarding ones and I can't imagine hunting with any detector asides from a Minelab E-TRAC!</p>