Memorial Day weekend 2009 I planned on metal detecting every chance I had. It started on a Friday with an invite to a private park from a friend who had found several silver coins there before. When I say several silver coins I believe we are talking in the hundreds, it’s one of those places dreams are made of. It was about an hour and a half drive to meet him and I got up there and we hunted all day. If I recall, I found 7 silver coins in the park that day. I put them in my container to keep them safe and drove home. By the time I arrived I was beat and needed to get to bed because I had another hour and a half drive planned the next day for metal detecting and dinner at my mother’s house.
I woke up the next morning and met up with my brother at a church from the mid 1800’s he had got permission to metal detect. To this day that ground was the strangest I had ever ran my coil over. The dirt was so soft and airy. You could open a hole for a clad and it might fall several inches in a pocket that was in the soil. Not expecting much with the soil being so soft we kept plugging away. I got a deep signal with my Minelab E-Trac Metal Detector. It would only give me a tone in one direction and when I would turn 90 it would just break through the threshold. I dug and couldn’t believe it. An 1872 key date Indian in decent shape but with amazing detail! We wrapped it up not long after and headed to moms house for dinner.
By the time I got back home that night I quickly took pictures of my finds so far for the weekend and posted them on a forum I had built. I showered up and went to bed because the next morning I was driving yet ANOTHER hour plus to hunt with my brother by his house. He had secured us permission to an old school and two old churches that the township owned. We had a fun day and if I recall correctly we found a few silver coins and Indian head pennies.
After we were done metal detecting we went back to my brother’s house for dinner. After dinner we were sitting around discussing metal detecting and my teenage nephew was asking about some of my finds so I jumped on their laptop to show them some of the stuff I had posted on my forum from the weekend. I went to the finds I had posted the night before. There were several responses on my post asking if I had looked at the back of the 1916 dime. I scrolled back up and sure enough I had found a 1916 dime! In my rush and being so busy all weekend I had not even realized that I had found a 1916 dime! I had found 3 Mercury dimes that hunt and I was almost certain two of the three were indeed Denver mint mark but I had no idea.
I left very soon after and it was the longest drive home ever! I finally got home and super excited to look through Fridays finds and see what I had. My eyes were tired from the past three long days so my eyes strained to see the mint mark but it looked like a D! I quickly grabbed my loop and sure enough, a 1916 D Mercury dime! It was definitely one of my best weekends of metal detecting ever!
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