My Detecting Start--Part 2

In the first part I mentioned my 1st two detectors. I owned the Relco( #1) from 1969 to 1978 the year I started a job in auto parts counter sales. In the fall of '78 I had a steady paycheck so I traded my Relco for a Bounty Hunter Red Baron(#2). I began finding lots more older coins with a good quality detector.



Red Baron and Red Baron RB7 looked the same

 Along a mile stretch of one road in Houston is a park area built in 1950 with two 2 lane road, and a divided grass center median. People who used the park would park on the center grass median, because there was no curb--the street was built with no curbs on the center grass strips. So from 1950 until about 1980, park users parked on the grass and walked across the 2 lanes to the park. They could park anywhere along the 1 mile stretch of road. About 1980 the city decided to install curbing on the medians along the road. The road crew scraped down a few inches of dirt, built up the forms for the curbing, poured the curbs then filled up the area inside the median with fill dirt.

I was lucky enough to know one of the foreman on the crew who let me detect the areas that had been scraped before the men came and built the curb forms. As long as I didn't bother the work crew or get in their way I had permission to dig. Many people had parked along the sections of the medians, so when I detected I was digging keys, key rings, metal bottle openers, some toy metal cars,wheat cents, Indian Head cents,V Nickels, Buffalo Nickels, Jefferson Nickels,Barber dimes, Mercury dimes, and Roosevelt dimes. Spending hours on my days off I dug plenty of Barber,Standing Liberty, and Washington quarters along with Barber halfs, Walking Liberty halfs, Franklin halfs and some Kennedy halfs. I even dug up a few Morgan and Peace silver dollars along those sections of grass. I had dug up enough coins to fill 2 large coffee cans full, and a small can of assorted other items. The workers caught up to where I hunted, passed me and were done before I finished the mile long section, as it was only about 4 months ----I have never hunted the remaining sections of center grass medians. I am guessing that they put about 3-6 inches of fill dirt to make it even with the top of the curbs after they had scraped down dirt to make the concrete curb forms. Most other roads with center divided medians have the concrete line right up against the curb. These have the concrete form line about 4-6 inches away from the actual curb.

I traded a bunch of the common silver coins and copper coins from this "project hunt" in the late 1980's for some rarer coins for my Mercury dime collection. I kept about $125 ( face value) worth of silver coins and put them in one of those glass canning jars with the metal wire type spring closure---- It makes a impressive display.

Similar to the Fisher I had

About 1982 I traded the Red Baron in for a Fisher(#3), I think it was a model 440 or 444. I used that one about a year and in 1983 I traded it for a newer Bounty Hunter Red Baron RB7(#4). I liked the Red Baron and wanted to see if the new model had better improvements on it. It seemed about the same as the old model, and I used it for a couple of years, finding old coins.

In those days if you were lucky, you would come back from detecting with a handfull of old coins and 3 or 4 clad coins. Nowadays you come back with a handful of clad coins and maybe if you are lucky, one or two older coins.