Failure

[Tugboat]

Well, today i detected 2 parks both old and big, both in the back streets! One was an old cemetery that was changed to a park in the 50s! Both parks had playground new style and old style (concrete pipes etc) tables, free bbq areas, basketball hoop etc! I dug over 30 plugs to find junk, padlocks, big nuts, washers, lead strips! Do you guys know when an area is an empty area? Or its been detected before! Seen so many YouTube videos from the USA, about digging playgrounds swings, problem is our council have put all that sponge padding down now! I know to think outside the square but not one coin! maybe a trip to hills or york peninsular is on the cards

 

[Sandta]

Good morning tug,
Mate, not every outing is productive (for me anyway)
As im sure you have already heard ... Research is crucial.
But what you consider to be a great lead , could have been for someone else too.
Others may well have been there before you.
Just remember ,under those frustrating conditions, to keep those plugs neat and tidy.(and as small as possible)

 

[rocketaroo]

I have had plenty of crap hunts, and will have plenty more no doubt! Look for empty house sites in old areas, footpaths, parks close to schools, shops, or pubs. Google earth is good, but nothing beats going for a drive in an old area to spot sites. Anything obvious has been detected. The beach is always a chance, think about places that the finds are replenished.

 

[AtomRat]

We don't often post the junk most days mate, sometimes there's a shopping bag full of it you don't see :lol:
If your getting padlocks, washers, pulltabs etc there should be coin as well, unless there's another local swinging as well.
I've been on a terrible run, probably gone out 6 times, swinging 4-5 hours each, for mabey 1 coin, a heap of alloy junk and bottle tops etc so nothing after digging all that time. You may have to dot around after reading some research to find your first good location, just keep at it and the targets will begin to appear..mabey a gold ring as your very first, you never know.

You may find that where you are swinging could have been levelled by dozers, burying coins deep, and where the research pays off, especially with photos, to find areas un touched, and havnt had tar or concrete layed over it etc. Dozered areas around parks I've noticed, generally have a few obvious grass mounds a couple of metres tall. People like to sit on these newer mounds though, especially if a tree for shade is on it too.

Sponge pad is annoying..

Any rivers or creeks nearby?

 

[ColinD]

Yup... went to a spot I've been looking at for about a month that I was sure would be loaded with coins.... one 10c.
C

 

[Tugboat]

Cheers guys, with vacant land whats the go! I live in a seaside suburb, a lot of older homes are being demolished to build 2 new ones! Now i notice there is a 2 to 3 month time gap between knockdown and the new slab going down! Am i allowed to detect on these blocks if not fenced off?
And how deep is to far to dig? Yesterday i was getting good tones and numbers, but 40cm and more deep. I dont want to take a shovel to the park only a small relic digger to make a plug! I came across 4 like this! Coin or junk? Did my local hotel beer garden the first day i brought my detector found $11 in coin, might go back now i know what all the buttons mean on my X-TERRA! (Funny thing same day i went to the beach for 20mins, sun was going down, and found $4.20 in the sand! I thought wow how easy is this $15 in one hour!!!!! Beginners luck) I also find tree roots are giving a good tone and numbers, so is metal under the root or in the roots?
Cheers!

 

[Heatho]

Cheers guys, with vacant land whats the go! I live in a seaside suburb, a lot of older homes are being demolished to build 2 new ones! Now i notice there is a 2 to 3 month time gap between knockdown and the new slab going down! Am i allowed to detect on these blocks if not fenced off?
And how deep is to far to dig? Yesterday i was getting good tones and numbers, but 40cm and more deep. I dont want to take a shovel to the park only a small relic digger to make a plug! I came across 4 like this! Coin or junk? Did my local hotel beer garden the first day i brought my detector found $11 in coin, might go back now i know what all the buttons mean on my X-TERRA! (Funny thing same day i went to the beach for 20mins, sun was going down, and found $4.20 in the sand! I thought wow how easy is this $15 in one hour!!!!! Beginners luck) I also find tree roots are giving a good tone and numbers, so is metal under the root or in the roots?
Cheers!

That would be trespassing Tugboat, you would have to ask the property owner for permission. If you take a shovel to parks and dig big messy holes you will likely be arrested, sent to court and fined for vandalism. This really is a hobby where you have to think about your actions and the consequences of such actions. Digging square plugs is not reccommended either, dig triangle plugs and leave 1 side attached so the grass in the plug won't die. You really do not want to dig really deep holes, I've walked away from hundreds of targets because they were too deep and recovery of the target would have made a mess.

Just be careful not to upset anyone and it should be ok, make a mess and as I said you may be charged with vandalism.

 

[rocketaroo]

you can find vacant land, thats been vacant for decades. Jumping on freshly demo'd sites isnt an option, plus its often temp fenced. People hate the word "plug", they imagine crater 4 sided sods, that you see on american youtube vids. A plug should never be shallow...that grass will die, and flap open. I reckon a three sider is fine, make sure you smash it down flat. Park detecting days are almost over, and its hard to find one that hasnt been done anyway. Contentious issues are these lol, better you use common sense, and figure it out yourself

 

[Ramjet]

We are often surprised by some sites. A spot we belive will give up lovely treasure can be almost empty but then another site we don't think will be any good turns out to be a honey holes.

We all have crappy hunts.

 

[Goldpick]

Reminds me of when I first picked up on park detecting. It was quite frustrating for the first few months until I got a handle on what good deep coin tones sound like, and at what depth to expect to find them at in any given area. A local park that I had initially detected over period of a couple of weeks, many years ago, provided nothing more than a few shallow decimal coins, and a lot of junk at first.

Then one day I hit my first pre-decimal - a florin, and the coins seemed to flow after that. What I learnt was how a coin tone should sound at depth, say compared to a shallower target, and what size targets I should be looking for when pinpointing (most were reasonably faint, and pinpointed as a small target compared to shallower canslaw and other obnoxiously loud non-ferrous items). Turned out that I had been walking straight over all those faint deeper coins, and only picking out the more obvious shallow targets, most of which was crap.

If you use target ID's, coin numbers should remain reasonably stable, whereas with irregular shaped items (ie. Canslaw) the numbers can jump around by several digits, despite sounding good. The deeper the coin, the less accurate your ID will be, hence you should rely more on your tones for accuracy on deeper coins.

Some parks in the city are littered with so much modern junk, you are better off walking away from them to save on frustration, especially when initially getting your head around on how your detector operates.

The beach is probably the best and least frustrating place to learn on initially, and still manage to walk away with some coins for your effort (or jewllery if you are lucky). Tot lots are heavily hit these days, so you might struggle to find a paying one. Hills tot lots have always been more fruitful than city ones.

Also do keep in mind if a cemetery has been turned into a park, it is more than likely that the whole area has been top dressed with soil, adding extra depth to what would already be reasonably deep pre-decimal coins in the first place.

The Adelaide Hills has been good to me regarding pre-decimals, probably more so that in the city, especially river bank frontage. Some areas are found with some research, whilst others are found with blind luck.

 

[Brian_au]

A lot can depend on wheye you are and what you are hoping to achieve. Any decent size suburb, town or city will provide some excitement. You will find the guys out swinging regularly smash the beginner and inexperienced. This is like any hobby or even sport for that matter.
If I was starting over I would stick to chip bark playgrounds and grassed parks until I learnt the detector and detecting. Lots of digging puts the runs on the board. The first pre decimal, the first ring, the first deep mower clipped 2c or 1c piece are memories that stay with you.
To find coins and treasure you need to gain insight on where they are dropped to maximize your efforts. The southern side of the big shady trees in a park are always good areas they are the places people gather in summer to sit. The grandstand area at a sports oval is lots of work on the ears with little result due to junk. These things take time to figure out. Take time to watch people and places to work out "likely" areas. And dig a lot of junk. All the coins will be different to junk in most cases it just takes practice to sort the 2 out.
No short cuts no matter who you are or what you swing. And we all have disappointing days or spots. Can't be helped.
Places to dig are only limited by how far you want to travel and how limited your thinking is. Schools parks and playgrounds are easy and consistent. Access to churches, swimming holes, old sites and homesteads, river crossings, road spoil, rail stations, pub sites, sporting grounds, backyards take time to find and secure access. This is far from a comprehensive list but like gold it takes time to research and develop knowledge of an area and types of spots left of Centre to pull more coins and treasures.
I recently went to one old gold area hit from the 1800s that still had silver pre decimals in the ground less than 100m from the supermarket. I wonder how many 100s or possibly 1000s of detectors were in that area that never hit the town lot and gave up 10 silver coins and a swag of moderns. You never know until you swing.
Good luck.