Metal Detectors Super Store

Dear Stu,

Well, its in the dead of winter and I'm on the road again doing my favorite thing, detecting for Civil War Relics. At your suggestion I am taking 2 of my 3 Minelab Metal Detectors on this trip, Sovereign XS which is my favorite coin detector and Minelab Musketeer which has proven to be an outstanding Relic Hunting detector. My destination is the Holly Springs area which according to my research should have a number of good places to detect.  By the way, the key to finding good relics and other treasures is in the research that I do before each of my trips. I have a good library in my home town and they have been very generous in locating books for me, even those that are out of print. The research I did this time came from a book titled "Decision in Mississippi" by Edwin C. Bearse. (Out of Print - of course).

I searched a number of different sites and even though the weather was cold I was thankful there was no snow on the ground. I was also lucky even though the ground was somewhat frozen, I was still able to dig into the ground as a number of items were quite deep.

One of the first areas I detected was strangely enough in some trenches that had been dug in an area reputed to be a campsite. I of course had to widen and definitely deepen the trenches as both the Minelab detectors produced different "finds." Minnie balls are easy to find with some detectors and difficult with others. My Sovereign cut through the soil quite easily and I started to recover one minnie ball after another and once I cleared the trench of the easy finds, I switched over to my Musketeer to see what I might have missed.  Found a number of minnies about 16 inches deep and they were followed by several uniform buttons that were even deeper. Stu, I used the Automax V2 Pinpointer and you were right "I saved a heck of a lot of time in locating small targets." The pinpointer got the uniform buttons in a few seconds saving me more precious time.

Second site was a real jungle. Lot's of vines, tree roots of all sizes and more brush than I usually like to hunt. Tried to stay in some clearings where I felt I might have it easier proved to be the right decision. My first find was a cannonball only about a foot down. My Sovereign actually screamed when it went over the target. Easy find, easy dig, happy me! I paid for the cannonball by finding many pieces of iron, lead and junk, junk, junk.

My next area was the easiest of all. Large cleared fields where my luck went from good to better and I started finding many coins dated from 1860 to 1880, including a number of 1880 Silver dollars, large cents, half dimes, v-nickels, buffalo nickels, lincoln pennies, etc. showing that this area had been used probably earlier than Civil War and through the 1920's and more recent. I'm always amazed at what can be found in places no one would even imagine coins and artifacts might be just waiting for someone smart enough to check.  Oh, I also found a number of small rings I believe they are silver and look hand made, I'll let you know when I clean them up.

Sorry I didn't use my digital camera, only had my regular "old box". Hope the pictures are ok. Forgot to mention some of the older coins were in a buried bag which totally disintegrated as I removed it from the ground.

As good as this area was for metal detecting, it turned out I was the only one detecting on all of these sites. Sure it was winter, sure it was cold, but I proved once again that I can detect all year long as long as I dress correctly and do my research before I get on the road.

Regards
Jim McGarr

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