Welcome to those that have come here due to the prompt from the article in Western & Eastern Treasure magazine.

This is the portion of the California metal detecting ("Kinzli forum") that is accessible without the sign-up process. If you want to go to the main "California metal detecting" page, you can sign up. It's easy (just pick a name and password). The main page requires the signup, to deal with spam issues.

This thread will concern itself with just the subject of the article, so feel free to post any questions or comments. Myself and some of the others who hunted that project will chime in with replies. I will also post more pictures here from the hunt, since obviously the magazine could only select a few.

As you browse down, it may be necessary to use your left/right scroll bar to see the entire pix and text's to follow (d/t large photo size).

Here's a landscape shot. Notice the old houses in the background that give clue to the age of the neighborhood:

and......

Notice to the right of the tractor - the depth of the cut into the turf


Here's the gang showing up at dusk one of the nights, getting ready to go to work.





















A shot of ray's silver:




Ray's wife Julie works above the cut (where only incidental scraping had been done). Notice in the foreground, the depth of the scrape. The unbothered trees had been left at their original level.




Another shot of Ray's silver:




This key-date 1923s quarter ought to be worth a pretty penny? :dinnertime:

There were a lot of old foreign coins testifying to the part that San Francisco played as a port of entry to the United States in the past: (also shown is a USA half dime). These coins were from my finds.



Here's one night's hunters lined up ready to start. From the left: 1) Gary Collier, a veteran hunter from the late 1970s (very early '80s?), 2) JW (Jim) from the Oakland area, 3) Mike Simon from Alameda (near Oakland), 4) myself- Tom from Salinas (south of San Jose), 5) Mike "the machine" Walding, from San Bruno. Mike's been detecting since 1977 - back when it was not unusual to dig dozens of silver coins in a day from practically virgin parks in SF using the first 6000d's and early Teknetics, 6) Bill "Metroman" ("925Bill" on the forum). Bill has also been at it since the mid 1970s, and is a wealth of information about SF peninsula spots, history, etc.... Several other hunters who were in on the various nights, are not pictured here.



Ray holding a welcome sight: the reeded edge of a silver coin in a dirt clod he's about to break open :wub:





Here's my silver from the various nights. Missing is an 1840-something half-dime, which I lost somewhere that night (durn half-dimes are so small and easy to loose anyhow :angry: ) Also missing are some mercs passed out to tractor drivers for their "cut" :lol:



Here's all my coins (both old and new), that totalled 400-ish. To the left is a gold band I found there. Gold jewelry was VERY few and far between. Although there were several gold rings found between the hunters, it would be safe to say that for each one found, probably 500 pieces of aluminum junk had to be dug (tabs, foil, etc...). In some sections on some nights, of course aluminum junk wasn't a problem, d/t we we'd be in perfect scrapes with no new stuff in there (tabs and such were only around since the mid 1960s). But by the end of the project, dirt was getting mixed around and a lot of junk had to be dug.



Here's an octogon shaped trade token. I can't remember who found this one, or what it says. Maybe Ray will pop on here and refresh me.




Here's Mary (forum monicker "Bluefoot"). She drives an ambulance for SF as her occupation. Her smile and friendly demeanor was always uplifting to the gang any night she was able to come ;)




Here's Ray, down to dig another target in the dark.



Here's a shot before the project really got underway. This was just the "grubbing" phase, where only the grass was scraped off, just to the roots (not deep enought) While it looked impressive, we quickly found out there was still way too much modern junk. Look closer and you can see that the vast majority of the piles are actually turf, not dirt.






Ray got this impressive 1859 S key date quarter. He sent it in for grading/slabbing. What was the results of that Ray?

wow tom thats an awesome post . now im starting to get an idea of what kind of site to hunt ive never really found anything that old yet but it gets the heart pumping thanks
mike

WOW WOW and WOW, as I opened this post and started scolling through the pics then I hit the first pile of Silver my eyes nearly popped outta my head.

Thats what the cream of this hobby is.
Simply amazing.
Absolutely incredible.

That SLQ is worth BIG $$$.

Well done to all that had the chance to hit this spot.

I'll echo what Mikey and G.A. said , that is really something !!
Great story ,finds , pictures on what had to be a thrilling adventure for all involved . Thanks for posting that Tom , this thread is a real motivator .

got my copy today- congrats and awesome job on "the great silver scrape". :morebeer:

WOW[B]..What a great inspiration to read your article. I'm going to pick up a copy of the magazine for rainy day dreaming...Thanks a lot Tom!


Joe

:thumber: You guys made some terrific finds. B) B) :D :D

Great job on the pictures! :D It's refreshing to look at the pictures. Man those trees look huge!

Incredible finds were made out there.

All of you that shared your finds with my guys still talk about those nights we stopped by. You are an inspiration to those who do not hunt. You guys and Gals Rock!

Thanks for motivating me!

I feel your article was one of the best I've read in W & E Treasures. While WHAT people find is always interesting, HOW they found it is what is more interesting to me, and your article had plenty of that. Your article provided a "little window" into the watchfullness and timing required to hunt a construction site. Wow! I would say you "got out what you put into it" - a lot.

I had a couple questions. It sounded like you did your hunting at night. Why? Is that because there was the least activity going on then? Secondly, how do you hunt at night? Were there street lights or did you use flash lights or just hunt "by feel"? Lastly, in one of the pictures showing Ray holding a clod of dirt, it looked like he had blue rubber gloves on. Do you hunt with gloves on? I've been hunting for 6 yrs (an hour a week if I'm lucky) and have never worn gloves. I've had a few close calls with sharp pieces of glass, and I've poked myself a couple times with my probe (dah) but nothing serious. Do you recommend wearing gloves and what kind - rubber, plastic, leather, cloth, etc.?

Thanks again for your article.

Wildwest, thanx for the comments. It was a lot of fun to write it, and was a group effort of text, photos, etc... for several of us.

To answer your questions:

We hunted at night d/t multiple reasons: The workers leave at 5pm-ish. Certainly they don't want people in their dodging tractors, in their way, etc.... Always hunt demolition sites after the workers leave for the day, so you're not an eye-sore, etc.... ;) Next, it just naturally fit with most of our's work day shedules anyways. Ie.: we would all get off of our jobs, and meet up there.

We hunted with no lights, other than distant street lights, the stars, etc... Ie.: no head-lamp lights. We only turned of flashlights to look at objects, dates, etc... but used no light in the course of the actual detecting. The reason for this is: If you do use a headlamp, your eyes become tuned to the beam of the light. Then, pretty soon, you get blinded and can't see anything else around you, outside the beam. Better to just let your eyes adjust to the dark, and only use a light when necessary. The lights of the distant street, moon, etc.. were enough that you could see around parked tractors, obstructions, etc... Another reason we didn't use lights is, because we didn't want to attract attention to ourselves from the street people. It wasn't a very .... uh .... "nice" neighborhood (quite blighted as a matter of fact). We didn't want to advertise to street urchins that we were in there. From the street perspective, the const. site was dark and empty, and we wanted it to stay looking that way. A bunch of light beams darting about, could cause some busy-body to want to know "what are those guys doing?" Out of site is .... out of mind :ph43r:

Your last question about gloves. Ray was the only one who wore gloves, to my knowledge. I personally don't use gloves ever, because I prefer to be able to feel things better in the dark. Yeah sure, once in awhile you get knicked. Oh well :drunk: . Our night-time lows are pleasant in the summer, so it wasn't a cold thing either. Maybe he will chime in and say why he was wearing gloves.