Wonder what we do miss with those little blips.

Reading our local club's forum this morning there was a very interesting conversation going on regarding a recent hoard of £1 coins that had just been found. There were 74 £1 coins in total, 34 loose and two bank sealed bags of 20. The conversation they were having certainly makes you think about what you may be leaving behind by ignoring those little bleeps the detector is giving off.

Here is the main part of their conversation:::

Detectorist 1.  Was really strange we think someone robbed the near bye pub, there were two complete bank sealed bags of golden nuggets all pre 2000 in date all confined to a 20 ft square area, 3 of us dug them out at a depth of 6 to 9 inches , it was a real test as some signals were the slightest blip and we only dug these really iffy ones because we knew they were there.
Even the complete 20 coin bags gave iffy signals...a good test in digging out a hoard even if they were just nuggets.

Detectorist 2. Beggars belief that the full bags still gave an iffy signal cos just a single GOLDEN nugget gives a cracking signal usually. Was the ground quite mineralised.

Detectorist 1. Not overly, it was more the depth, the bags were maybe a 10 or 12 inches deep individual coins were really hard, some were closer to surface and gave the normal 82, but as we cleared them we were left with little blips at 91 to 97.

Detectorist 2. Lesson to be learned there for the number watchers.

Detectorist 1. It was no different than digging any other hoard, the Roman one I was involved in a couple of years ago was very similar, once you know it's a hoard you have to dig just about any signal, it's then that you realise how much stuff we miss, as you remove the obvious signals it gets harder and harder, and you end up digging just blips, which you would normally not even notice.

The machine he was using was a Deus, same as I use. I've just got into the habit of digging 'iffy' sounding signals, now I will have to re-tune my ears for those 'blips' as well. 

Wednesday 7 January 2015.