Cache Hunting - How To Locate A Coin Cache In the Farm Field - Tutorial
Pinpointing a Treasure Cache In the Ground
This method is applicable only for the farm fields that are plowed annually. These days, many fields encompass the sites of old settlements that flourished once but, for different reasons, disappeared forever in the past. The proof of their former existence could be found either on the old maps or in form of fragments of bricks, pottery, and foundation stones scattered on the ground in farm fields. That's where a discovery of the coin cache can be just "a piece of cake."
The Cache is usually buried no deeper than the arm's length for the purpose of easy retrieval. The treasures could be placed into any container, either metal or nonmetal.
In my treasure hunting experience, all coin caches that I discovered were
just stacks of coins in dirt. That would indicate that the coins were placed
into a wooden keg, stocking or just a sock which had disintegrated over
a long period of time.
It's hard to discover a buried treasure that was placed into an iron pot. That would require a more sophisticated approach.
To search and recover buried stacks of coins is much easier as a good part of the job would have been already done by the field plowings and natural processes.
What usually has been taking place over many years is simple. Initially, a field plow would hit an upper part of the coin column, catch a few coins from it, and bring them closer to the ground surface. The subsequent field plowings would move the coins further away from the cache and up to the surface.
Many winter frosts would finally finish the job by pushing the coins out of the ground, thus, creating a Coin Spread-a spot, approximately 10 yards by 5 yards, at which the coins would be scattered on the ground. Such a Coin Spread would have a certain pattern: either a triangle or an oval.
When you discover a coin spread in the field, it's very important that you determine its pattern. That would be helpful in pinpointing the cache. The best way to see the pattern is not to cover the holes that would yield the coins before all work is done.
After you would have dug a last coin and made sure no more coin signals
left at the spot, you would be able to see the pattern clearly. If it has
a triangle shape, the top of the triangle that is in line with direction
of plowing would indicate a cache's location. If the shape of coin spread
is oval, its center point would be where the cache is buried.
Another way to pinpoint the cache is to look for a large iron signal. That would require both the use of All Metal mode of Discrimination and a larger Search Coil.
Out of being superstitious, a person who buried a cache would also bury a Cache-Protector, usually an iron padlock or door bolt, on top of the cache. In medieval times, it was believed that a Cache-Protector would prevent the discovery of treasure by others.
Ironically, a few centuries later, the cache-protector has become a true protector against any metal detector: it fools the machine by masking a signal from the loot underneath such an iron object.
Unless the cache-protector had been moved away from the treasure by field plow, the cache would be missed by an inexperienced treasure hunter. It's wise to scan a Hot spot with metal detector in All Metal Mode before digging down. To "Recovery of Coin Cache in the Field" on Page 2
