An individual's skill (or luck) in finding coins with a metal detector can best be judged by the fruits of their efforts. Coins and tokens shown on this site were all found -over a 20 year time span- with a metal detector in Baker City Oregon.

You be the judge, is it skill or is it luck? Certainly doesn't hurt to live in an area where interesting coins and tokens were in circulation. The stories that these finds might tell! Fortunes won and lost, barroom brawls, parades and horse races, lost gold mines, stagecoach robberies, Indian wars, railroads, and cattle drives. All the elements of the Wild West that come together in this part of Oregon have left a trail of metal detecting treasure behind them.

Although the Oregon Trail figures prominently in Baker City's past, the glue that held her together was GOLD! For she was the Queen City of the eastern Oregon gold fields.

Many of the coins and tokens date back to the gold rush of 1898-1907; when nationwide interest in the western mines was reawakened by the Alaskan Klondike discoveries. Surrounded by productive gold mines, Baker City was a hotbed of stock swindlers and shady dealers more interested in plundering pocket books than mining gold. At one time we had a traveling semiprofessional baseball team and the world's largest bass drum, all dedicated to promoting gold mining stock. If I remember correctly, we also had the dubious honor of being home to the first stock swindler to be convicted of mail fraud. To this day, visitors need to watch their pocketbooks. Sad to say, modern day gold seekers are still be taken for a ride by our resident hustlers.

That's the question that I have fighting with. I like to think that more than a little bit of skill is involved. After all, the other coin shooters in town haven't made near the finds that I have. (Hate to brag, but the pictures tell the story.) Anyway, that luck versus skill question prompted me to get off my backside and write down how I made some of my better finds. To my surprise, I found that nearly every one of my better finds involved detecting tricks that most new coin shooters likely never heard about. So I decided to put together a combination How I Did It, You Can Do It Too guide for coin shooters. Being the cheapskate that my momma raised me, I decided that the best way to peddle the guide would be to offer it on the Internet. For those who might be interested in coin shooting with a metal detector, check out some sample pages.