Another rule to follow:
Use Safe Target Recovery Techniques. Get yourself a long (8" – 10") blunt probe, a long, heavy screwdriver, a stout knife, a stout garden trowel, and a plastic Frisbee. Consider getting a carpenter's apron with divided pockets for trash and goodies. Carry some tissue paper to wrap that really good coin that you are going to find. School playgrounds are good places to start. You won’t find anything old in the wood chip piles beneath the swing sets, but you will gain confidence in running the detector. You will also be able to dig without causing any damage to any grassy areas. When you find a signal, pass the detector head over it at different angles. Try to locate and identify the target, using the detector’s pinpoint and target identification features.Pinpointing and Target Recovery
One key to success in recovering a coin without damaging a lawn lies in your ability to precisely locate, "pinpoint" the object that your detector has located. The better pinpointing detectors have an all-metal, no-motion mode. Switch to the all-metal mode and move the search coil until you hear the strongest signal. The target should be directly under the center of the search coil. As deep coins are usually easier to pinpoint than shallow coins, one pinpointing trick is to convince your detector that the target is small and deep. For detectors with a detune feature, simply hold the coil over the target and hit the detune trigger. The signal should decrease to a weak signal centered directly under the center of the coil. Take your probe and stick it in the ground at that point. For detectors without a detune feature, raise the coil until you can barely hear the target. Again, the target should be directly under the center of the search coil.
For motion detectors without an all-metals mode, the target can be located by swinging the coil across the target at 90-degree angles in an X-shaped pattern. The target should lie directly under the center of the X. Again, mark your point with a probe.
Hit the Bull's eye
After pinpointing the target, gently push the probe down until it encounters resistance. Not too hard, you are looking for collector coins and definitely do not want to scratch your 1916d dime. If you pinpointed accurately, you should feel the coin with the probe. This is where detectors with depth meters prove useful; if the depth reading was 6 inches and you probe to 8 inches without hitting anything; move slightly to one side and try again. You will probably have to probe several times before you hit the target. Two things to remember; a coin tilted on edge will give a false pinpoint and may be located several inches to one side or another. Althoug a ring may pinpoint exactly, all your probe may find is where the finger was. So you may want to dig for the target even though you did not hit anything with the probe. Another thing to keep in mind; probing works real well in sandy or loamy lawns, but not so well in rocky lawns.
Probe, Cut, and Stir Now that you have located the target with the probe, you need to decide on how to dig your hole. Myself, I prefer the knife-screwdriver-trowel method. Leaving the probe in the ground above the target, take your knife and cut a 4" to 6" slit in the grass sod. Gently widen the slit to about 1" width, then take the screwdriver and insert at an angle from one end of the slit, pushing the end of the screwdriver under the target. Next lever the point of the screwdriver up and the coin should pop out of the hole. For deep targets, probe the bottom of the hole, and then stir things up with the screwdriver. Insert the trowel into the slit and remove a handful of dirt, placing it on a plastic sheet or Frisbee. Continue excavating dirt until you reach the depth that the coin should be at. Try locating the coin with the detector after each trowel full of dirt is removed. When you no longer hear the target in the hole, try the Frisbee, it should be in the dirt that you just excavated. When you have trouble finding the target, dig into the sides of the hole; the target may be an on-edge coin. If the target signal goes away and you can't get a signal from you dirt pile or the hole, remove all loose dirt from the hole. Many times I have knocked a shallower, on-edge coin into my hole while digging. I have also tilted flat-lying coins on end as I dug. As I don't know of any metal detector that gives strong signals for deep, on-edge coins, it is understandable that the target signal disappears. Speaking of depth, just how deep can you expect to find a coin? Hard question to answer; as it depends in large part upon the size of coin, size of the search coil that you are using, and amount of ground mineralization. Although I have found coins 10"+ deep in clean beach sand, lawn coins at depths greater than 6 inches have been rarities. Even then, I have a nagging suspicion that some of the deeper coins were knocked off of the side of the hole as I was digging. Don't get me wrong, some of the newer detectors are quite capable of locating 6+ inch deep coins, when used properly. Disappearing signals can also occur when masking junk metal drops over the coin. Such things happen. I picked a shield nickel out of an old sidewalk that the guy in front of me missed when he dropped his trash on it. Being somewhat disgusted, I was cleaning up his trash as I advanced down the sidewalk when a nickel signal appeared from beneath where the junk had been dropped. (Another reason to pocket all of your trash!) Sidewalk coins are well enough hidden to start with, metal garbage just makes it tougher.
