Enjoyed the great weather with Dave and hit a few places we had been before, but different areas. A little over a buck in clad and these keepers. A nice scalloped edge aluminum token and a 1920s era Menter Clothing Co. token. Two silver dimes, 1946 and 1956-D.

So now I take stock and look back at a really fabulous year of detecting thanks to the Minelab E-Trac, which has definitely paid for iteslf in just 9 months (I started the detecting year mid-March with my Minelab Explorer SE).

For a full photo gallery, click here.

$349.63 in clad coins
Over 4,700 total coins and tokens.
299 silver coins, 1244 wheat cents
Dozens of rings, most silver, two gold.

2009 was my 19th year of detecting, but by far this was truly the best year ever. In 2009, I found my first large cent and oldest coin, dated 1820. Then just a few weeks later, a second large cent, 1844. I found my oldest silver coin, a beautiful XF 1833 bust dime, which amazingly came from the most heavily detected park in the city.

Dog licenses dating back to 1924, a small tribe of Indian cents, two Civil War storecard tokens, nickels of every sort...

It's been great fun and a great challenge. I started the year aiming for 100 silver coins, thinking I would be quite lucky to get that many. Instead, with the E-Trac, I quickly surpassed my initial goal for the year. A friend and fellow E-Trac user, Dave and I have pulled over 550 silver coins from local parks and schools in 2009 and we both wonder what we will do in 2010, as many of our old haunts are not hunted out, but finds are few and far between. We muse about larger or smaller coils, what could possibly give us more of an edge to be able to do as well again in the coming year.

You can see in the first picture the silver coins I found using White's and Fisher detectors 1990-2007 (about 225), the silver coins found in 2008 with the Explorer SE (52) and the pile from 2009 with the E-Trac (and a little bit of the Explorer, 299). I'm still amazed when I look at these totals.