Metal Detector’s Blog

Last summer a friend and I were detecting a site when I found this 1773 Spanish reale in shockingly good shape. It was about 4 inches down. This was at a site along the El Camino Reale trail in central CA. We knew that there was a small and short lived trading post on the spot in the mid 1800’s and there were a lot of corresponding seated coins found. However, we also knew that it was in the area of one of D’Anza’a camps as he mapped the inland trail of California in the spring of 1776.

I have had my new Fisher Coin Strike for about 3 weeks now, and I continue to learn more about it each time I take it out. It is a bit different to operate than any detector I have used in my 35 years of detecting. That said, I do like a challenge!

I was searching in a small patch of a garden that’s not far from where the old garrison once stood on the original farm in 1650. The owner of the property often drives his tractor along the side of the corn garden to access his field, and by chance I decided to go over the area with my Minelab Explorer II. . .
“I’ve considered myself a Metal Detectorist for about 30 years. On and off since the 1970’s, I had given the hobby up for several years and started getting back out there in 2003. About a mile from my house, in beautiful New Hampshire, there is a farm owned by wonderful folks. It’s run full-time, ‘round year – they grow produce in the summer and Christmas trees in the winter.