I went out earlier today, Sunday August 26th, 2012, after enjoying a beautiful Sunday morning with my family, my wife took a nap after we got home and gave the OK to go detecting for the rest of the afternoon!
I decided to go to a park where many old coins had been found by my detecting crew. Barbers, Indian head pennies, Buffalo's, etc. have come from this old Los Angeles park. This park is really trashy and I have had some really good luck just slowing down and listening what my E-TRAC is telling me. I love this machine and I have it tuned to work well in trash and still pull deep, old coins.
I started off with a couple random wheat pennies in areas that have had hundreds of detectors over and was making my way to an area that a friend and I had identified as a possible area of interest. I started detecting this area and right on top of the dirt was a 1927 wheat.
This area is frequented by a large family of gophers and they are always digging up stuff and moving it around for us to find. I saw a couple pieces of broken china in this dirt that looked old so I continued on in this area.
There was trash on most sweeps, but not more than a minute after finding the 1927 wheat, I got a really steady mid tone signal of 11-37/12-37 all the way around at about 4 inches. I thought it was going to be a screw cap, but since I just got that old wheat on top of the this soil, I thought I had a chance at another early wheat or even an Indian. Although the pinpoint was larger than a penny, I figured my first assumption was right and it may be a screw cap.
I then put my digger in behind where I pinpointed and "popped the dirt out". Out came a flash of gold and landed in the little pile with some clod dirt still sticking to it. It really surprised me to see a coin and the first thought was that it was a Sacajewa/Presidential dollar, but those ring up as quarters!
I looked up to the sky, prayed, and asked for it to be gold! I picked it up, picked off the dirt clod on one side and saw the Mexican eagle and saw the date of 1919! It was my first gold coin and my E-TRAC had once again pulled through in finding the goods! It is a 1919 Veinte (20) Peso Libertad. Only about 1 million were made and now one of them was mine.
I ended the day with the 20 Peso and 5 wheat pennies. I just couldn't go on. My hands were still shaking. I never thought I would find a gold coin, let alone one this big. The coin was cleaned after I brought it home with some running water and a soft bristle tooth brush.
I have scored over 200 silver coins and over 1,000 wheat pennies since getting my E-TRAC 14 months ago, but this coin is by far my most favorite. I don't think I will top this one any time soon.
The third photo is a comparison of size to an 1885 Morgan silver dollar I found last year.
Good luck out there and happy hunting!
Greg - California, USA
