There's an area me and my mate have recently been hunting lately, and as per usual, we get the odd few, having a good old chat to us. One old timer in particular, told us this area has been hunted for many years, he knew of this as he has been living in the area for decades, and encountered many before us, I got the sense he was pretty much saying, we were wasting our time here. Obviously hearing this new information it had made me and my mate disappointed, and my motivation had dropped to a new low. So we packed up for the day, and headed back home. A new week rolled round and I and my mate were determined to find some old coins, so we decided to go back to the so called "hunted spot". It was a wet, cloudy afternoon, some people enjoy hunting in this type of weather, as it’s not too hot, nor cold, personally, I hate it when the ground is damp, your gloves turn all yucky, luckily I had improvised with a nice new pair of pink dish washing gloves! Perfect for the wet environment. So off we go, swinging our Minelab Equinox 600's, left to right, right to left, we decided to hit high tone numbers as we were looking for florins and half crowns, which are between 24-28 on the vdi. Florins and half-crowns are 50 percent silver here in New Zealand, beep beep, oh Patrick, screams my mate, way across the field, I knew he had a worthy find by the cheeky grin and stare, he gave me as I scurried across. He pulled out a British florin! I was in disbelief, flooded with jealously and excitement, I too, gained the motivation to seek out my own worthy find. Time seems to fly by when you detect, and your pouch gets a lot heavier too, with rubbish and old/new currency, nothing to exciting, until I too got a "beep beep" I recognized, oh boy 27 to 28 on the Minelab vdi, I dug that hole, like I was spooning a bowl of ice cream. It was my turn to call my mate over, oh Elliot, I screamed, he looked and wandered over to see I had pulled a 1933 half-crown, he was shocked and so was I. Pulling two large silvers, simply don't happen often for us. From that point on, I didn't care if I didn't find any think else, i was satisfied with my hunt. Hours started passing by, and I only had found one more silver coin, a British three pence dated "1925". But Elliot on the other hand had found two more silvers, a New Zealand six pence and a British three pence. We were thinking about wrapping the day up with a few more holes as it was getting late, so we started looking for any signals at this point, I got a number that rang up 18-20 on the mine-lab vdi, I was thinking "eureka" it has to be a New Zealand six pence! So I knelled down and started making a plug. As I opened the plug, I could see a gold rim at the bottom, I was thinking 'um" that's not a six pence, feeling betrayed I pulled the shiny object out, I looked at it again, and thought jeez, this is one shiny New Zealand one dollar, as all I could see at the time was a ladies face at the back, then I realized "OMG" its queen Victoria! Then I figured out straight away what I was holding, my very own gold sovereign! My hands were shaking uncontrollably, "Eliot" guess what I just found, and it trumps all our finds together so far! I said, his face turned sour, all he could do is ask what it is. I placed it in his palm of his hands, and he looked at me and looked at his hands. No way this can't be real he said, I told him it’s the real deal bro, an 1886 Melbourne mint full gold sovereign. Moral of the story, a hunted out spot, is never really hunted out, you never know what’s lurking under the ground.
Patrick Moriarty Dunedin New Zealand
