Think Differently

Nobel prize winning biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi once said, "discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought."

He might as well have been talking about metal detecting.

Detectorists love to say that no site is ever hunted out. While this is very true, it also means that there is a lot less in the ground of any well-pounded spot than there once was. If I were to hunt the same ground today that you detected yesterday, I will probably still find something, but I can't find the coins and relics that you took out of the ground before I got there. If I think like you did and swing where you have already swung, my finds will be minimal. But if I think differently than you thought and sweep my coil over a different area than you did, the odds of my finding something good improve significantly.

There is a park near my house. A beautiful park. A walking path circles a small pond, weaving in and out of majestic shade trees. Benches line the water's edge overlooking twin flowing fountains and a large gazebo stands on the eastern shore. A clubhouse sits just south of the pond and there is another fountain, a small stage and a sprawling, open grassy area on the other side of the clubhouse. Patches of flowers and decorative grasses are everywhere you look.

As you can imagine, a park like that gets a lot of use. Parents push strollers as the older children run on the lawn or chase the ducks that call the park home. People walk dogs while others sit on the benches enjoying the view. The fishing isn't good, but there's usually a kid or two trying anyway. And bands on the stage or events thrown by the city can really pack the people in.

Being a block from away, I hunt the park a lot. I'm not the only one. Like everyone else, I started where people were most likely to congregate, around the pond and in front of the stage. I found a lot of coins, but they were all modern. The park is over 100 years old and I was finding nothing but clad.

Time to think differently. The feeder creek to the pond enters the park in its south east corner. There's nothing of interest in that corner so people don't tend to congregate there. Still, I reasoned, it had to have its fair share of traffic over the years. I was right.

My first find in that corner was a wheatie. Maybe not the most exciting thing I've ever dug, but it was a good sign. The coin was decades older than anything I'd ever found in the busier areas of the park. Shortly after that I dug a bucket lister - my first every Barber quarter. And after that I pulled out a beautiful old skeleton key - another bucket lister!

I've pulled several old coins and interesting relics out of that park since then and with the exception of a complete crotal bell that I dug near the gazebo, I found everything old on the back fringes of the park where the other detectorists don't tend to go.

All because I thought differently.