If I can get a complete brake job done by Wednesday, that west-side weather looks promising for me to make a Thursday, Friday and Saturday detecting jaunt. It's been a very wintery shut-down over this way with frozen ground, periodic snow or ample wet, and not enough warmth to make it enjoyable. I need to start working on my Annual Coin Count, plus I know full well how productive tot-lots can be when it comes to gold and silver jewelry.

Certain locations seemed to be higher producers than others, but in less 'socially appealing' neighborhoods. I go armed with more than my detector and gear anyway, and keep a watchful eye as I sure can't make a mad dash if I needed to. But a 3-day jaunt might be fun and include a non-school day to hit some of the schools that were usually above average in recoveries.

The broken-up drive in there will cut in on my hunting, but I'll start on the far eastern side on the metro area and see how things go. I always made decent urban coin finds, but older site work provided more display items for club meetings. Back surgery in mid-'95 was helping me out early in the day but by '98 I was back to the cane and pain by mid-day. At the end of '97 I decided to devote more effort to the Portland metro area or any travels to work towards a 10,000 coin goal for the next year.

In '98 I made it to 12,479 coins. But the FOTM displays, plus some people seeing me out and about more, called their attention to the woodchip and sand-filled tot-lots as being prime locations for quantities of coins. Especially the jars of coins I entered in the Display category in April thru August which were months I found between 1600 and 2100+ coins, with tot-lots at parks and schools accounting for about 85% of that. Two fellows in-particular started hitting them regularly and hard, especially on Friday evening through the weekends in the metro area and I could really tell the competition was brisk in '99. That was one of the two years I lost my totals in a move.

I know two or three people around Portland kept that up through about 2010 or '11, but with so many of them getting cleaned out, combined with a dramatic change where they go unused most of the time, even during the summer, and kids seem to play with electronic devices and just don't carry much pocket change to lose,

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