Ancient treasures rarely remain untouched in the ground, even if no one has found them. Usually, gold and silver coins were placed in clay pots or small bags, and such items cannot be preserved for long, unlike coins and jewelry made from precious metals. The pots and other household items broke and scattered, while the fabric decayed, causing the contents of the treasures to disperse in the ground, gradually becoming a scatter. Buried treasures often ended up on agricultural land, and after fields were worked by machines, coins scattered over a large area. Treasures packed in tin cans preserved the best, but this was quite rare.
Search for a scatter of coins and its extraction
Stage 1 - searching. Discovering such a scatter of coins or precious jewelry is a great fortune for a treasure hunter, but since the targets may be scattered across the area, it is not always possible to immediately recognize such a find. Therefore, it is essential to keep in mind that even one found coin can indicate a scatter. To avoid missing such a find, one must adjust their metal detector in such a way that the sensitivity easily reacts to the desired objects. Choose an appropriate scanning tactic, not missing a single centimeter of the area, and avoiding duplicating your steps. It is best to use visible landmarks and move along them either in a spiral or in zigzags. Movement with the metal detector should be efficient, so one should not spread themselves thin on meaningless and repetitive movements.
Stage 2 - Extract the coins. As soon as you managed to find an area with a scattering of coins, you need to move on to the next stage - extraction. The most important thing in this matter is not to rush, and remember that coins can be very close, so it will be difficult to do without a pinpointer here. For example, the novelty of the season from the French manufacturer of search equipment pinpointer XP MI-6 will help not only to find all the scattered coins, but also, thanks to the red color and sound signal, it will remind you of itself in case of loss. If there is no pinpointer, then you can use a special pinpointing function, but unfortunately, not every detector has such a function. Another option for accurately determining the location of targets is a miniature sniper coil of small diameter.
Excavating targets can also have several variations, and each treasure hunter develops their own tactics. However, in the case of a scatter of coins, retrieving finds has its own peculiarities. You will have to dig a lot, and in order not to waste effort, it is essential to properly distribute the load and try not to miss any piece of soil that may contain finds. The ground can be cut in two ways: the first is square, based on the depth at which targets are detected, the second is in semicircular pieces, while the excavation should either be cone-shaped or V-shaped. Each piece of ground needs to be thoroughly examined using a pinpointer or carefully dug out by hand. Coins should not be damaged, so you need to act very carefully.
After extracting a mix of coins, there will be many dug holes remaining, so it is necessary to take care of eliminating the consequences of the dig to avoid unnecessary talk and to not jeopardize the treasure hunting endeavor in principle. If the excavation of targets was done by cutting out square pieces of soil, it will be relatively simple to restore them. It is enough to return the dug-out pieces, ensuring that the plant roots remain intact, and no one will notice that search work was conducted in that place. With other methods of extraction, one just needs to fill the holes back in and cover the surveyed area with turf, although it won't be possible to completely disguise the consequences of digging. There is nothing terrible about this, but it is still better to leave behind neat patches with no visible signs of disturbance.