Playgrounds are among the most frequently metal detected locations due to heavy activity, public access and easy recovery. Playground equipment provides many opportunities for kids to loose coins as the hang upside down, jump off of swings and tumble around.
While playground equipment facilitates lost coins and jewelry, the massive metal poles can make it difficult to recover some of the lost items. The Garrett Ace 250 metal detector will detect these poles 6 to 12 inches away. Some of the more powerful metal detectors will signal on the poles at even greater distances.
As a result, the sand or wood chips located within inches of the poles often go undetected and can contain some nice finds. Similarly, the ground next to chain link fences is often ignored. There are four main ways to approach this problem:
1. Accept that some items will be missed and steer clear of the poles and fences. From what I have seen, this seems to be the most common approach.
2. Turn the Ace 250′s sensitivity down. This will allow the coil to get closer to the pole before beeping but with a loss of depth.
3. Use a pinpointer like a coil and work as close to the poles as possible.
4. Using the smaller Ace 250 concentric sniper coil if possible, sweep the coil right up to the pole. Ignore the loud beep or overload when sweeping toward the pole and the listen carefully for a second smaller beep to occur as you slowly move the coil away from the pole.
5. Use a small rake to pull the wood chips or sand away from the poll in order to search the material and then move it back into place. While this works in tot lots, this generally does not work for fences unless they are adjacent to a playground.
I almost always rely on methods 4 and 5 to recover neglected coins and jewelry. I typically start with method 4 and if I start finding a significant amount of coinage or jewelry, then I will move on to method 5 to find as much as possible.