Hiding your precious metals.

[pkveazey]

I've watched a few videos on hiding your gold and silver. I thought they were OK, but not what I would do. I use this catch phrase for a lot of things when prepping. "Don't put more stuff in one place than you can afford to lose." If you bury any of your precious metals in the yard, make sure there is a pretty large metal object nearby and then take about four rolls of those worthless zinc pennies and throw them all over the open ground around your house. Don't forget to take them out of the rolls before you throw them. Those decoy pennies should keep some clown with a metal detector busy for a week. A good tricky spot is in the driveway exactly where you park your car. If you have a concrete driveway, then you might not want to use the driveway as a bury spot.

[grizz]

pennies will or at least could encourage someone to continue looking. Better to bury pulltabs from cans, cans, candy wrappers and similar trash in an opening away from your stash. This will keep them looking in a trashy area, leaving you signs that someone was there while also keeping them away from the good stuff..

[pkveazey]

pennies will or at least could encourage someone to continue looking. Better to bury pulltabs from cans, cans, candy wrappers and similar trash in an opening away from your stash. This will keep them looking in a trashy area, leaving you signs that someone was there while also keeping them away from the good stuff..

I probably wasn't clear on the pennies. I'd scatter them all over the yard in a large area that was not where the treasure is buried. Scattering pull tabs and little balls of aluminum foil is also good. The first thing someone with a metal detector is going to do is set their machine up to locate non-iron metals. Little clumps of old copper wire works good also. You could throw in a few old lead fishing sinkers also.

[Nemo]

Add in the steel stuff to get them real confused when they are looking for the underground safe.

A box or 3 of steel shot duck/goose rounds.  Empty the shot and spread it.  Be sure to take your spread out across the local woods patch and neighbors back yard.

Nemo

[Kbop]

in this day and age, ground penetrating radar is also a concern.
I recently put in a shed - as a foundation i put in a box of pressure treated lumber - like a  raised bed.  I filled that with gravel for drainage and put the shed on top.

so just dig in your gravel bed a little deeper than is absolutely necessary.
or a section of gravel in a driveway or a repaired block of a sidewalk - put a PVC pipe under the sidewalk block 4" down and jutting out over the edge of the edge of the sidewalk block.  you can access it by pulling up the turf and replacing it when done.  Metal detectors are foiled by the mesh in the concrete and the mylar water barrier under the aggregate and fill.  GPR will be foiled by the concrete.

GPR prices have come way down and the technology is available to LEO forensics at the county level now.  In a SHTF bad guy's can 'acquire' these without too much trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar

[grizz]

I started metal detecting this year and FAR from an expert. My rig is a minelab 800 if that means anything to anyone, if not its one of the better rigs on the market.

My point is this, after digging beaches, parking areas and hiking trails I've learned you always find something where you find people. Not much on hiking trails but more around areas with a place to sit or fish. If you find something you will find more stuff as long as you keep looking. Sometimes good stuff is found under or near trash finds so its worth the effort keep searching.

If a lot of my finds are trash found deep or in hard ground I'll spend less time in that area.

If I'm finding pennies or any coinage, I keep digging. When I find trash I keep digging but learn the signals in that location and quickly move on.

What I'm trying to say is if I don't get a signal I don't dig.

From what I understand some of the better rigs can find coins a foot or so deep. I've found a 2# barbell weight about 18" down. Size matters, the wider the target the easier it is to find when deep.

Maybe more experienced diggers can chime in