In the old days, in the absence of modern banks and safety deposit boxes, people would often bury small caches of their valuable items such as coins. The idea was that so long as they knew where to dig they could return later and dig up their treasures again. Unfortunately for them, however, many forgot where they buried their goods and never found them again or were simply unable to return. This means that these caches still lie buried and waiting for you to find them with your metal detector.

The best areas for hunting for these types of caches are old agricultural lands. In colonial times, it was safer to bury your precious goods than leave them in the homestead. Metal detectorists mostly dig up caches of old coins, but sometimes jewellery is also found. Imagine the thrill of finding one of these caches?

Sometimes what are known as "naked caches" are found, this is where a number of coins are found in a particular area but without any container. In these cases, the coins were probably originally buried in some linen or a sock and this has decayed over time, leaving the coins directly in contact with the soil. In other cases, caches were buried in iron, typically small cooking pots with lids. These caches are notoriously more difficult to find as they were usually buried more deeply. To find them with your metal detector you would probably need to go over a particular area several times to pinpoint the location of the iron pots.

Spotting likely areas to search for coin stashes?

Former agricultural land is a great place to look, but you can also look at lands currently under agriculture. Land that is ploughed regularly often has what are known as "coin spreads" – these are small areas where coins have been spread through ongoing agricultural activity.

You can imagine how this happens as every time a plough comes across the land, the coins are not only brought to the surface, but the article that contained them would break and eventually the coins would "spread" across the land. Sometimes these coins spread can contain up to forty coins.

Old coins were made from silver and sometimes gold, both metals producing very different signals on your metal detector. So it is better to reduce the sensitivity of your machine to more effectively pinpoint the coins. Sometimes people used iron to protect their stashes and this will confuse the signals even more, so you might have to dig through some junk to find the coins.

As soon as you have pinpointed a small area where a coin spread is hidden, you can begin digging. Remove each mound of earth from the target area and slowly sift through to identify the treasures and coins. If you have a buddy, one of you can do the digging whilst the other waves a metal detector over each mound of soil. It’s also a useful idea to bring a large tarpaulin sheet with you and then place the soil you dig up on the tarpaulin. The coins will immediately stand out against the tarpaulin.