Wrap Up Equinox 800 / GPX 5000

[schoolofhardNox]

I have the pleasure of sporting the worst cold I have ever had. I should be doing battlefield metal detecting, but for the past 5 days I am just enjoying this cold.? So, not feeling like doing any real work or going anywhere, I decided since my beach hunts are over until fall, I would gather up and count and post all my finds for the whole season…. A season wrap up, if you will. Since I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to do everything in one post I figured I would at least post the good stuff. So here it is – the Gold and Silver finds from last Labor Day thru this Memorial Day. I managed 36 beach trips, not sure how many hours but probably about 250 hours of detecting. The breakdown goes like this: Gold total – 36 pcs, at an average of 1 pc per visit. Silver total (coins and other) – 207 pcs, at an average of 5.75pcs per hunt. The breakdown for silver is: 146 coins consisting of 6 Half Dollars, 27 Quarters, 98 dimes, 15 War Nickels. The other items (rings, chains, earrings, pendants, odd broken pieces etc.… - amounted to 61 pcs. Coming later “someday” will be the clad count, and a breakdown of the junk items to show the ratio of good to bad that comes with the territory. It was a great season for me and I look forward to shifting gears and doing the battlefield hunting and maybe some cellar hole hunting if I get a chance. And since I have neglected my other hobbies, maybe doing some of those until Labor Day.  Most of the gold was found because of the Equinox, probably 75-80% of it. Most of the silver was found with the GPX (at depth) probably 90% of it. Not a great comparison since I have found most of that gold in 8 visits and the silver was found with about 28 visits and I was specifically looking for deep silver, so I did not use the Equinox for that, mainly due to the fact that it was busy finding gold  Seriously, I was too inexperienced to get that kind of depth out of the Equinox, as most of that silver was in the 14" deep range, basically sitting on a clay layer with the sand above it containing small wisps of very fine black sand.  But that combination worked well for me and I'll probably stick with it for a while.

[Happa54]

Holy Cow!!!!!!  That is a super fantastic wrap up. Not only do you have the "much wanted gold", but you have (more than most can get) a large amount of silver too. You must be up there in the 1%-5% class. Congrats on that impressive haul !!!!!

[schoolofhardNox]

5 minutes ago, Happa54 said:

Holy Cow!!!!!!  That is a super fantastic wrap up. Not only do you have the "much wanted gold", but you have (more than most can get) a large amount of silver too. You must be up there in the 1%-5% class. Congrats on that impressive haul !!!!!

Thanks Happa54. A lot of people on different forums have bashed the Equinox as not being much different from Minelab's previous machines, but nothing could be farther from the truth. My CTX never found that much gold and neither did the GPX. This machine hits well enough on shallower small gold and chains, and hits very hard on smaller gold rings, even if the band is cracked. That difference alone is responsible for me finding more gold than ever before.  And the GPX, properly tweaked, can hit those deep silvers even with the clay and black sand. I watch others walk all over the area I was finding most of those silvers, and they never stopped to even dig one hole.  Without those 2 machines I would be in the middle of the pack percentage wise.... maybe 

[Happa54]

1 hour ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Thanks Happa54. A lot of people on different forums have bashed the Equinox as not being much different from Minelab's previous machines, but nothing could be farther from the truth. My CTX never found that much gold and neither did the GPX. This machine hits well enough on shallower small gold and chains, and hits very hard on smaller gold rings, even if the band is cracked. That difference alone is responsible for me finding more gold than ever before.  And the GPX, properly tweaked, can hit those deep silvers even with the clay and black sand. I watch others walk all over the area I was finding most of those silvers, and they never stopped to even dig one hole.  Without those 2 machines I would be in the middle of the pack percentage wise.... maybe 

It is interesting you say this re the Nox. A couple of months ago I was at an old 30's small semi-desert park and the infill was sand and grass on top. I hit some deep high CO signals and after about 8" of digging I covered the holes and walked away thinking deep rusted iron or irrigation pipe. I think I understand now and I may have walked away from some good finds.  Also have the So Cal beaches at my disposal and yet I have never hunted them. I do good on coins but lousy on jewelry. After seeing your wrap up I think I better head to the ocean and at least give it a try. Thanx for sharing. 

[bado1]

Wow! Awesome wrap up! Thanks!

Dean

[Randy Dee]

Well done a very impressive amount of gold and silver.

 

[GB_Amateur]

Average of 1 gold find and 6 silvers per hunt?!  Obviously you not only have some good sites, but particularly know what you are doing.  This sounds like the good old days when virgin ground was abundant.

It continually pains me to see the condition of the silver you get on the beaches.  Does seawater always do this (I mean around the world)?  Land hunting here in the US Midwest, silver coins come out of the ground as pristine as the day they were dropped.  (Pennies and nickels, not typically.)  I've done just a smidgen of waterway hunting (just a couple creeks) and have yet to find silver there so don't know about that.

It seems odd that someone in the US Northeast takes the summer off from detecting and can do so well through the darker (colder) months.  Due to the warm weather, schools being on break, and (late summer) creeks being low it seems to be my best hunting time.  Maybe I should head up your way when the sun goes to reduced hours.  ?

[strick]

Nice work! looks like beach #2 was the hot spot this spring. Looking forward to your "battle field" stuff.

strick

[Randy Lunn]

schoolofhardNox,

Congratulations on a superb year. I hope you are feeling better soon.

[Steve Herschbach]

Fabulous display of gold and more - very impressive!!