New And Need Equipment Advice

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

What is more important for your confidence and sanity is that you are setting the proper expectations when you do decide to recover the target.

Confidence is one of those things that's earned the hard way for most people.  And I do mean true confidence, not false confidence.

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

Point is, expect trash when you recover, that way you get a nice surprise when you are wrong about your guess.

Another solution is to only dig the most promising signals.  (That's never been my approach, and never will be.)  In my current park I estimate what the chances are that a 12-13 is a USA nickel.  I never go over 50%.  I go down as low as 5%.  I'm not as good at tone reading as you guys, but I'm not easily discouraged.  If I learn one thing then the detecting session was worth it, and if I didn't even do that there's only one place to put the blame.

We had a cool spell (our second of the month, and unusual for August around here) and I got out 3 days this week (3-4 hours each).  I'll save the story for a more detailed post, but all of the above applies to my overall experience this week.  For two days I had over a dozen signals that looked like they could easily be a (old) copper alloy or silver alloy coin.  ('Easily' being relative -- just meaning everything I thought of trying in terms of investigation pointed in the right direction.)  Nada.  Day 3 I found two keepers in the first 25 minutes.  The second one was a nice surprise.  (Not a nickel zone target, but) I gave it less 5% chance but told myself "there's a reason you dig this TID."  Confirmed!