So The Beach Hunts Start Again

[F350Platinum]

8 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Silver is definitely down mostly because the beaches are hit hard and technology is catching up with the GPX 😭

Aaaaaaaand it's also the easiest to find. 😀 BTW that spoon bowl from my last post is silver. 🥳

[schoolofhardNox]

14 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Aaaaaaaand it's also the easiest to find. 😀 BTW that spoon bowl from my last post is silver. 🥳

It looked silver. Usually they are very thin, and yours looked like a good candidate for silver. That makes that hunt even sweeter 😋

[schoolofhardNox]

Beach hunt # 28 was at one of my favorite beaches and the place I wanted to try the Manticore to see if it ground balanced differently than the last beach. It did and I posted that on the thread in the Manticore forum, so I won’t repeat it here again. I had originally wanted to hunt the dry sand at the beach down the road for old silver, but I stopped at the beach that has bathrooms first and saw a lot of exposed rocks, so out comes the Manticore for the next 2 ½ hours. Sparse pickings even though it looked like the beach was trashed from the waves some time ago. I’m sure it was hit hard, and I only managed a little bling jewelry. I then hit the dry sand and quickly found out that the Manticore really does not like that purple/ black sand. It struggles a lot. Barely a good hit on a 4” quarter, but enough for me to know that the dry area would produce. So, I swapped detectors and let the GPX do its thing. If I lived closer, I would investigate the single frequencies on the Manticore more, but honestly I have a pulse to counteract that type of sand, so it would just be a waste of time for me to try and find a better setting, if one even exists. Swap machines and be happy.  🙂 For me, the Manticore is for damp/saturated sands, and any water hunting I may try, and deep coins/silver in parks. It is not for black sand, disturbed ground or gold hunting in parks, since the pull tab range is huge and crosses over so well with the gold range. The GPX kept me busy digging, but as you can tell, the layer I was in was mostly clad from the 80’s. A couple of silvers and many copper cents was all I could muster up. I hunted 6 ½ hours with the GPX. Long hunt but I got my fix. Next week I may try that other beach down the road.

[Gold Seeker]

Take that broken Snap-On opened end wrench to a Snap-On dealer and they may give you new one, I think they have a lifetime warranty on most hand tools!! LOL

[F350Platinum]

Great hunt again! The difference is staggering.

We had the Axiom up here a couple days ago, heck of a machine. 👍 It didn't find anything the Deus wasn't finding, but we only used it for a short time. I followed with the D2 and identified what most of the stuff was, it hit bullets well. I selected a spot where iron and aluminum trash wasn't too heavy and there was potential for good targets.

Personally I don't know how you do it, if I had to dig 2' holes for every target and have most of it be crap, I'd go nuts. 🤪 You're awe-inspiring. 🏆I could see it more on a beach than clay or wet ground.

After that experience I appreciate a discriminating VLF even more. 🤣

[schoolofhardNox]

34 minutes ago, Gold Seeker said:

Take that broken Snap-On opened end wrench to a Snap-On dealer and they may give you new one, I think they have a lifetime warranty on most hand tools!! LOL

I'm not sure if that wrench piece is real 😄 It's extremely lightweight.

5 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Great hunt again! The difference is staggering.

We had the Axiom up here a couple days ago, heck of a machine. 👍 It didn't find anything the Deus wasn't finding, but we only used it for a short time. I followed with the D2 and identified what most of the stuff was, it hit bullets well. I selected a spot where iron and aluminum trash wasn't too heavy and there was potential for good targets.

Personally I don't know how you do it, if I had to dig 2' holes for every target and have most of it be crap, I'd go nuts. 🤪 You're awe-inspiring. 🏆I could see it more on a beach than clay or wet ground.

After that experience I appreciate a discriminating VLF even more. 🤣

Yep pulse vs multi in my area shows the major differences between the 2 in both depth and discrimination. I'm surprised the Deus kept up with the Axiom. 🤔 As far as digging goes, if you just put your head down and don't count how many holes you make.... all is well until the next day 😄. I am here to make sure you never get a pulse machine or dump your Deus 🙂

[F350Platinum]

20 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

I'm surprised the Deus kept up with the Axiom. 🤔 As far as digging goes, if you just put your head down and don't count how many holes you make.... all is well until the next day 😄. I am here to make sure you never get a pulse machine or dump your Deus 🙂

It's not too surprising here, most stuff is in the first 4-8", there is a clay/sand/loam layer, then red clay for about 6" more, then beach sand ad infinitum. The topsoil is blue marl, kinda sticky when wet, very heavy, but when mixed with farm tailings it's not bad. Most stuff doesn't make it past the clay. There are few if any rocks. Silver and large cents/copper discs will sound off down to 12".

Sometimes we will find beer cans at 2', mostly big iron. Anything that sinks that deep is usually crap. Usually it was tilled in a long time ago.

I'm certainly not saying the Deus goes as deep as the Axiom, just that whatever Chase detected with it I could detect too, I did have the 13" and the deepest settings possible. We dug some of the stuff that was iffy but it was all nails. In nearly every case the Deus 2 called it right, and the Axiom iron check worked well. It was interesting, but the wind was really ripping and I don't blame Chase for switching to the Deus to find something cool. He did. 🙂

[CPT_GhostLight]

Your GPX spanks it again, sohN, well done! That's interesting about the Manticore performance. I would imagine there will be some updates coming out for that. It's also interesting that you find so few zinc pennies. Do you just throw them back into the ocean so they can completely dissolve or rebury them for the tourists to find? 😆

[GB_Amateur]

19 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

For me, the Manticore is for damp/saturated sands, and any water hunting I may try, and deep coins/silver in parks. It is not for black sand, disturbed ground or gold hunting in parks, since the pull tab range is huge and crosses over so well with the gold range.

I'd like a little more detail on some of this:

1) What is 'disburbed ground'?

2) Regarding gold hunting in parks being hampered by the wide range of pulltab VDI's, how is that different than other detectors?

Your usual detailed (and time consuming) photos of finds.  At least one of the Buffalo Nickels has me intrigued.  It looks to be in decent shape, and I would think has readable date and mintmark (if the latter isn't Philly, of course).  Can you share with us what date+mm those two have, if any?

[schoolofhardNox]

4 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I'd like a little more detail on some of this:

1) What is 'disburbed ground'?

2) Regarding gold hunting in parks being hampered by the wide range of pulltab VDI's, how is that different than other detectors?

Your usual detailed (and time consuming) photos of finds.  At least one of the Buffalo Nickels has me intrigued.  It looks to be in decent shape, and I would think has readable date and mintmark (if the latter isn't Philly, of course).  Can you share with us what date+mm those two have, if any?

First this is how I see the machine for me - not necessarily how anyone else may view it. The disturbed ground I was referring to was the bulldozed beach and possibly plowed fields (although that has yet to be determined). I remember my Equinox not doing well in the plowed fields and I suspect the Manticore is not that different technology wise form the Equinox. We'll see.

As far as parks and pull tabs are concerned, some machines do a better job of assigning gold targets and pull tabs. An example is the CTX 3030. No pull tabs read 6 or 9, but a lot of small gold rings and thin women's rings read just those 2 numbers. That was nice when you were doing a stripped beach at low tide and got a solid 6 or 9 reading. That alone proves it can be narrowed down better. Pull tabs read anywhere from the 20's through the 40's and I think even into the 50's on the Manticore. Also the smallest targets can read 12 or 15 or more.

It seems we are going backwards in target ID. Foil used to read in the single digits and rarely went into the teens. Now it seems to read much higher and would be harder to discriminate or you may lose a good target. Tiny aluminum rivets like the ones on a pull tab, can have a fairly high target ID.  Not knocking the machine, it is a good machine but I feel there are drawbacks to the way they determine target values.

I can't get a good read on the dates of the Buffalo nickels, but I do remember they were Philadelphia mint. One might have been from the teens but not real sure.