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I found similar button in California. Some believe it is related to the Odd Fellows, not sure. Have seen a match safe with same pattern also.

Thursday I decided to hunt a 1/4 acre patch of woods near a old 18th century hotel. When I first started in I noticed a couple of old detecting holes, which had me a little discouraged. Good thing I didn't leave, because after finding the complimentary trash I got a real good hit an dug it. To my amazement it was an 1864 indian head cent. Another 20 minutes later I scored on a colonial button and two old harness buckles. Off to the next spot another woodlot. I was headed across a rather large field swinging as I was headed to the woods and bingo, a great tone. Rifle shell casing in the bag. I walked 30 yards and again a good solid hit. Another indian head cent this time a 1902. Needless to say I never did make it to the woods. When I got home and looked at the shell case, it was a very rare REM-UMC head stamped 256 Newton. These were produced from 1916 to 1921. They were made from old 30-06 brass after WW1 and I believe were replaced by the more popular 25-06. Oddly I was more excited over the shell case. I think its time to grid the field cause its huge. Also it's pretty nice to snipe an 1864 coin from a recently hunted spot!

What ever type digging tool you use make sure you have a powerful magnet attached. This is what I use in the tailing piles I dig in.

I'm glad Reg said it was a fake, I almost was ready to sell the house and move to the land down under. I think Simon was ready to go too. He would need one hell of a plane to put all those detectors in ha ha

Time to share some finds i have been making with my Nox 800. From the Sierras to the streets of Reno i have been swinging as much as possible over the last couple weeks. I'm running in Park 1, sens. 19-23, manuel ground balance, 5 tone, and 5 recovery, but i also play with the settings some to learn the machine. Here are some coins and relics i just found over recent weeks. I'm new to coin hunting, only been hunting since the end of January, but i am falling for this hobby too much fun!😃

Paul I carry the 7000 on a bungee in my right hand and a 800 in my left hand for discrimination. And they both act as canes when I stagger on the loose boulders. Discrimination works on the small shallow stuff. Be prepared to move a lot of big boulders for deep big stuff like this. Have a good day, Chet

Something to the effect of “Tangshan Grocery store, shop always have”

Simon will need a second plane for the coils!

The guy on the left is Dean Smith, who is an expert on the casting of gold nugget replicas. His work is excellent, as you can see. He has actually taken casts of a couple of nice colors that I have unearthed. Neville Perry a Victorian gold buyer is in the middle and next to him is Mick Clark, his partner and excavator operator. The two have a successful license north of Dunolly in central Victoria. These gold shows give the impression that gold is easy to find in Australia, however as Mitchel can attest this is not the case. I was approached by one of these film companies some time back but decided against it as i suspected that facts would be, shall we say, flexible.

I have been finding small-small nuggets and specimens ....... All of these added to 9 grams ....

Looking for tips on detecting tailing piles... I have the Equinox 800 and the Minelab 5000. and a lot of trashy tailing piles to detect !!! 🤠 _________________________________- BTW----- Looks like we are running low on masks 😷 and gowns here in LA--- but we will survive-- Vets have been exposed to tougher stuff than this!!! ______________________________________________________ Social distancing does not have to be social--------- but it should be physical-!!!---- I cant see why most of you would have to learn how to do that-??? -- you been practicing it with me for years🤣🤣 Carry on and thanks for any tips on the tailing piles.. paul

Update, I just spoke with the IOOF and emailed mine and cap's photo's to them . The gentleman that I spoke with said if he could not identify the buttons, he would forward them to the UK for further evaluation. I hope this pans out. Fingers crossed.

Paul, keep up the good work, buddy! Every life you help save is wonderful! I agree with Glenn in Colorado, powerful magnets are extremely important for removing the tiniest bits of iron. The problem with trashy sites is that no form of discrimination or target ID is going to prevent you from digging a lot of trash. That's just the way things are. One such pile I dug, at an old minesite, about 8 cubic yards total, was full of square nails and other bits of 1890's trash, and yielded one piece of rich highgrade ore for each 100 or so pieces of trash. Thus lots of digging. Very tiresome, even using a magnet, but gold is gold. HH Jim

If not too trashy I’d be running the GPX with 18” round mono coil and digging everything. There is nothing magic about detecting tailing piles with a VLF. Either no discrimination and dig everything, or minimal ferrous rejection. Looking for nuggets so Park 2 a good place to start, see https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/6799-equinox-800-gold-nugget-detecting-tips/ for possible settings. I’d be using the 15” coil with steveg rod and balance kit. Check out my Steve’s Journal and tales about Ganes Creek, Moore Creek, and Fortymile country (Jack Wade, etc), plus 2013 and 2014 adventures.

Seeing the Palmer Goldfields in Jonathan's backyard was fun. Seeing someone find a nugget and putting the detector away right after was BS....reminds me of the GPAA gold shows where gold was just laying around like candy at the store... Mostly I love seeing the country...because I Love Australia fred

"ALL" ...reality shows a set-up--- they could not afford to follow a detectorist around all day whilst filming--- Look at a lot of the nuggets that are clean when they come out of the ground--- but it can entertaining... just remember it is fiction....

Great research Dog! Keep up the good work! Here's another version from a California gold camp Dog, just curios what period are most of the finds from your house site. The California sites are 1850s-80s, but hold older items as well>

Quick update. I spent the last couple of hours doing genealogy research on the home site which I found the button. The house roughly dates to about 1768. The owner of the house in 1816 was Aaron Krause, He had a son born the same year he purchased the property in 1816. The sons name was Joel H Krause, who at the age of 16 entered the Freeland seminary, now know as Ursinus college. He became a well known doctor and was a member of a masonic group and a member of the Independent order of the odd fellows. How's that for research? I think the link between the doctor and the button might be proof that it's what caprock has stated. I love this site, So many great people to help with identifying odd finds.

Thanks brother, I Isolated myself out in the mountains......

If the Vanquish was waterproof.........it'd be more expensive 😉

Every year my Alaska Gold Mining Claims For Sale page skyrockets into number one position for the website as TV viewers around the world dream of getting a gold claim in Alaska and striking it rich. Because everything you see on TV is real!

The whole depth with single frequency VLF detectors thing in my opinion has been nothing but a red herring for decades. I have read a thousand posts from people wanting VLF detectors with "more depth". Yet VLF detectors maxed out for usable depth by at least 1990 if not before. I have not used any single frequency VLF metal detector since 1990 that got more depth on coins than my old Compass Gold Scanner Pro. The only real improvement we have seen and are still seeing is in the ability to find and correctly identify items that are masked by the ground itself or adjacent undesirable targets. There are an amazing number of targets in the ground at depths achievable by any decent detector made in the last 25 years, but that are being missed because they are improperly identified and ignored, or just completely masked and invisible. This is an area where the Minelab BBS and FBS detectors have excelled. They do not go deeper. They simply get more accurate discrimination at depths exceeding what most detectors achieve. Machines like the DEUS and a lot of other Euro machines are excelling not for the depth they get, but this ability to acquire and accurately identify targets at shallower depths that are missed by other detectors. If we had a detector that could simply see through everything and accurately identify coins to 10" the ground would light up with countless missed finds. I get a chuckle out of all the deep coins I see people talk about on the forums when the best detectors made can't accurately identify a dime past 5-6 inches in my soil. Anything deeper just gets called ferrous. There is huge room for improvement in metal detectors still not by getting more depth, but by simply finding shallower targets that have been missed by other detectors made up until now. How To Make Yourself Crazy! U.S. Versus Euro Style Detectors

I don't own an nox 600 or the at pro, but one thing I'm fooled by the most is 18th century iron. It has a way different metallurgical make up than most modern steels and irons. It will cause my MK to read in the 70's. As for the false signals, iron rich red clay soils when wet or damp can make your your detector sense a false target. Everybody on this forum has experienced phantom signals, it happens from time to time.

you know what i am waiting on is that person who tells me how to discriminate out the trash.... 😁 Of course if everyone did that i wouldnt have gotten my keys back would I??? lol _________Thanks for that btw! If any of you wonder.............. this has to do with the time i lost my keys in Yuma desert mountains and had to have beatup tow my Seqouia out to the main road,,which was an interesting ride with no brakes or steering to speak of.. Cost about 2000 dollars for new keys and fobs at Toyota, but other brother eric or brett ??? found them this year in a wash where i lost them.... he also found 3 or 4 nuggets with in 10 feet ...that i am sure fell out of my pocket too--- i couldnt have missed that many could I????????????? lolol--- Thanks for returning the key and I am still waiting on him to return the nuggets--😇 Just do the right thing!! 🤣

I can swing an Equinox with 15” coil all day long day after day with the stock coil. I did just that in the U.K. but it is nose heavy, and I’d be lying if I said it did not have certain back muscles protesting mightily at times. The fix is a steveg carbon fiber rod with counterbalance. It perfectly balances the 15” coil and although the counterbalance adds weight it actually feels much lighter. You are not fighting that nose heavy torque. A huge improvement and in my opinion a must have for anyone using the 15” coil for anything other than very limited times.

Art, that is AWESOME thank you so much!!

This is in no way definitive, but growing up in China my wife is pretty familiar with most Chinese symbolism and the images on the button didn’t speak to her in a way that said Chinese? But I agree the gold camp connection is intriguing.

Three similar buttons, but none identical. California gold camps from the mid-1800's? Oriental designs on the buttons? I see a growing connection. Someone is going to crack this wide open. 2Valen needs to contact his buddies who specialize in Oriental antiques. BTW, I played around with Google Image Search, including sketching a couple individual designs from the buttons and trying to just match them. Either I don't know how to use it to its full potential (likely) or that software/app is grossly in its infancy.

cap I'm finding a lot more early to late 1800's stuff now that I weeded out the modern. I'd say on average most date to the 1890's to 1920's. I just ordered a larger coil for my MK and hope that gets me to some of the better targets. This place has been regraded over the years and I seem to find older things in weird small patches of ground.

Dog i edited my previous post, with dates.

This is fun, even observing from the sidelines! My impressions (for what it's worth) are summarized: 1) The buttons are similar enough to be related, but there are items not common to both. Having two different buttons, though, may make them easier to indentify. 2) I don't see much on either button that associates it with the International Order of Oddfellows (IOOF). For example, the three rings are a significant symbol but their orientation isn't correct, and further that is present on only one of the buttons. However, as such an organization evolved its symbolisms likely evolved along with it. So maybe early IOOF symbols could be represented. 3) The genealogy study and early connection with IOOF is tantalizing, but that may simply be a non-related coincidence. I note you've got Tim (2Valen) stumped which is tough to do. This is a difficult one but with so much progress thus far I foresee a solution upcoming.

I am pretting confident u could flog those buttons on Levis vintage forum............... RR

I really like that Jefferson medal, But I think my favorite is the old razor head ha ha. Great job on the collection of goodies.

Sure looks similar! GaryC/Oregon Coast

hmmmm, not sure about a chart but there was this.....

Tom, does the MK have more power than the Amphibio if they had the same coil? About my past experiences on big coils is they have more downsides than you may realize and often limited on where you can really benefit from them. Larger coils I have found tend to mask out easier in trashier areas, harder to ground balance, harder to navigate around obstructions, can be sensitive to EMI and in general just heavy to swing. There are cases where they work well such as matted down fields where you lose a few inches from dead grass on top before you even get to the soil, meadows that have substantial top soil depth and old fields. I have a Nel Big, 17" wide x 15" long and it is like swinging a chihuaha on the end of a broom stick. The depth on that based off a stock coil is only about 50% and often less depending on ground conditions. I have found deep dimes with at 14" which is impressive for the AT Pro but the work swinging it is brutal.

The AF28 coil which is the standard 11" round DD coil on the Anfibio will give you a couple more inches depth compared to the standard Mulit Kruzer 7" X 11" without adding the extra weight of the AF35 coil. I've had the Anfibio and still have the Multi Kruzer. I really liked the AF28 and will get one for my Kruzer one of these days.

I just watched the video. It talked about the control pod being water resistant as it was showing footage of it with the rain cover on it. It's not water resistant...not officially, at least.

Couple more passes this time with the Tejon so I could skim over all the can slag and got the usual clad, 59 nickel which is the age of the school and a nice old sterling kids ring. Has a makers mark inside I'll try to look it up.

I tried a couple different google searches and google image searches with different key words too and not much useful, at one time in the early days the first hits would have given you a direct link to an identification page for free and you could have narrowed it down a number of ways, all you could learn right there I’m hooked, The information high intoxicating. I kept coming back for more like everyone else searching for answers, google was waiting on the corner with a sly inviting smile as though they expected my return. I was having to search harder now clicking more links it’s frustrating but I could still satisfy that restless need to know, it just took longer to get there and I’d find the information less rewarding the need to return becoming more frequent the empty feeling from conflicting advertisements making me feel anxious, sleepless and strung out unable to decide my own breakfast... I fear the street knowledge all that’s left, I need the answer to the mystery of the button, really nice button and great find best of luck finding about it sorry for the google rant🤪.

on the first image there are two prospectors one at the bottom and another among the posts in normal times the remains of the posts are not visible they are under the sand on this beach / over 5 years ago strangely, all the heads of Teller mine let's not get the swastika, only one of those found, year of production 1938 I also had to dig a very large amount of piece of brass detonator remnant

I posted this on Dankowski as well, and a couple of bright folks suggested maybe FTP could use capacity to produce ventilators. While that is a far reach - they are complicated and need clean rooms for assembly, I sent the posts to Tom Walsh in case there is any critical item that they could make.

Thank you!

Hi Fred generally hot, as an example I have very few areas here where I can use Normal type timings.

This mornings effort started out late so only a few hours targeting some deco clays. This ground is hard work and you really need to focus, hence my fatigue now that the session is over. Some pics of the waxy gravels (colloidal clays) and deco with nuggets encased. I think at some stage this country has seen some glaciation way back in the distant past. Who know’s it once might have been as mountainous as NZ and these flat Nuggies were locked up in the slates before the country flattened off to what it looks like today. JP

I doubt it's 100% scripted, but I also doubt even more that it's 100% WYSIWYG. A couple hints: 1) he's not smiling; 2) (apparently) he doesn't say he found these. Anyone who is trusted to hold that much gold can pose for a camera. Are the show's promoters going to play it up? Sure. Is it ethical? Maybe in their world. 'Reality TV' is full of people who rationalize their tactics. There are worse places and people who do a lot more than that. I'd like to say I wouldn't do it if I were in their shoes, but I'm not (and thankful for that).

Two letters only to cover this.....BS. If you believe this, then I have a second hand bridge I can sell you in Sydney.

The best Australian nugget Parker had was that hottie he used to hang out with. She probably bailed on him...

Well sure enough I found this big earring tonight ringing in at 8.