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Out to some softball fields and surrounding grass patches for a few hours today. I was kind of cherry picking my way today because there were a lot of signals in the ground with the 15" on the Equinox running in Park 1, 7 recovery, 50 tones, and all metal. I was listening for high tones after I dug low numbers for the first half hour. There are many items in this ground that give over a 30 signal, so discernment is critical. The two aluminum tokens were not close to each other, but the dates are so close in time that it is uncanny. The ring is the heaviest silver that I have ever found. Its numbers alternated between 30-32. After thinking it was going to be a piece of flashing, it was a pleasant surprise! There is a screenshot of a ring with the same weight by the same maker on ebay right now. Lots of quarters and dimes today, one nickel, and mostly copper pennies. One more thing...it was cold. The weather today in Florida was in the 50's! No need to throw pennies my way northerners, just sharing my trials of life.🙂

I searched out an area that had a house on it but no one could ever find a foundation. It was pretty close to a pond so there wasn't a cellar hole. I hunted for iron signals until I found a small flat area and a part of a stone footing. In that area I found this steel case ww1 zippo and old pocket knife in the same hole. Guessing the house was probably a summer cottage near the water and eventually just torn down. Though not that valueble the history on the zippo lighter is pretty cool. https://www.zippo.com/pages/then-now Big thanks to Dogodog for doing some research on it.

I got out for a night water hunter yesterday. I had hit a bunch of lead targets and the usual garbage. I did score a nice 10k ring at about 8 inches. It was easily heard with a short signature. I also hit a 14k gold chain and charm. My guess it was around 5 to 6 inches. It came up with the first scoop and the chain was exposed. It sounded like another lead fishing weight. Some of the fishing weights were over 12" and clearly can be heard. I just love this machine.

I have been trying to locate a school house site in a small farming settlement that was abandoned by the late 1920's. The settlement had a few houses scattered about, a rail stop/ post office and a 1 room rural school house. Everything was razed years ago. Yesterday I located a privy hole that was cased with an iron pipe so I figured that must be the area. Meager finds that are par for the course here where I live with the exception of the Chinese coin. It is the first I have found, so I was pretty happy with that.

Wow I can't believe I got out yesterday to dig. It seems like work and the stress of things in 2020 took a toll on my detecting experiences for quite a while. I wanted a new coil for the MK and saw a post Kac made about the Nel Superfly, So I said what the heck I'll give it a try. This coil is 6 grams lighter than my 9 inch. I must say this coil is amazing!!! great depth and way better separation. So I went to give it a spin on a site I hunt that has some modern and 18th century history to it. (ball fields and farm fields). I swung for about 5 hours in the 35 degree weather, and found a bunch of coins,(1941 penny, 46 nickle) shot shells, suspender clip, fishing reel, and a fragmented old bell. I wish the bell was whole, because it was about 2'' in dia. The reel perplexes me because of the lack of water in the middle of a 20 acre field. Overall I had a really nice trip out, I was starting to forget how detecting can clear your mind. PS Joe D can you please send some of the Florida warmth up here to PA.

Thanks to forum members for showing me how to clean and cash in my coins, didn't pay for my nox 800, but sure made the wife happy with Amazon credit. We now have some nice new cookware. 😃 ht

Hi Duck, yep you must be itching to get back over. Hopefully this year if the don't close the internal borders again, I think a lot of the indigenous areas/ communities are still declared bio areas and if not they will be if the Kungflu gets a foot in the door over here again. As for this spot, in line about 50 metres away there are 2 spots where the old boys dug out the quartz down about the same depth as I am. It seems to be running the same way. This area is littered with quartz veins running through the host rock anywhere from 5mm to 2 feet wide. They are at surface in areas then disappear into the ground again only to pop up a bit further on. I am going to pick a few random spots in the line and dig down to see if I can locate the quartz and take some samples. I'm thinking I've just hit a little enrichment that's been at surface level. Good luck to you and the misses for this year mate, stay healthy and no licking strangers from declared hot spots.

Actually his name is Raymond Block ( http://leavennotrace.org/ ). He is kind of a one man band when it comes to the environment and trash pickup on Coastal 101, beaches and roads throughout the state. You can usually see him single handed along all those roads picking up trash and depositing the secured up bags of trash along the roadside for the municipalities to dispose of. When I took the picture his whale was only partially built and was quite a lot filled in when New Years Eve came. On his website you can see it being torched and being pulled out to sea. I did go down and do some detecting with my Impulse a couple of times after the first but did not come up with much. A small metal cross, pieces of it's chain, some coins, sinkers, somebodies keys (old, not from this event), lots of nails all in the lower wet portion. The sneaker waves and rolling logs in the surf made it difficult to concentrate with one eye on the ocean and one on your target. Got soaked twice from the surges of rushing water which are on you in a second. Never turn your back on an Oregon beach wave!! GaryC/Oregon Coast

Forgot the receipt!

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2021 is starting out to be Not to bad (fingers crossed). Yesterday started out kinda cold and damp, but warmed up to around 54 at 11:30am. I told my wife I'd be back by 3 for Sunday roast chicken and mashed potatoes. I decided to hunt a patch of woods that had an early house that was razed in 1973. (second run at this place). The ground here is infested with iron, aluminum and copper flashing. I entered in and saw what seemed to be the skull of the Devil, a little off putting to say the least. It was the oddest deer skull I've ever encountered. Thinking this might be a bad omen I proceeded on. 1 crap target, 2 crap targets, old trap tag (OK). I've always had good luck detecting deer trails, so hit the closest one. The first 5 feet and boom, a solid copper coin tone. First coin a 1896 Indian Head. Good day already accomplished. Fifty yards away I got a weird 47-56 id on the machine, I almost didn't dig it, but it had that good coin tone. At 9 inches I had my doubt's for a coin, But when it popped out at 11, I almost fell over. This turned out to be an 1864, Which would explain the odd ID numbers. The rest of the time was uneventful, but that really didn't matter. I had two old coins in the bag and a great Sunday dinner and the Devil didn't ruin any of it.

You probably recognized that knife -- quite common. I have one (not found with a detector) that looks quite similar. Here's a photo I downloaded from Google Images. Note the striations on the handle grip. Apparently these brand knives go back centuries but the plastic grips likely date it to the 20th Century, maybe mid-century. That lighter sure is toasted, but always fun to find, IMO. It's history for sure.

Thank you so much for your replies, I have just purchased the 17"x13 NF Spoked, from a genuine NF dealer, soon, l will be taking it to (Zimbabwe) Africa, will post my results. Again thanks for your replies. Nigel M.

Send it in they should fix it for free.

There has been several gold mines here in Illinois, and several people that I know finds nuggets every year using their metal detector. There is more found using a sluice or dredge in my area than a detector, but I for one am learning how to detect gold with my 800, so soon I will be posting some of those nuggets myself I hope.

First things first, The ring is awesome. As for the aluminium tokens. The DeSoto Square token is from a Mall in Manatee County Florida built in 1973. The Venus token (Krewe of Venus) is from a cultural awareness organization founded in 1965. They are based in Tampa, and as far as I can tell still operating on very little funds. Hope this can help solve the mystery

Heya Gary ! The wave do that here too ! I just got taller boots .....some of the guys even wear waders ! But they go in a lot deeper than me. I just wait for "minus" low tides.... A 10 to 12 foot tide here.

It does not look like a meteorite to me, you can try a couple of easy tests like try to see if a magnet will stick to your rock, most meteorites will attract a magnet. Next take your rock and try to scratch the inside of your toilet bowl lid. You can use unfinished piece of porcelain tile if you have some, but see if a streak of color appears or not. Meteorites don't usually leave any streak. Good luck hope you find one! ht

Yes, those were very nice finds that I would be happy with any day! Congrats! What mode are you using? I hunt in Park 1 about 99% of the time. If you are not using 50 tones, I would suggest you use that, or assign the numbers I said just one tone so you dig everything in that range. I personally like the 50 tones for the information that can be aquirred by investigating the item from different directions.

Have you hunted parks? I have found that using the 15" on the Equinox helps me cover far more ground. I generally run on 17-18 sensitivity and 7 recovery. I'm not going for depth if I am looking for jewelry; I'm going for coverage. If you are hunting a very trashy site, your ears will cry out for mercy in 50 tones. Stick to a football or baseball field and find a place away from the stands where foil is generally thrown down. For gold, focus on solid, repeatable signals in the 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13 range. Yes, gold can be outside of those numbers, but the law of averages can keep you from digging crazy amounts of trash. For larger silver, like a men's band, you will generally want to watch for a number close to a quarter or just a bit above.

Hi Kac, There is a little "something" happening in my custom coil that I can't replicate with an off the shelf one, I may experiment with some in the future, but for now I need to use my wiring configuration for my system to work properly. -S

Nice. Fishing reel is a #60 Hendrix. Probably had a nice gob of silk line and fit on a cane rod. Love the old reels, amazing craftsmanship that went into them unlike today which is all white metal die cast and cnc.

I have been using Beach Mode lately on the Anfibio working Iron patches in moist ground, I think it has a lot of attributes. Have had good success with it,

....so, when we last left our hero's....we were giving a rundown of some mechanical hardware which I proceeded to put in boxes on my kitchen table.....and not touch since then.... But , I did do some parts soldering on the new board today......only to find out that I'm not as good as I used to be when it comes to putting down LLC packages, (sigh), it was the heart of the power supply. So I decided to put that aside for now and moved on to populating the oscillator, it's a pierce crystal oscillator running at 120KHz, it's then divided down to 60KHz, this is going to be my operating frequency. I also use the divider to give me a good 50 50 duty cycle. It gave me some trouble before I got it running. but it's looking good now. I'm using an older NI Virtual Bench on my laptop for the bench testing/troubleshooting. Sorry for the dark photo, I may replace it later. I experimented with manually placing solderpaste on the board to place the LLC package and only proceeded to make a mess. It's the only one on the board, so I'll just have to wrestle it down.

I have found that when I go the the county building and go through the OLD PLAT books, they will have good information on who lived where and what the old buildings were. I have found that several old buildings that have since been torn down in a small town near me had 16 stables and a hotel. When I get a chance later this year I plan on hitting all of them. Do your research and then re-do the research and ask questions with the oldest people in the area to see if they remember those sites. Good luck and happy hunting.

There have been good size nuggets found in Maine, can't remember the name of the river but a little research will bring it up, not sure if any were found with metal detectors, most gold hunters up there try to use dredges, but I remember on a Gold Fever show years ago Tom Massie visited and dredged up there and they showed a large collection of nuggets from a dredger with a few over an ounce and many at least 1/4 ounce. Also a dredger from one of the older forums found a 2 ounce nugget in that river about 10 years ago. I also know of a fellow that has found numerous gold nuggets in Virginia with a metal detector on private property, with a couple at around 1 and 2 ounce range.

Waiting to get another 50 lbs or so then hit the local bank on a sat just before closing 🙂

NICE, Here in my part of PA. the coinstar machines went the way of the dodo. I think they got tired of the pocket lint clogging the machines. Now I have to count and wrap and drag to the bank, which is good because they can't see how bad those coins look. Great haul, now just don't show that receipt to your better half. HaHa

Condor took my brother and I out for a hunt in what was a new area for us two to detect and let me tell you it was some of the toughest walking I have done in quite awhile , it did put the hurt on myself and Steve my brother not so much but he is part mountain goat anyway. The good part was everyone found some gold Steve got one, i got one and my brother a couple pieces the gold seems to be very spotty in this area and very thin with a quartz matrix also stained with what seems to be manganese . Here are the pieces my brother and I found.All gold was found using GPZ 7000s.

It was just amazing how I could call target size with my Sovereign!

I disagree.

First out for the year, found a spot that has cuts that are over my head. I know how they got there but best I hold on that for now. One thing for sure targets are every where, on the top shelf, down the slope, and in the bottom. Just have to wait for a better tide so I can hunt the whole bottom and not worry about sliding down the slope. Most targets are shallow. First gold was maybe 12 inch's? Going to be interesting to see how long this spots stays intact-ed. I knew something was up and one reason I took the Excalibur for I had no clue on what I would be walking into. I am debating on taking the 8 inch on the "AQ" next trip. Seems to be no trash at all.... Three hour hunt, 1916 Class Ring and 1929 Class ring. 4 Silvers, which are eaten bad by the brackish waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Water is just dipping into the high 30's, full hunt I was toasty but Need to make some adjustments to my gloves, left glove is like wearing a sock.. No mobility.

Hello, I'm new to detecting but have been researching different gold prospecting techniques on and off for the last 7 years. I'm addicted to learning new things and felt it was time to stop lurking around here and join the fun. I live in the mountains of western North Carolina and am mostly interested in nugget hunting. This state was the biggest gold producer in the US until the California rush started. The gold around here is known for being very pretty with exceptionally high purity. I'm planning on buying my first detector this year, and hopefully it'll lead to some nice pics to share.

Did a quick hunt the other day and dug only coins. This has to do with the "training" that Canadian coins have given me. In a way they are a "median" target--part non-ferrous and part steel. What this means is that they have characteristics of both. So with a clean processing pulse like the AQ--you have a narrow signal (imagine a tube carrying the response up) with some wide or maybe irregular characteristics. Point being that they make good "trainers" teaching you to look for even poor examples of a narrow response. Then when you hear some clean gold...unmistakable. Foils and tabs will do the same thing but are still not as good of conductors. If you are in soft material focussing on deep heavy targets this is a very strong tool for ID'ing responses with the AQ. Very glad that caps sound wide on this machine. With a pulse that processes at this level the principle of "carry" (see illustration) is even more important. With some VLFs--Hieneken caps are similar to Canadian coins--steel--but with lots of aluminum in there too--right on the border--and for this reason a good teaching tool. cjc

There are some pretty good resources online regarding meteorites. Do you know any professors over at Milsaps? Or maybe up at Oxford? Somebody who studies this stuff might grind off a corner to have a peep inside. (I'm no expert, but that looks a bit like slag in these pix.) Good luck! Pretty cool find.

Well , I do ! Like I just posted. Just detecting stuff not auto repair...but now that you mention it,,,it might be a good idea ! My back isn't going to like it though....................skuh kuh kuh kuh

I just read the whole thread. Lots of interesting comments ! Some pretty funny and some practical... BUT HotSauce said he went from grams to pounds !!! Oh Waiter ! I'll have the same dish as him ! I'm a two of everything kinda guy myself... Only have one scoop though,,,but I have a shovel in the back next to that scoop even if I'm not carrying a detector... I usually hunt with a backpack on so one detector in there with the other extras and one hanging off my arm is pretty typical unless I'm gonna stay close to the vehicle. I'm not too crazy about leaving the extra one in the car at those beach parking lots though , my Nox may not be a "big gun" ,,I just think of it as an Uzzi ,,,small and light and will still git 'er done.

The open sections of the spoked version is very minimal, and with the curved edges of the coil, getting sticks etc snagged up is hardly an issue. I had a spoked, then went with a solid, then went back to a spoked. My current spoked came from a customer who traded it on a 19" evo as he wanted more depth. After testing it I kept it for myself. Just mated up to the old 4500 perfectly.

whereas with something modulated like the Equinox you have no clue. cjc

Great finds and good hunting for the foundation. The footing area I would be checking for sure and the path to the pond. Some of those ponds were used like a septic tank today, So don't run across any stinky coins. Good luck on your next hunt.

What type of detector were you using to find that?

EL NINO who posted just before you did thinks there is still room for improvement in the scenario you mentioned by using a higher top -end frequency. I guess we'll see. Unfortunately, it looks like we won't see anything from Minelab along these lines until 2022.

Amazing how small of nuggets the 7000 can detect. Good way to start the year Lunk.

Heres a good chart.... note what the 8 means.... and like Steve said the manufacturer has the final say. http://www.dsmt.com/resources/ip-rating-chart/ you have a mix of hardware and connectors. Some simply go by the rating of the connectors. Its difficult to rate the entire component. Testing will tell. I also agree Demitar maybe conservative in his rating. However.... it appears he is better waterproofing his box and the battery area to say yes its waterproof if you saw that video Steve posted. He spent a little extra time on mine to waterproof it. Mostly what hes doing now... sealed off my speaker and the wires coming in from the bottom of the box. Other than that this things pretty tight. Yes .... anything rated to 10' to me is a wader and about 98% of us need to detect out there..... provided the manufacturer has a good warranty and stands behind it. Thats HUGE for any machine going in the salt water. You also have to consider this is a small growing company.....it doesnt have a ML size repair shop. thus far im not aware of any systemic repair issues with this machine and as Steves video also shows its evolving based on our suggestions id say.

Very short but very productive year for me, seeing as I only got to prospect from Oct. - Dec. and only about 8 days during those months. I'll post a few more photos later of my 2020 finds. But enjoy this semi drawn out nugget discovery to recovery 😂

Welcome!! Great advice has been posted by Chase and other members. Research, location, and of course having access to un-hunted grounds, are all key to finding silver, and everything else. MD'ing 101 Having stated that, I have just purchased a 800 and will soon return to sites that i believe were untouched before i began detecting on them years ago. The silver finds on those sites have declined over the years, naturally, but I'm hoping that the 800 will find what the other detectors (and primarily me) have missed. Good luck to all!!!

Tony, Several people here have given you the best information possible as I am also a newbie. When I am given information from someone here such as Chase I re-read and learn what he has stated. These people knows more about this equipment than most of the YouTubers out there as the are just making videos. They really never show all the trash, nor do they ever show areas that have nothing except trash. As a newbie I can tell you read, read, and re-read. Then take your time and learn what the detector is telling you so you know it like the back of your hand. I am still learning my unit and I know it will still take a couple of years to get as good as Chase, Phrunt, or any of the masters on any forum. Good luck on your next hunt.

The inside bend, side slope of a desert canyon about 200 feet above the existing stream bed. That's all I can share for now..

Not saying anyone else did not give good information and many did, but this caught me at the right time. You mentioned "as a novice" and then went on to describe how the different detectors (tools) are used to help you identify the potential signals, which saves time. This is exactly why my staff/I train/tell customers to know the capabilities and limitations of your detector. No way can 1 unit do it all the best. I enjoyed your comments and how you realize the tools do different tasks better/worse. Well said.

"Pack up a Back up" or " Forget a back up, you'll have to pack up"😁 Could be a good bumper sticker reminder! Pretty much applies to all supplies!👍👍