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I cleaned up the button I dug with some lemon juice, it has an incredible amount of gold gilt left (amazing how well lemon juice can bring out any remnants of gold gilt). Although it has some similarities to the one you shared, after getting it cleaned up, it's pretty different. It has a rope twist boarder, with a horizontal lined background, and the letters (they're really hard to read, not because the button is in bad shape, it's the font they used). For sure the last letter is a B, but the first two letters 🤔 The back is marked "SURFACE GOLD". I'll keep looking around to see if they mystery can be solved 🙂

When the handle is replaced get one with the wood grain orientated on the same plane as the pick head. It is the strongest for hitting and levering out the target. The photo above shows that it spit along the grain that was at 90º to the pick head orientation.

I bought Snakejim's White's Sierra Pulse Pro from the classifieds and got it this afternoon. It was a great deal and the detector is in fantastic shape and works great. I owned a beige special edition TDI SL for a while and didn't care much for it. Somehow, (maybe it's me) the SPP with the Miner Johns folded Mono 9X5 and the little Super 150 are hitting targets that my TDI SL couldn't hit even after doing a battery mod and I was using a NF Sadie on it most of the time. It's a head scratcher. This SPP is hitting small gold and lead targets that Deus 2 can't hit!!!! I mean, hitting a .1 gram nugget at 2" depth and a .25 gram nugget at 3" in bad dirt is great in my book on just default settings for a simple detector like this. Sure it is not as sensitive as many hot detectors like the SDC 2300 and GPX 6000, but it's turn on and go and this one anyway runs very quietly at the default settings and only gets an EMI warble when I turn the gain up past default. So far it is way better and more stable and easier to get running than the QED I had for awhile. It is super lightweight, EMI resistant enough to use in my backyard and is screaming on 6" deep coin sized targets that most detector miss in my test garden. This should be a really hot relic detector and a backup PI for the Axiom when it is released. Thanks Jim for offering it through DP Classifieds.

The button mystery has been solved, a forum member on another forum nailed it: https://www.batesandhindmarch.com/product/william-iv-period-court-dress-button-fire-gilt-23mm/ Turns out to be a King William IV court dress button. King William only ruled from 1830-1837, which dates nicely to this site.

I cleaned the IHP a bit and turns out the date is 1896 🙄 It's pretty toasty on the front, not so bad on the back, so must've had the front oriented towards the elements and whatever seeped down to the coin to cause the corrosion. Oh well, at least it wasn't an 1877 😉

It's certainly not a company I'd be investing in at the moment, they didn't mention any headwinds from competitors either of which in their recreational market is now huge with Nokta and XP really giving them a workout and now the gold market with the 24k and Axiom from Garrett moving in on their territory. These are the key points I take from it. Development of several new metal detector products has progressed well and we are on track for late first half FY23 product releases. Minelab had a clear focus on improving profit margins and cost efficiencies by passing on price increases to customers and reducing freight expenses Gold mining sales in FY22 did not reach the record highs of FY21. This was primarily due to lower sales into the Northeast African market. This market was impacted by a number of factors, including geopolitical unrest and a decline in the number of artisanal miners as they returned to more traditional forms of employment post covid. Recreational markets held up throughout FY22 and were remarkably resilient despite returning to a normalised demand profile post covid, growing inflationary pressures impacting consumer sentiment and the cessation of sales into Russia. Despite these headwinds, sales in North America grew 9% and LATAM grew 35%, largely attributable to the on-going success in penetrating retail distribution channels and the establishment of e-commerce channels. The business remains well positioned to drive further market share growth with new product releases in FY23, new geographies being established and e-commerce distribution channels continuing to develop. There is a clear global strategy that will be executed over the next three years focussed on marketing, business development and the introduction of our next generation range of products. It to me seems clearly they're going to focus more on coin and jewellery detectors as that's where the easy money is, perhaps a new Equinox, although I'd personally rather a new CTX, the Equinox is still sitting in a nice position, CTX sales would be low and the CTX has clear advantages over the Equinox on silver coins in my soils so a modern upgraded version of it would be pretty impressive being such an old detector. It will be very interesting when their FY23 results come in now they're starting to have some competition across the board.

Hi Doc Bach, We do see some old broken glass, but more pottery and porcelain. I'm sharing photos of the all the finds from just this trip, including the iron implements I dug (except the first iron hook item that was dug a while ago, but is interesting). I'm sure if one wanted to kill themselves digging iron, there's more interesting relics to be found. No idea what this hand forged item is (Lincoln cent for scale): A few Indian trade items from this trip: trade silver snippet, cobalt blue faceted bead, opal glass blown bead and an Indian trade ring: Surface finds: pottery, doll head parts, and a piece of blue and white porcelain (no idea what the red bit is?): The trips take for the seemingly endless supply of ammunition shells, some lead, rivets, and whatnot: Here's some iron implements that were dug on this trip. The item on the far left appears to be a knife blade, perhaps for shaving? There's a chisel, iron garment buckle, a button hook, part of scissors or shears, a square nail that's been fashioned into a hook, and some kind of keeper on the far right: The obligatory harmonica reeds, and I thought the quart pieces might be knapped (Lincoln cent for scale):

I had a chance to go up to the high sierra area 3 days ago with my brother to do some scouting and detecting with our Minelab GPX 6000 detectors. He had the stock 11in round mono and I had my newly-arrived Goldhawk 10x5 made by Coiltek. We found some old-timer workings in an area that was new to us both. Those old miners sure did a lot of work and there were rock piles stacked everywhere. Bedrock was very limited to a few places lower down the slope. We concentrated mostly on the areas nearer to bedrock to see if we could find something the previous miners had missed when cleaning it. I set up my GPX6000 on auto 2 with threshold on and went to work scanning the piles and sides of the gullies. I immediately found small shards of copper bullet jackets, some small lead and the usual nails. The machine ran fairly nicely, without any real noise issues for the first hour, so I figured today might be a day noise-cancelling wouldn't be needed much. Scanning steep slopes was not only a breeze with such a light coil, but I didn't get a lot of extra noise from not having the coil horizontal, like I do when using my stock 11in round mono. I ended up doing about half a dozen noise-cancels throughout the day. Mostly in the later afternoon as temps rose and generally when more emi is around due to distant planes, etc. At any rate, off to a good start so far with the new coil. After about 1.5 hours I hit the first nugget on the sidewall of a cut, right atop some bedrock. It was a very rough piece and weighted .13g at about 1.5 inches of depth. Off to a good start, and gave us hope more nuggets could be found at this location. And, as it turned out, we got a lot of hope quickly after I dug a coarse 2.45g nugget about 45 minutes later 7 inches down out of the side of a throw out pile. Game on now that we knew this spot had some real potential after all! In the end, after 10 hours of swinging that day, my brother and I ended up with 8 and 7 nuggets each, respectively. A great outing to a new spot, and plenty of nugget digging action, even if most were on the smaller side. My brother with his 11in coil beat me by 1 nugget, but he had two "patches" on exposed bedrock knobs where he found all but 1 of them. I did eke out a .25g nugget about 3-4 inches he missed at the first spot. Maybe it was due to the smaller coil size, or just because he left me a bonus nugget. Nice of him to "share". Overall, I really enjoyed using the 10x5 Goldhawk. I could fit it among the rocks and bushes very easily. I "side-wall" scanned much of the day and the light weight of the coil made it very manageable. Sensitivity of the ML GPX6000 with this coil is really nice and its probably similar to the sensitivity of the 11in mono while still getting nice depth on small nuggets. I was able to pinpoint quite easily and quickly with the 10x5 as well. I dug probably 1/3 more targets than my brother, though partly that was due to how jazzed up I was from finding that larger nugget early in the day, haha. I included a picture of the trash just to give you all an idea of how much junk you have to dig to get the good stuff.

It is slightly different, different back mark as you noted, and the button on their site appears to be a one piece, whereas mine is a two piece (which would lead me to believe their one piece is an early version, and mine is a later version as two piece buttons started to come into use). Also of note is that mine has a twisted rope border whereas their example is plain. Aside from that the button design is identical, leaving little doubt on the King William IV attribution IMHO. Interestingly this desert site has produced quite a wide variety of buttons from all around the world. It was a Spanish outpost, on both an emigrant route and ancient trade route, and there was a trading post either on the site (which we suspect) or nearby that's now inaccessible. What's fun (to me at least) about this site, is that when Tom and I discovered it about ten years or so ago, we believe it was a virgin site. For some reason this site just spoke to me, probably due to it's colorful and dark history, and given its seemingly virgin site status, I worked out a deal with Tom ($$$) to keep all the finds so that we could have a fully intact historical context of the site. It was never an easy site to work, there's been plenty of trips where Tom or I dug no coins, but always relics. Tom hasn't been that interested in it for a while because it can be a punishing site. He seems to favor virgin sites with no modern trash and where the finds are just jumping out of the ground 🧐 Who doesn't, but I'm not afraid to work a site that's interesting to me, and this site has produced a lot of finds over the years. Dozens of seated silver coins including some high value ones and a mystery seated dime button cache, a rare gold coin, lots of buttons, buckles, some Indian trade silver and Indian trade beads, and Spanish era artifacts such as a myriad of religious medallions, Phoenix buttons, and reales, on to Mexican era coins, and into the Western era. You rarely find anything past the 19th century there when the site effectively ceased usage. To me the site has an untold story to tell, telling it one find at a time. Eventually I plan to exhibit the collection of artifacts from this site as a whole in my man cave (if I ever get one haha).

Cal, I am pretty sure the lettering is a W and R.

Nice cleanup! South African military button: Same crown design, not same script but just as fancy. I also saw some Canadian railroad buttons with similar patterns. Good mystery. 😀 you might want to look at railroad buttons if there was one there.

No offense 350 but I like Cal’s button better it’s more fancy 😊 strick

That is some really nice gold and it would be very nice if you would share the GPS information to some of us so we can come by and congratulate properly. Good luck on your next outing and stay safe.

To clarify on Aureous' post, I modified a TDI to test out an idea I had, it was a lot easier than trying to mod an Impulse. To do this I had to write new micro code from scratch. The idea worked but needs more effort. The code includes a switch to exactly replicate the original TDI timing and I sent a few chips to someone with a bunch of dead TDIs but he says the chips were acting squirrely so, again, needs more work.

I have an SPP also (got it from Steve H.) and wish it had the conductivity switch that is on all other TDI's (well, is it on the TDI Beach Hunter? Don't know about that special use version). Long ago Steve wrote up a piece about coin hunting (it's still here on the site) with the original Pulse Scan TDI model and he made use of the conductivity switch in that application. Besides silencing high or low tones (your choice, besides the option of hearing both -- only option on SPP), it also is a bit quieter if you select high or low, according to the manual. If you happen to get into ground that allows you to leave Ground Balance off, it detects considerably deeper (at least mine does with the 12" mono). I recall reading that there are circuit variations on the TDI/SL (including the TDI/SPP) which lead to performance differences. For a simple detector those variations seem to produce complications in some cases. Still, maybe the most affordable Ground Balancing PI out there. Works with all GPX compatible mono coils -- a great plus in itself.

The island's only bank won't even let me run my coins through their machine.. they took one look at the bags of dodgy looking coins and told me I had to join the bank before they'd think about it.. also at the pub and some shops they'll only accept corroded coins when they can see the Queen's head.. ☹️

I’ve still got over $100 in damaged $1 and $2 coins……I think they can be exchanged by banks?

Yes... thankyou Minelab. group coins, second to last season of "keepers" Coin shooting (etrac). Barbers & "keeper" nickels from my last season coin shooting. Nugg jug not including this seasons gold.

Got 13 today. 1.58 grams. Forgot my knee pads so I decided to just re-search my old open area. The 6000 impresses me every day. It has some quirk's but it is getting me gold every day, even in areas I thought I had hunted it to death. I am looking forward to hunting it with the coiltek 9x14, come Friday. I couldn't wait for the NF coils to come in. I will get those when they do.

The wife decided to get rid of some of our coins and cash them in nearly $400 The metals are a mixture of copper and nickel . 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are 75 per cent copper and 25 per cent nickel.

I've been using it for a month, and 750 euro, that is good price for D2. WS6 module + wired earbuds seats in my pocket, ultra light setup with 9" coil.

He's said earlier in another post or thread they're bundle wound. The thing I've noticed which in a way confirms this is the 11" stock coil is rather insensitive to tiny targets on the edge of the coil which you would expect for its partial flat wound design for those that tilt the coil on its side and use it as a pinpointer. The Coiltek especially the 10x5 I've put the most usage into has hotter edges which fit in with it being bundle wound. Anyone that's used the Evo's or Elites on the older GPX will be familiar with what I'm talking about. As targets get bigger yes the 11" sides pick them up well but its the little hard to find targets they struggle, where as the bundle wound coils having all their windings right at the edge really work great as pinpointing coils. I think it also explains why the 11" seems about as sensitive to tiny targets as the 10x5" and more sensitive than the 14x9" and also possibly part of the reason the Coilteks run a little quieter. Just my uneducated observations.

Yea, people were wondering why the Nox went up in price in the US, they had all these theories as to why it's gone up, turns out Minelab just needed more money as their profit was lagging behind forecast 🙂

Picks are kinda expendable items if you use em a lot, but you should be able to hammer out that stub or worst case drill it out in pieces. The Link seymore west sledge/maul handles have worked and held up good for me. Just have to size the handle a bit on a belt sander, and use a little 2 part epoxy when driving it in, and you should be good to go. The gorilla glue epoxy is nice, and not so brittle when set.

Yes...the pulse scan TDI, and then the Pro. The pro had better Ground balancing for the Australian market, but sold also in the US. Then the SL version, which fit ina smaller box because they went to surface-mount components, but it also had a different ground-balancing system, which improved the performance. Not much later Reg Sniff (RIP) started testing mods to the SL that improved the performance. His mods, which included improved sensitivity, and faster allowed sweep speed, without sacrificing sensitivity really turned the SL into a great machine. The factory finally relented and adopted the improved sensitivity mod into the factory models, starting sometime in 2015. Then the tan version, which also had the improved sensitivity mod. No factory unit ever had the faster sweep speed mod, though that's the easier of the two mods to do. Jim

I'd buy one of those in a heartbeat, if it available near me, Jeff. You beat me to Jim's only because I was out of Internet touch for a few days in Wyoming. I knew when I saw the post, I'd be too late....LOL Should have known it would be you...Ha!

Just a quick report on my heavily modded TDI SL. It stilll works very well, with my 16v battery packs. My wife used it on a recent trip to South Pass, Wyoming, and found lots of old lead bullets, cartridges, etc. A couple of days later, I took it out nugget hunting, and while I found no gold, it did find a piece of what looked like chewing gum foil about 3/8" long and 1/16" in diameter. The foil was 3" down. Doubt it weighed 1/2 grain. My TDI isn't a Minelab or Garrett, but it's still very sensitive, and i can swing it all day. The sensitivity and sweep speed mods, along with my vernier controls really make a difference. Jim

Geof_junk, that is what I saw about his pick as well. The guy at Apex claims that their picks are precision engineered and that they wont take any gold hunter's tips to make them better because they make the best pick. 🤣 Hahahaha. I will take an Australian made pick any day over an Apex. I will be ordering some Osage Orange handles for mine and my buddy's picks. Hands down there is no other wood better for pick handles than Osage worldwide.

I've been making the most of some very low tides to hunt at the back of my local bays.. Amongst a load of crap, this is yesterday's haul from Alma Bay.. $32 and some cheap jewellery.. This haul really opened my eyes to the differences in success between scuba and beach detecting.. These coins and jewellery were found along a swimming/snorkelling zone where I usually dive (3 to 5 metres deep).. To my great and eternal shame, I missed them.. Although some are newly dropped, others have been there a long while.. Covering this zone on scuba takes a long time.. Visibility is not always what you'd expect for a tropical island.. Constant channel dredging for a nearby port and mangrove swamps along the coast keep our waters pretty murky.. Also, the smaller coils on the Deus II and PulseDive make it harder to cover large areas.. This compares to covering the same zone whilst beach detecting with larger coils: strolling along the beach, cherry-picking juicy targets and digging as deep as you like without the hole washing away.. You can see what you're doing and the target stays where it's supposed to be, all this makes the job much faster.. Although not necessarily more enjoyable as the challenge is gone.. On scuba the biggest haul along this zone in one morning was $6.50 and an silver earing.. In bays which have shark nets the scuba vs beach hunting ratio is usually the other way around, as people are herded together in one small space.. I'm lucky that on the island coins are still in everyday use, even in a mostly cashless society the island's busses still only accept cash.. As do all small businesses like the tourist stalls at markets along the beach, the 'tropical fruit juice lady' and the seafood van which sells straight from the island's trawlers.. This means there's a regular supply of coins dropped at our three main bays, all within 5 minutes from my house.. Yes, I know.. I'm a lucky son of a.. very nice lady!

Nice hunt and big silver ring. That is a really beautiful spot.

Could it be kurrent lettering from 19th Century northern Europe? But even those had many different fonts and also variations by region (e.g. Denmark vs. Germany). Here's one example:

Way to go, congrats. Made for a great read!

How do you know that the 24K is the only thing that Garrett used from Whites? Let's see, there was the Ace APEX which had simultaneous multi frequency tech that came from somewhere, and the new Axiom has some different and enhanced technology that didn't just come from the Infinium and the ATX. Where could some of the SMF technology for Garrett's SMF AT series that we all know will be happening eventually be coming from????? Just my opinion, but it's a possibility.

The $1 & $2 coins are removed from Carol heap and go in mine. Tony the total that you have to be counted is some where between 100 and 50 coins so that is not problem like the 2000+ that had to be counted by the bank machine.

Thanks for the detailed post Erik. I like sharks about as much as I like bears, and that isnt much. Stay Safe.

Got another 7 today. Wow my patch is still giving them up. My buddy's Apex didt last long. He got it 4-5 months ago.

True that, the old timers didn't mind a hard days work, could lift anything they wanted and stacked up tonnes of rocks with their bare hands without complaining it's too heavy even if its as light as a feather 🙂

I’m over 6 foot and haven’t had an real issues with the 6000 but then again I have no issues with the GPZ either, not sure why that is. I have brothers who are taller than me yet my head hits the roof of their cars whereas theres don’t so maybe my longer back has something to do with it. The rose joint is a special swivel-like rod end design that allows a small amount or degree of movement in the stem end that in combination with the iso rubbers take the shock out of solid hits like large surface rocks and large pebbles. It creates a barrier to the direct connection feeling associated with the very light carbon fibre shafts and also soaks up some of the spring like movements that come from the larger impacts (Lower shaft wobble is reduced with the heavier coils because the Rose joint acts like a shock absorber). I think it is likely most noticeable in very flat Terrain where the coil is transiting an even sweep from side to side (often at a fast pace for coverage) with no plonking of the coil bottom like you do in hilly terrain, all those micro touches and larger ones in flat areas like WA can migrate to the handle and also the coil cable. Anyway its not a BIG deal more a refinement to the experience that can also have some benefits with micro bump cable noise etc. If your a fisherman its very much like the difference between monofilament (being the Rose joint) and Braid, monofilament has stretch and give and braid does not. JP

Well Carol only got a third of a $1000 but the machine I used took an hour too. The computer keep crashing and would only take a maximum of 400 coins. The bank employer was get mad at the machine and was very happy when it was all over. ☹️

Many years ago, I finally bought a tumbler to clean up about 10 years worth of all the coins from the beach and water……I spent no less than two full days tumbling the coins in a mixture of sand and vinegar. Off to the bank coin counting machine with two heavy duty duffel bags that I struggled to carry. I was at that counting machine for over an hour……..final tally was just under $4000 👍 Those were the days when everyone carried coins to the beach…..not so much now. In hindsight I should have hired a cement mixer and cleaned the coins in one go.

Great hunt! Buttons are my favorite thing to find. 👍 I managed to find one somewhat like the button in question on a card of "British military buttons", but cannot make out the writing under it: I'll keep looking. 🙂

"Like" Ran out of them 🙂 Interesting the history of the bay and the big shark barrier. The bay is like warm bath water and you can just plonk in it all day but the problem is the warm water doesn't shrink fingers for rings to fall off like cold water does. I'd be detecting up close to the rocks in the water, people are drawn to that area, well they were when I was there, I was one of them though so maybe they were drawn to me 😜

I forgot to mention that within this zone there once stood a massive shark barrier.. In the picture above, you can just see a stretch of dark patches where it was.. Today this line is a shallow underwater gully with iron beams scattered along it.. This is what Alma Bay looked like in the 1930s..

Put White’s in the out of business/retired forum. It doesn’t fit in the Garrett forum in my opinion since the 24K is probably the only Garrett/Whites rebadge that I expect to see from Garrett.

Great explanation Steve. The TDI SL recently released (2018?) special edition was a really fun and comfortable detector to swing since it was so lightweight. I would have definitely kept the one I had for awhile if it wasn't so gutless power-wise. I spent most of my time in the gold fields wondering why it was so quiet. I went behind it with another manufacturers PI made in (2003!!!!!!) with a similar sized coil, basic settings and a 16 year old battery and found out why............. Jeff

There is no benefit to doing so on a VLF because they are all voltage regulated internally. A PI detector is a different beast, and in general more power means more depth, and many PI models are not voltage regulated. Too much power can of course blow the circuit. The TDI series is odd in that the early models were more powerful and newer models less powerful. The original TDI Pro used a 16V battery pack but White’s went to 12V with the TDI SL, mostly to allow for use of the existing AA power pack scheme, which avoids shipping issues with the old Li-Ion pack that White’s was using. So some people are boosting the voltage back up to gain that little edge that was lost by the move to 12V.