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So, I get a call to help out at a Revolutionary War camp site.... I declined 😥 Hell no 😄. So 4 of us spent the day working with Archaeologists doing the metal detecting survey for them. Total Regiment buttons were 10 plus 3 round ball. This place has been hunted twice before with detectors, so we did pretty good, considering the grass was really tall and there were cow droppings everywhere. 💩 I ended up with 5 Regiment buttons and 2 round ball, plus other good stuff. I only used the GPX 5000 since the grass was so high and iron was rather light, considering the present occupation. I also found a large colonial copper & a small copper coin - both unreadable - and a odd 2 piece button that I can't figure out what the heck it is. Pictured are 3 of the Rev War buttons, since they are the only readable ones, plus the odd button. If anyone has ever seen that odd button before, I would appreciate any info on it. I've detected a lot of cellar holes and other old locations in my life, and have found quite a few military buttons, but these are my first Rev War buttons ever. Nice to get that monkey off my back.

Some Photos from Vic and WA Aus. Whites 6000D and Aus Whites GoldMaster from early 1980s on the beach after Gold jewellery. Panning South of Ballarat. Note proper Steel Gold Pans. 😁 VIC. Claim I took out after finding 26+ oz in one day. The brother-in-law on claim. WA. Where I found my largest bit, 3500 gm with nearly 17 ounces of gold. General Area of above. Same area but wide view of general spot. A photo that was used on another forum that has now gone the way of many others. Four hundred small bits about 0.3 to 0.4 gm each.

...Gold is everywhere! Just, go out and dig. There's no pattern to follow. Specific weight is high, that the only guide. Study your beach, winds, tides, bathing areas. And a little luck!...

Ok ok... i cant resist. The depth of the two machines is similar. Beyond that, i dont think there's a category where the equinox is equal to the d2. The d2 is WAY lighter, like not even in the same ballpark. It is more ergonomic. It is way better at the beach. It is more customizable, w lots of advanced settings. The waterproofing actually works w the d2. The d2 goes way way way deeper underwater. The d2 has far superior separation, even w a 9 inch coil being the smallest coil. The d2 is sturdy, ive seen a handful of equinox machines where the console is literally falling apart and taped together. The customer service from xp is superior. The ids on coins are pretty dang spot on every time and when paired with customizable audio, you can really avoid digging junk like zinc pennies. That's all I've got for now.

So... Two years ago on April 4th, I took 250 modern zinc cents and hid them about an inch deep in our sand driveway for our nephews and niece to find with my metal detectors. The detectors were too big and heavy for them so they just used my smaller pin pointer detectors and a couple of sand scoops. The had a ball for a couple hours and found quite a bit of them. Since then after a rain a couple of the modern cents will surface & I smile thinking back how much fun the kids had that day... Fast forward to tonight, I was walking back from the barn with Jody after doing the evening chores and I looked down and saw a green cent on the ground. When I picked it up, I could see that it was a worn Indian head cent and I told Jody, "Holy smokes, its an Indian head cent". She said "You must have thrown it out there that day you buried the coins for the kids". While still walking back to the house I told her "I wouldn't have thrown an Indian head cent out for them to find". When I got in the house and put it under the magnifying glass, I see that it's a 1872... I looked back at my records and old face book posts and I have never found a 1872 Indian head cent. Could this be that this 151 year old coin has been on the property all this time? Not only is this a 1872 Indian head cent, it is an error coin as well. The error is that it's a "Shallow N FS-901 1872 Indian head cent". Here is the link to the PCGS website that explains the error: https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1872-1c-shallow-n-fs-901-rb/404547 I did find some old stoneware last year on the property that was made prior to 1897, so anything is possible.

I also have a Deus 2 …… it’s no slouch for Park hunting …… 9 inch coil ….at the park today …90 degrees….. under shade trees ……sensitive full tones…. Once you master The Deus 2’s Audio …….& go over a coin size Target…. Boy do You know it…. …… must be willing to bond with The Deus’s Audio information

Well we had fun. Have to go home tomorrow. The photo shows our finds. The usual. The one rock has chevrons etched in it. I think this is how some of Rye Patches nuggets end up with the unique feature. Just my guess. One of the rocks has a print from a prehistoric cat. The shiny silver stuff is a rare element called aluminium and is only found where homosapiens have been. Unfortunately we did not find the allusive element AU.

Hmmm... - Dave

May 30 2002 We ended up with 9/10 of an ounce of gold out of yesterday’s work. Jacob was saying that if we are going to bring in an excavator we should just do it now. He didn’t want to wait. I explained to him again that we need to wait for our permit to be approved. As if on cue, while we the crew sat around camp this morning eating breakfast, who decides to show up? The government agent from the Forest Service. He came walking into camp with a fine howdy due and told us we were going to be approved and needed to post our bond. He said the paperwork would be sitting in his office tomorrow, which was Friday and the last of the month. Then he said we’d needed to post our bond. If we wanted to start immediately, we needed to put a CD in place at the bank payable to the Forest Service and we were good to go. Hallelujah, we are in business. When the agent left we all started talking about our plan. Jacob was really excited to mine with some digging equipment. We decided to buy a mid-sized excavator at a lot in town.We had been eyeing it for several weeks. This would put a sizable dent in our gold count but we figured to make up for it in pay gravel volume quickly. So we took the day off from digging and Jim and I went into town to conduct business. When we concluded, I stopped and bought some good whisky and beer for the crew. We had ourselves a big supper and sat around the campfire drinking and talking about the mine and all the gold we were going to get. Before we knew it the time had slipped right past us and it was 1:00 AM. We all headed for our campers. Tomorrow will be a big day for us. TO BE CONTINUED ..................

While I have been down south of the border scooping a different kind of gold, I was reading some of the reports of all the records of Snow coming down. Some of the videos and pictures is just amazing and seeing how folks cope with and live through it. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/03/15/california-snowfall-record/11435377002/ Then, I got to thinking about when all that snow melts and those creeks in gold bearing areas will be at levels most have never seen. Then to go a step further, some of the rivers should just be roaring with life and movement. Heck I already heard a few washings in AZ that typically don't see much movement, were actually exposing some new layers and a few nuggets were being recovered. I know for a fact what a good gully washer can do in desert regions, as I witnessed such event at Rye Patch, NV one early Spring (April 2015) while I was getting ready for a 3 Day Field Training for customers. When driving in, I noticed the roads below were really torn up and a couple washes with deep cuts and ruts. When I got south of the burn barrel, there was one section of exposed bedrock. I figured there had to be a few pickers in there and as soon as folks started swinging, sure enough. Pics are of a lucky lady and her 1st score with a GB-2. After she swung over it, she looked down and there it was stuck in a crack, finally exposed after thousands of years. Later in the class she was able to score another chunkier nugget with some nice character. Do you think the record snows and rains will be a big benefit to for gold hunters or just a few? How many of you folks do sluicing, crevicing and other gold recovery methods? I would expect later this season to be fantastic for most who are traditional Prospectors of gold. I really don't know as my only means of gold recover has been with a detector. Yes I'll try to get some pics of a few Au rings I recovered down south...just trying to get caught up with customers 1st.

May 31 2002 We were all up early before daylight and had breakfast and coffee. We finally got the excavator delivered around 10:00 AM and took it up to the dig site. Vern and Jim were already working on a big grizzly setup to protect the tom. Our plan was to feed it directly from the bucket on the machine and also use it to remove tailings as needed. We set the tom up high on a platform of compacted gravel so the tailings would have a place to fall away. Then as needed when they piled up near the tom we would push them aside and remove them. The excavator had a blade on the front which could be used to push them away. We wanted to find out how many yards of gravel the home built tom is capable of handling. We are hoping for a minimum of 5 yards an hour. That might be pushing it so we will see. Part of the day will be used to deal with tailings so we are planning on washing pay gravel for 9 or 10 hours a day. If the tom is capable of the 5 yards then we should get close to 45 - 50 yards of processed material in a day. Also, we are already discussing the possibility of buying a small trommel. One step at a time for now as the season is still early. We also added a larger water pump that should handle the increased volume of gravel being washed. It was past 5:00 PM by the time we were ready to give the new setup a try. Vern fired up the pump and Jacob hollered out “Here she comes” as the water came down and across the mountain. Jim ran the excavator and the first load was fed into the grizzly feed hopper. We didn’t push it too fast and just let the tom take what it could. I set my watch on the operation and calculated nearly 7 yards for the first hour of run time. We decided to shut down and do a good cleanup. By then it was around 7:30 PM and we hauled the concentrates back down to camp and set them off at our cleanup station. We decided to go ahead and do the cleanup which we finished around 9:30 PM and called it a day. We took a look at the gold as Vern weighed it up. There was ½ ounce. We figured if we could run 9 - 10 hours a day we could get around 5 ounces of gold per day if those numbers held up. We were all pretty darn happy when we finally sat down to eat our supper and have a drink with Jacob. He was already saying that if we proved those numbers over the next week or two we should buy a trommel and triple our production. He was really getting into the operation now. Everyone’s eyes were full of dollar signs. Then Jacob gave us a stern warning. He said that when the big gold comes we must be very careful not to talk about it with any outsiders. He also said we should not let anyone near our camp or dig site. Period. He said big gold means big trouble. Then he said absolutely no woman will ever come near the claims because they are a jinx to miners. TO BE CONTINUED .................

At least you were able to get out, put a little time on your machine and clean up from some of the messy folks. Sorry the genuine gold did not show its shiny face, but sometimes gold come in many forms and ways. Thanks for sharing.

The first pic is a close-up of the date. At first I thought it was a 1878, but it's a 1872. The second pic is from over two years ago when on April 4th 2021 I seeded my sand driveway with 250 modern zinc cents for my nephews and niece to find with my metal detectors.

It appears the old Treasurelinx site is hosted at Geotech now…. https://treasurelinx.geotech1.com/Main/index.html

Some of my customers are making snowmen down there. I have Brad, Jim and another guy (camped around the burn barrel). Another guy from Boise, ID (Rob) is heading down Thursday and I think Ray, Faustino and one other, is also heading down this weekend. I heard Lunk was running around with the Axiom and scored a couple yesterday. The ground will still have a quite a bit of moisture, so stay on the ridge tops and keep your GAIN/SENS moderate. Since I just returned from Cancun, I need to weigh all my gold jewelry and get caught up with customers before I head down. Crazy it's already mid April and so many of us have yet to find our 1st gold nugget for 2023, well at least me anyways. That's exactly why I had to get out of dodge and head south across the border. Have fun guys and if you need any detectors or coils, I can ship them C/O at the US Post Office in Imlay. If you stop in Mill City (it's not a city at all, just a couple buildings) say hello to Trudy at the Star Trading Post. If you really want a treat ask her about the Prime Rib and Lobster Dinners (you must pre register). Tell her Gerry's Detectors from Boise says "Hello". If you are around the dam, stop in and see Danny at Gold Diggers Pizzeria and Saloon. Treat yourself to the coldest beer in the area and one of the best hand made pizzas you'll set your lips to. Danny, is the grandson of famous Ed Spears. Tell him, Gerry's Detectors said "hello". I forgot the name of the girl who offers sight seeing trips, but I know you won't be disappointed. It's amazing the imagery you can see under moonlight. Dang, were did I put that card? Have fun everyone and be sure to have good quality tires, a spare and know how to change it.

New members now have limited access until they reach Full Member status. There is no ability to include links or to edit their own posts until they have made 10 posts and been a member more than 30 days. There is no access to posting classifieds until after 10 posts and 30 days. They can post in response to an ad however. There is a limit of one Personal Message conversation per day so they can contact people with ads in the Classifieds in private if desired. Any account that has not posted at all in the 30 day period will be deleted. Anyone with more than one but less than 10 posts will simply remain in the regular Member account status indefinitely. The accounts that make at least ten valid posts and have been a member at least 30 days will automatically be promoted to the new Full Member status. This will give access to the Classifieds, remove the PM limit, allow links and post editing, preset "signatures" and more. This does not affect any existing accounts!! Any current members with less than 10 posts etc need not worry as all accounts as of this morning were promoted to Full Member status. Anyone with no posts however should at least post once or lose your account after 30 days have passed. This was done to stop the excessive spammer activity after consulting the current membership over the last month. It should pretty much put a complete halt to that sort of thing, while also encouraging new members to be more active. Lurkers are welcome, but will need to post at least once. Thank you everyone for the valuable feedback on this subject. I will monitor the new setup but if anyone experiences anything odd due to the new setup, please let me know. I changed quite a few forum settings and hopefully got it all right.

Was lucky enough to find an 18 k chain and pendant on my second time out with the Manticore. Chain has a silver pendant and a gold pendant , looks like there was a second gold pendant that has come off. 33 gram with the silver pendant. I have been told that the gold pendant most probably holds a portion of someone's ashes. Found in the wet sand around 25 cm deep. It was the silver pendant that I heard. My guess is that most beach detectors would have heard the silver pendant, but it was nice to get some gold with the Manticore. So far I am really enjoying the Manticore on the beach and in the water. Haven’t had it in fast moving water yet, but it is working great in tidal pools.

Got home from work today and had the urge to hit a park I've been hunting for four years. Only having an hour and a half to get it done I grabbed my 800 with my new Steve's 3 piece shaft and six inch coil and headed out. I parked the truck turned on the 800 and realized I needed to pair my headphones due to my factory reset. I got it done and walked across the driveway took one swing and got a really nice tone (32) ID. It sounded like a silver dollar but I get fooled sometimes. Shovel in and a little pinpointer action and a finger scrape and the goodness showed itself. It was a 1950 Franklin half dollar with a giant nail next to it. I figured it couldn't get any better so I continued to make my way around the big old cherry tree to see what else was there. A hand full of clad and my time closing in, I made it back within 15 feet of where I found the Franklin. I got another really great tone with the same 32 ID. I was wondering what the chances of finding two silver half's in the same day. Well I would say 100% when out came the second Franklin a 1962. It was an amazing feeling knowing I have not dug one of those let alone two in very very long time. Oddly I dig a lot of silver half's but rarely these. Today was apparently a day when the detecting gods pointed me in the right direction.

I've been away from the forum for a good while, but very recently dipped my toe in again. One reason was that I have about 10 detectors lying around as a result of my previous intense curiosity about these magical devices,, how they worked, the story of their development...yada yada yada. Wanting to get together all the notes, copies of data and posts related to various detectors I need find a good home for, I decided to use a tool which I am relying on a lot in the rest of my life and interests. So, wanting to dig up what I could on a lovely Teknetics Mark 1, factory hip/chest mount - which I need to "re-home", I went on Bing Chat (part of the Microsoft Edge browser). Here's what I wrote in my "prompt" can you find any information on the teknetics Mark 1 metal detector here's the result: I found some information about the Teknetics Mark 1 metal detector from a web search. According to a post on DetectorProspector.com, a user found a Teknetics Mark 1 metal detector for sale on Craigslist for $100. The seller indicated that he had no idea if it worked or not as it had been sitting for decades. The user eventually purchased it for $25 and found that it worked after replacing the batteries 1. Is there anything else you would like to know about this metal detector? 1. detectorprospector.com2. tekneticsdirect.com3. tekneticsdirect.com+1 more of course, the first reference link was This forum Teknetics Mark 1 - Factory Hip Mount - Metal Detector Advice & Comparisons - DetectorProspector.com Which is, of course, my post and the resulting posts from December 2020!

Exactly. Learn to use your detector. Listen to their language. Low tones, all metal, threshold... Low recovery speed, no iron filters, no bottle cup reject, go down your break tone...a world of things! Take your time. Deep old gold sounds like iron, you can see negative ID's ... don't worry. Trust your ear!!! Your Items: old/green coins, fisher weight, iron, perhaps silver... Easy. 😉

As far as I know the 7000 doesn't auto adjust sensitivity down due to EMI though. So if he had the sensitivity set equal on both machines, one should just be quieter than the other. I'm not sure how one machine is that much deeper than the other just by making it slightly quieter though, I can't see the mechanism for which that might happen. The purpose of making machines quieter is being able to boost sensitivity (and to reduce target masking), but he doesn't appear to be boosting sensitivity. Target masking can occur with too much noise, but that doesn't appear to be happening here as it's the same target in open air, with similar noise levels, and on one machine it's simply being detected much deeper with very similar noise levels. Dunno... I'm a bit skeptical though, maybe he'll explain it all further? I personally don't believe the 6000 was inconsistent among different owners. My observation has been some people simply didn't recognize it. The problem with it existed on literally every single 6000 I've ever come into contact with. In many cases the owners themselves were unaware, or saying they didn't see the issue - until I used it and showed them. Most of these people were primarily headphone users, or people who insisted excessive noise on detectors is "part of the game", etc. I haven't encountered a single 6000 that didn't have that issue, so I doubt it was unreliable components, I think it was a design flaw with unshielded components on every 6000 made up until a certain point. At least, I haven't yet seen any evidence to prove otherwise, but I'd be pretty curious to see a 6000 in person that was bought before the cut-off date which doesn't have this issue when in my own hands, if anyone in the US wants to show me one in the field here. But yeah...as to Woody mods, I'm skeptical. If he is reading here, it'd be interesting for him to post and answer some questions maybe. I too find it hard to believe ML would make such basic, correctable errors... But they did seem to do exactly that with the 6000 unshielded components, so... That Woody hasn't found the EMI/speaker/whatever issue on the 6000 himself, when this appears to be his primary job, makes me wonder too. Or maybe he has a newer 6000 with the fix already in place? Also thought similar re: your last sentence - I think they probably did leave some gas in the tank for whatever the 7000 successor will be, easy gains in combination with lighter weight. But with this long between models, I'd sure hope for something else good in terms of advancements. 8 years is an eon in the tech world.

I've pretty much abandoned using these GPT AI's alone for anything prospecting related. They are ok for asking questions, but for some of the work I wanted to do with them, they aren't sufficient at this stage. Too complicated to explain here, but the problem is with the general design where they are language model AI's, and the way they interpret language. They are ok for ingestion of large amounts of language based data, like reading and summarizing a lot of papers - which is one thing I wanted to do. But they fail entirely with spatial recognition and certain number based computation. So for exploration work, they are no where close to sufficient as standalone tools and require other API's as well as other AI's, and the whole project has gotten beyond my technical ability. That said, in the process of research I did find some pretty interesting hybrid-AI type tools that look promising for prospecting/exploration. But I just don't have the time to learn tangential stuff with no immediate application right now as I have too much other stuff to take care of first. When I get more time to learn these things I'll try to post on them if I can make them useful.

Oh yeah, GB... I also found this cool suspender clip with a turtle on it near the 1870 IHP in the same park, same day.

Thanks GB, It is one of the fun years for sure. A few years ago I found a really, really nice 1870 shallow N Indian head cent in a city park along with a gold cufflink and three percussion caps. With the environmental damage of being a dug coin, I don't know if it would be worth having it graded or not.

I don't know much really, I don't specifically look for them, I find them by accident. The people I know who meteorite hunt seriously spend a lot of time looking for fresh falls though, so it must be at least somewhat frequent. But from prospecting in general I can say I've found meteorites in 2 states that were unknown falls, cold discoveries while prospecting for gold (both were clearly old though, 100's or 1000's of years). I haven't reported any of them to be classified. I don't really want my full name out there for the bad elements to know, and I don't want some places I'm actively working to be known either, so no classifications for me. I suspect there is a good number of meteorites found that go unreported for similar reasons, I personally know other people who've also made finds and not reported them for those reasons. While they are rare, I doubt the slim number of recorded instances represent the actual occurence/distribution of them on the Earth. The amount of land people have run coils over is diminishingly small. Both cold finds I made were in places no one would ever metal detect, and probably never will again, because there was no indicators there of prior habitation or gold mineralization. Endless more land like that available... That leads me to believe that meteorite hunting probably could be a fairly doable hobby with a metal detector, for people with a ton of patience. At this point, if I had to really make a living off detecting and didn't want to mess with jewelry, I think I'd probably choose to do meteorite detecting as it gets me into the wilds and exploring and away from people same as gold. That said, I doubt it will ever be a significant source of revenue for detector manufacturers....but it's something I guess.

Things are going good. Im not camped in a good spot for nuggets but this area is rich in Sapphires. I'll be doing some sapphire mining as soon as my Saruca's get here. Good money in Sapphires too. I'll do this til the snow clears out of the mountains to the point I can get some more gold. Got a buyer who will be buying every bit of gold I can dig up so won't be hurting for money. I've been sleeping like a baby in this 27 degree nights being back in Montana. I haven't used my heater once in the back of the truck since I have been back. Heck, I even slept in til 9:30 this morning. That is unheard of for me. I typically get up around 5 am. Gold Ryder and I are going to have to deal with a scoundrel former claim partner this summer, who apparently is going to be a thorn in our sides. Hopefully the bears will be out in force this year. 😆🤣

Been lucky to travel a little with metal detector. Below - 1st pic is Positano, Italy and I detected the beach. Found some coins and a sterling ring. 2nd pic (below) is my 1st ever one ounce gold nugget. Found on the runway at Ganes Creek, Alaska. 3rd pic (below) is from Australia and the hot ground. 4th pic is from Bahamas Detecting England in the early Spring Rains and some of the success from the group trip. Interior of Mexico and the soldiers watching over/protecting the gold Anyone been around old mining should know what this is...MX Lake Tahoe and the rock statues watching the gold. I was able to earn a little yellow heavy metal from Lake Tahoe. Last pic - My CTX-3030 says something metallic in the rock.

Here are some of my haunts.

Wife and I have been prospecting and nugget hunting in this area since the 1980's. We've been fortunate finding wire and leaf gold specimens.

Some may find this interesting, a tear-down of a GPZ 7000.

Ok, spur of the moment decision. Erin and I have just decided to head to northern Nevada/ Winnemucca area for three or four days. Weather in Idaho sucks but might be ok to the south of us. Anybody want to meet up just to say hi?

Way below the level of this discussion, but...have a look, you might find it amusing...

(I'd rather get less gold if it means less trash) the old timers were everywhere. when you are finding miners trash from the 1800s its probably a good idea to slow down and have a look around. (I don't prefer locations where I know others have detected already) you might be surprised just how far some will go to find nuggets. (The more remote, the better.) ill just say be careful. this morning i found a 60 year old guy from Texas broke down. he was nugget hunting. he was pretty far back in there. he had busted his oil pan on a very bad road. i had to use a tow strap to pull him out over some spots i don't even like to take my 4x4. kind of messed up my day. you didn't say when you were planning to do this, its 90 degrees here in AZ today and will be pushing 100 next week.

I have already sent bigtim some info via private message on another forum. I own and regularly use the Equinox 900 and Deus 2. Anyway, I can see a few reasons why bigtim might want to use an Equinox 900 versus Deus 2 which he already owns. One is the really easy to read display. If he is having trouble seeing the Deus 2 remote display I personally can understand that along with the ease of use of the Equinox 900 versus Deus 2 interface in general. I also really prefer to be able to switch from SMF to single frequency within the Park, Field and Gold modes by just hitting the frequency button. I definitely prefer the easy, unlimited single digit notching on the Equinox 900 compared to the weird, cumbersome, very limited notching of Deus 2. Small target sensitivity difference especially using the Equinox Gold modes versus Deus 2 Goldfield and Relic modes has already been mentioned. Finally, for occasional water use such as I am at the beach or at a lake just working the shoreline and I decide to just get the coil submerged a bit, hopefully I brought my Deus 2 antenna wire. No worries with the Equinox 900. Conversely, I could make a substantial list of the things about Deus 2 that I like better than similar things about Equinox 900. Weight for me would be near the bottom of that list by the way. These are all very lightweight, easy to swing detectors depending on the coils being used. Otherwise, so far for me anyway, there is no way that I would sell my Deus 2 and replace it with an Equinox 900. That does not mean one is overall better than the other. They both have strengths and weaknesses that do not match up and instead support each other. If bigtim said he wanted to sell his Deus 2 and buy a Manticore.......that would be an entirely different discussion.

'Unglazed' is the word. Most bathroom and floor ceramic tiles are glazed on one side but not the other. Inside surface of a toilet tank is another option, but taking the lid off frequently runs the risk of dropping and breaking it.... The tile shop might have broken pieces they end up tossing, so if that's the case the price should be right.

Awsome work!!⚒👍👍

Great hunt. 2 halves is not very common in one hunt, especially Franklin halves.

Sure it does, but why would you want to put a very large piece of metal near your coil? I put a shovel handle on my scoop and drag it behind me. No problem.

I was detecting in a yard where the house was built in 1890 late last week with the Deus 2 and I found a mix of modern and semi old items, but nothing from when the house was new. I think the coolest find of the day was a modern Memorial cent that was struck about 90% off center:

Hopefully not much longer for the 6” concentric. I’m also disappointed it’s been taking this long, but it’s fair to say they got sidetracked by the Axiom release. Not saying that’s right, just the way it is. Getting coils out in a timely fashion for new detectors seems to challenge everyone but Nokta, though gotta say that with six coils at release Garrett did well with Axiom. But again, I think the 24K got the back seat due to that. I also tend to think the market for dedicated VLF nugget hunters is drying up, which is not helping either. Garrett may very well end up selling more Axioms than 24Ks.

Ok, he has to be reading these posts. 😄 His latest video shows some similar things about the 6000 as I was saying in prior posts about desensitizing and staying desensitized. His just caused by EMI, but I know big iron also affects it too and I think he'll discover that soon with more experiments as well. The problem is when the auto adjustments are sticking around rather than being auto readjusted back up when the EMI/iron goes away, and you never know if you're running dumbed down (mine were 3-4" reduced in my brief tests) all day from an auto adjustment event potentially hours prior, because there is no way to check. Trust in a detector is paramount to do good work, this is bad. One EMI/iron event might cause you to run desensitized for the rest of the day? Do we have to reboot every 5 minutes to avoid that? Even after rebooting I was still desensitized sometimes in my brief tests, but that too was unpredictable. It was happening in "manual" too, more problematic. * Bleh, deleted paragraphs of me ranting. It's Minelab. It is what it is. I'm not going to go on another single man crusade to fix yet another thing for a detector which I am just going to retire the first chance I get to get something better anyways. I don't get paid or free detectors, not happy about doing free work for them. People can draw their own conclusions, but I know what I've seen in the field and the 6000 definitely misses a lot of gold well within it's technical range to hit, due to unpredictable adjustments, even when operated by experienced detectorists.

Pretty gnarly winter this year in the Rockies, one of the snowiest/coldest I've seen anyways. I'm seeing dead/frozen pronghorn, deer, even frozen elk last time I got out and looked. Seems like it's gonna be a shorter prospecting season in some parts of the Rockies as the snowpack has barely begun to melt off in some places yet, hopefully not though, we'll see.

This is a great forum, thanks Steve!

i think that link is from The U.K.

I could use up all my likes on a thread like this ..and you can't give doubles . But this way I can . Double Oh My's on all posts !

MINEBORG

Dave Ahhhhhh ! Experienced but exploring new directions . You sure are picking up his clues well ! Now I know what you "will be making in 20 years" 👍 that's today ! You have bragging rights and the pics do it for you too !

Places where many green coins are found are usually where things have consolidated for a long time, which do mean jewelry and other objects of value tend to end up in the same area. I also found that areas where i've found stuff before could keep providing more as long as the conditions are right. Usually when I check places that historically I've found very little or nothing, I won't find much there later on no matter how often I check. But places where I have found stuff, (as long as it isn't sanded in) I will often find stuff there. The kind of stuff found varies though, based on wave action and the pattern that gravels move. (if your beach has gravels and rocks) Stuff tends to end up in front of gravel patches if you have any. So a gravel patch that is deep onto land is usually a good sign; check in front of that. If you have a gravel patch out near the waves check behind it, sometimes stuff like coins and jewelry can end up stuck behind the patch and to the sides of the patch where waves are uninhibited from pushing stuff up from the water. When finding stuff like jewelry, if you find at least one, circle around from that spot and go slow. Like objects stay with like objects, so heavy stuff like silver and gold will hang out near each other. I can tell you a number of times where I found 1 ring, and then found something of similar caliber near it. I found a silver ring and near the ring was a silver dime. A gold ring found, and a silver ring was not too far off. Much like coin lines you will find jewelry buried near each other if you've found a patch. Coin lines and jewelry also tend to stay near each other because both are heavy, especially if the coins are green. I personally just dig every target I can hit in a coin line (which is often horizontally trending), because i'm not too far off from digging something cooler than green coins. If you find an abnormal amount of can slaw you're in a bad patch. Light stuff only means something is inhibiting the heavier stuff in that particular beach or part of the beach from being carried up higher onto the beach. Move on quickly if you keep finding can slaw. These are all just from my observations and the numerous times i've gone to the same beaches over and over again. I'm new to this, only 3 months in the hobby of metal detecting but I think I got a pretty okay track record for silver rings thanks to all the tips and tricks I learned from youtube and here.

I use the 9" all the time because it's the only one I have currently, but I haven't had the chance to beach hunt or hunt large farm fields with the D2 yet. That's really the only reason I'm considering a larger coil, for wider coverage. But for all the types of land hunting I do, I haven't really felt the need to go larger, except for maybe a bit more depth in some areas. The 9" is amazingly deep even in mineralized ground, easy on the arm, and has incredible separation. If I'm being honest with myself, I really don't even need a smaller eliptical coil at this point except to squeeze into smaller areas and between shrubbery. Of course if a 9x5" does come out, I will jump on it like a chicken on a junebug! 😉

I don't know anybody that currently owns or has extensively used both the 900 and 24K except for Gerry (Gerry's Detectors) and his assistants. I used to own a Whites and Garrett 24K. I do own the Equinox 800 and 900. So any comparison I make would be anecdotal and based on records that I keep from testing. I have not been able to do any prospecting yet with my 900. I have taken an 800 and 24K to several sites where I had to turn down the sensitivity to lower than half of maximum on the 24K in order for it to stop overloading due to very high magnetite mineralization. I have never had to do that with the 800 yet. I can usually run it at least at 20 of 25 with no issues. Also, I am not just a small gold nugget prospector. So having a dedicated single frequency gold prospecting VLF is not necessary for me. I prefer to have more versatile detectors that also do really well gold prospecting when needed. If I was just using a VLF for gold prospecting, single frequency is all I needed, I didn't need waterproofing and I wanted the best detector for my dollar, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the 24K.