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I was just about to pack it in tonight and was making a pass through my ring honey hole for the 2nd or 3rd time and this beauty popped up. A LOUD solid 62 on the deus 2. It was 2 or 3 inches down but sounded like a nickel right on the surface. This is the highest ive had gold ring up on the d2 so far. 14k with 10 little tiny diamonds. If i can't find the owner it will make a nice christmas present for my mom who tolerates all of my non stop babble about this hobby! i think this is my 6th or 7th gold ring since february. Inside is stamped "cas" if anyone knows what maker that is...

I dug this pendant yesterday May 4. My wife said that it was 10KB and I saw 14KB when I looked at it. I googled the KB to find out what the B stood for. What I found was that if it didn't come from Mexico, it meant "bonded" or plated. Well the 15 told me that it was a Quinceanera piece of jewelry, so the Mexico origin made sense. Today I tested it and it only tested 10K. I got out my 40x loupe and could clearly see that there was a 4 counter stamped inside the 0. So what I am thinking is that the B stands for bonding the Tri gold together. The main part is yellow gold, the center is Rose gold and the number is white gold. Can anyone confirm my hypothisis? Thanks, Joe

It's still legal Steve - just as soon as permits are available you can start dredging. It was never outlawed just put away in a bureaucratic jungle. Any more than that is straying into forbidden territory on this forum. Thanks for providing a place where we are free from politics and religion. It's always about the hunt here. I'm good with that.

The battery for my WM12 stopped charging and was dead, zero volts with the multimeter so it was either buy a new WM12 for about $350 AUD or try and find a replacment battery. I ended up finding one online and it cost $25 AUD including postage so I ordered it and it arrived and I fitted it, it is just plug and play nothing to hard at all. The WM12 now charges and works perfectly again This is the replacement battery if anyone is interested or has a similar problem and this is the original battery cheers dave

Out with the Geo Highbanker today. I hit a pay-streak.....got all this gold in only three hours. My riffles were bleeding with gold today!

The hands and pans thing in the Auburn State Rec area is a bit of a joke. The Auburn State Rec area is not a State Park or even State land. Almost all the land involved is either private or Federal public lands. The State has less than 40 acres there as I recall. The Auburn State Rec area is a management contract between the Federal government and the State Parks department. The reason the hands and pans thing is funny is because that management contract specifically states that the State has no control or management duties for the minerals found in the public lands within the Rec area. Sometimes it's all about perception and voluntary compliance - not law or a duty to control. The Auburn Rec area minerals are still, for the most part, open to prospecting. There are a few areas that have been withdrawn from mineral entry and the private lands are off limits but the "hands and pans" regs are not really legally enforceable. Of course neither is the Adventure Pass but people still keep paying to park on public lands.

A good friend of mine passed away at the beginning of April and I was asked to take care of getting his detectors sold. The 6000 was purchases two days before he died so everything is still in the plastic in the box. Never pulled out, never used. To purchase call the top number and if you want to know about each item call me. Person buying will cover shipping and insurance if you want insurance. Pat Wirt - 1 406- 438-3941 Reese (Gold Seeker) 1-406-309-1009 Garrett ATX Deep Seeker with Garrett case - $1,000 Minelab GPX 6000 - $5,000 ( purchased two days before he died. Never taken out of box.) Full warranty.

As far as the Garrett purchase, a less than speculative answer might be to have kept the name out of Chinese or India counterfeiter hands. Fact is those people were already making near perfect copies in low cost facilities. All they needed was the rights to the name to be able to legitimately sell those copies in the U.S. market. Instant capability to ship with just a few decals changed. Making the buy basically eliminated a potential low cost competitor for Garrett, armed with a big name. Because otherwise as you and I know well, despite what many seem to think, the company had little of value. People should thank Garrett for at least making sure we are not looking at dirt cheap “White’s” detectors made overseas.

I had the opportunity to detect with some friends and a new person to our group yesterday. We had a Deus 2 9” coil, Equinox 900, Equinox 800 both with 11” coils, Garrett AT Pro 11” coil and a Whites IDX with 950 Blue Max coil. All experienced users. I found what I presumed to be a 7 to 8” deep US copper penny/clad dime/silver dime signal that was giving really solid audio and since I had the new 900 that Minelab America sent me, the target ID was a little better and was only 80 to 98 instead of 68 to 98 that my first 900 was likely to have shown. I was in Park 1 multi with sens on 22 of 28. The Nox 800 my friend was using was in Park 2 multi with sens on 20 of 25 and had a solid hit with target ID 25 to 30. Deus 2 read 4 to 5 bars out of 10 of iron mineralization. It was in Sensitive with sens on 90, had solid audio on the target and ID was 88 to 93. AT Pro was in Pro Zero with sens on 7 of 8. It had very broken up iron audio and no ID. The Whites IDX had sens just past the preset, disc on Rings and gave no response on the target which turned out to be a 7” US clad dime. Just one instance on one target, but it bears out what cudamark stated and has also been proven for me anyway using the many detectors that I have owned. Sometimes, newer really is better depending on the situation. Having one detector that can hit many different size targets at different depths in different soil and beach conditions can be better than having to use a different detector for each different situation.

I knew Monte very well and we corresponded frequently. He was a wonderful guy. Sure miss him. I still wonder what happened to Troy's design for a visual target ID detector. He and I corresponded about that detector a lot but as I recall he could never put the whole package together to get it made.

Oh, I need to add that my iron finds were from .9g down to unmeasurable on my scale. I got screamers that are near the surface that were .10 and .06g so it will find small.

I initially tested on a perfboard and it worked but to keep noise down I found putting on a small pcb worked best. Case was to hold it all together and keeps the coil stable.

Yep thats the policy in my area. Now if you are deep in the Auburn Rec area away from the public eye, I bet you may spot a sluice and shovel or two.

The diodes are connected in a back to back configuration to act as a voltage clamp for the mic input. Any silicon diodes will work, i.e., 1N4148. 1N400x, etc. The artwork legend shows zener diodes but in that configuration zeners aren’t necessary. It could be built using a perfboard. The circuit is so simple a board really isn’t needed.

Here is a map of the mines in California currently mining with permits and heavy equipment. There are new ones being approved on a regular basis. I have several clients that have permitted major mines in California in the last three years. Some of those are gold mines - both placer and lode operations. No form of mining has been outlawed in California. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/mol/index.html I wouldn't look to flooding to move much gold in the waterways. Mass wasting from heavy rains does replenish gold in the waterways but without mass wasting I wouldn't expect much change in river placer gold availability. Watch for new landslides or major slump movement to bring fresh gold this spring. 🚴‍♂️

It is similar, but it could just be an art piece as well. The Napoleonic Imperial Eagle, which was modeled after the Roman Aguila, has its head pointed 90 degrees to the left or right and the wing tips pointed down. The eagle in question has its wing tips pointed outward and the head facing slightly forward. Without closer photos of the sides, top, and bottom, as well as weight, it's hard to narrow it down.

My comments had nothing to do with how well Whites detectors work, and I could care less what you choose to own. I’m not selling you on anything. It’s like I insulted your wife or something - get a grip. They are inanimate objects. My comments were about the future of the industry, and detectors made by a company that went out of business because it lost the thread of what most customers are looking for are not relevant to that future. I worked with Whites in many ways for very many years, and tried my best to get them to see reality before it was too late. Arrogant mismanagement ran a once great company into the ground, and I’m more unhappy about that than most.

Kellyco has a small number of Fisher AQ Limited available for the price of $1999. No additonal batteries available at this time and yes that is a $500 price increase from the original price for the AQ Limited. My question is does this mean that this is it for the AQ or will the Fisher AQ Unlimited finally be offered for sale? Interesting, very interesting.

Just curious what anyone thinks was the best of the Tesoro Umax detectors? I had a Cutlass II Umax years ago and it was really fun to hunt with when I just wanted to beep and dig. Bill

I guess I am a sucker for hysterical young ladies. She and her friend came up to me and asked if I could find her ring that she had lost. I said, "sure, as long as it is metal". She showed me the 50 x 50-foot area and about five minutes later it was back in her hand. From the size of the ring in her hand, I suspect that she may have snuck it out of her mother's jewelry box to impress her friends as it was a Cartier 18K Love ring. I think that might lead to hysteria too. LOL Anyway, all's well that ends well. Thanks for looking, Joe

Just received my Steve's Detector Rods Deus 2 shaft and all I can say is WOW, I love it! It's light and tight and even better than I imagined. Excellent work, @steveg ! This allowed me to complete my 2 from 1 conversion and now I have full D2 and WS6 Master rigs. The force is strong with SteveG! 😎

I haven't been able to get out to any relic sites in a while so I modified my mission to see if I could find any older relics in the city which was founded in 1871. There are of course limits to where you can detect in the city and getting private permissions here is not easy. So I decided to research some public areas like city parks to see if there was any chance of finding older things. Most of these places have been pounded hard since the 1970s until they outlawed digging in the 1990s. Until recently I haven't had much luck finding older items but I still go out to look when I can. Recently I researched a place that use to have a neighborhood for many years that was demolished in the 1990s for a park to be constructed. I noticed this place had a railroad track that used to run through it so I decided to give that area a try. I had the D2 with the 9" coil running my wide open Fast program. I wasn't finding much at first except a whole lot of modern trash from the nearby homeless camp, so I moved to an area close to the creek along a dirt road. That's when I started seeing older glas and pottery shards on the surface and then hit a loud 96 on the TID. It was too big for a quarter but I dug it anyway, because all 90s come out of the ground. 😉 It was about 4 inches down and in the hard pack so it took a while to chisel it out. When it finally came out it was a heavy solid brass "4" from a house number. It's not particularly old, but from the demolished neighborhood, so I slowed down and started finding some older bits of this and that. I wandered back onto the dirt road and hit a solid sounding 73 on the TID. It sounded way too solid to be a ring pull or pull tab and I dug out a compressed rounded dirt clod. As I started to peel away what hardened dirt I could it became obvious this was an older button, so I put it in the good pouch and kept on hunting. I didn't find a whole lot else so I headed home. When I got home I cleaned all the finds worth cleaning starting with the button. As I got more of the compressed dirt off, I could just make out the word "DENVER" and "DTCO" and some sort of rectangular object in the middle. I wondered if I had found an old Denver & Rio Grande button, but after searching the interweb I found only one reference to those words and letters which came from an antique auction site. It turns out it was a Denver Tramway Company that operated trollies from 1888-1893 and then changed to Denver Consolidated Tramway Company and changed all their uniforms and buttons. So I struck "old" in the city! Real old for my area! The rest of the finds were mundane except for a nickel plated screw cap marked "Morgan Wright" and "ACO" which I think came from an oil lantern and a brass thing that kind of lokks like a buckle part or possible hair clip of some kind. This is what one in good condition looks like: Inspired by my old button find, I researched another park that replaced another older neighborhood in hopes of finding more relics a couple of days later. When I got there it was also overrun with homeless people camps, but I pushed on and nobody paid any attention to me except for one guy yelling at everyone he saw. I was finding mostly modern trash and clad coins as I swept past the camp and made it to a treed area near the creek. I hit a modern coin spill of nickels, dimes, and one quarter and right near there I hit a 93-93 TID and thought it was another spill, but out pops a shallow big English penny. Well that seemed out of place, when not foot away I hit a tiny sounding 75 to 80 TID and out pops the tiniest crotal bell I've ever seen! Actually I think it's probably from a cat collar. 😏 I did manage to find a UMC Co Nitro No 10 shotgun cap that dates from 1895 to 1899. Well the coins had dried up and I wasn't finding any older items so I hit one more grove of trees to see if there was anything else interesting around. I got a bouncy 88-90 that I thought might be a copper memorial penny but it turned out to be a 925 silver ring with 10 diamond chips on it. Well that wasn't old, but definitely the find of the day for that hunt. So while I didn't find any old relics on the 2nd hunt, I did score silver and copper! I guess sometimes luck is better than research! 🤣

Leaving holes at our beaches is frowned upon! Even though kids and others do it all the time! Of course we get singled out and blamed, just like at parks; not that there aren't detectorists leaving some also! That stupid "big deep hole" Tic Tok challenge is still around with the teenagers, and I've found myself filling in a few of those, so that no little kids get suffocated in one! Asinine! Not easy to do with a scoop and feet, when they bring multiple full sized shovels with them for the beach assault! Of course i detect the holes thoroughly first! Those haven't been this bad though:

It is really a combination of things that go along with the 'slightly' magnetic properties. One would be density. These are not very heavy targets. There is also no 'fusion crust' to indicate they have passed through the atmosphere similar with all the other meteorites you can find in that area. They also have a bit of crystallization/mica structures in a couple of them which is not something known for the area. There are no chondrules in them which is major. A window doesn't show these features but I didn't have to window all of these to know. I've done that before.

I will say something about these claims - Jacob told me that he believed they were cursed. He said just about everyone that spent any time there ended up with big problems or worse - they died untimely deaths. From my own experiences there I can somewhat agree. There will be more about all that in future writings.

Dave Johnson (who worked for several of the USA detector companies -- Fisher, White's Tesoro, First Texas) -- at one time or another, designed the X5. Troy didn't build detectors but rather came up with the concepts and then outsourced the engineering, design, and production. There is a ton of stuff about Tesoro (especially) and Troy detectors on the late Monte Berry's AHRPS forum. That forum has a user-friendly search capability to help you find hours of reading on the subject. Monte was an encyclopedia of knowledge and (IMO) likely knew as much about Tesoro detectors as founder Jack Gifford.

I wonder if you were in General the other day too, not ideal for small targets. Glad you discovered it while you still had some time in the day. I generally run mine in High Yield, Normal and 18 sensitivity, I do tend to use Low smoothing or no smoothing depending on my mood. JW runs HY/Normal/20 on his with no smoothing and he of course does better than me, but that's not just because of his settings 🙂 This is a video I did on a patch the 15"CC found me, you may have seen it before but it might mean more to you now you have one.

I took a short trip to Franconia on Wednesday and Thursday. When I first got my 7000 I had gone there and had fun. I even got Minelab find of the month! The coil handled the hot rocks well. I would say better than the spiral. I left it in the settings I had used for gold with the sensitivity around 10. I was kind of looking for the bigger targets but the first day I didn't get them for the longest time. I finally ended up with a .9g iron and a smaller one nearby. My first target was actually the most impressive. It was down about 6 inches and it turned out to be a button. I didn't put it in my other picture as it got spilled from my other finds. But I thought my settings were good and I guess if big objects were around they were. The next day I went to the iron field and had to walk in a different way but I was not finding many there. I thought things had really been hunted out in the last 3 years or so. I was finding but things were too iffy until I got them in the scoop. Pinpointing was hard it seemed. It was time to change my settings. It was then I discovered that I had been detecting in General rather than High Yield. Bad on me. I had not run through that setting. I had been upping the sensitivity and put on low smoothing. That was some better but then the last couple hours in the day I went to HY, Normal, 17 and High Smoothing and they started to pop! Some of them are very small but I could still make them scream with these settings and it was more fun than a struggle for my ears. The tiny wires are always a problem there and the big 50 cal and other bullets let me know if I was over a chondrite, it wouldn't be bashful. I finally had some settings to find irons easily. I remembered that Condor told me he cranked his sensitivity all the way up on his 17" CC. I was trying to find these targets with conservative settings but no more. When I go back to my gold area I'm going to up the settings. What say you Simon?

I went and I'm back. I spent one night there and swung the detector for about 14 hours in the two days. The weather was darn near perfect. I was not in the best of shape but it was good to have the 70s & 80s temps rather than the 90+ which is normal. I found irons (16) that ranged from .9g down to unmeasurable. They are in the circle at the center. I didn't find any chondrites. There are 5 meteor wrongs there that 'look like a meteor' but they are lacking in one way or another. Mostly in their magnetic properties but I was able to hear them with the detector. One area that I had parked my car on the north side of the tracks is now unavailable. Someone has placed a fence and gate across the road and it makes the walk in about 2 miles farther. I was able to detect the first day in the area on Dave's map.

My first Tesoro was a Troy Shadow X2. I had both coils. The 7" & 9". You can listen for that whisper.

Got more than a few, and love them all! But yeah, dual disc on the Tejon is hard to beat! Always glad to see any discussion on here about Tesoro's! Also got a couple Troy X2's; also Tesoro made! Gonna have to thin the heard at some point, so stay tuned!🍀👍👍

Looks like Limited with all the bad & goods. That battery is the worse. https://kellycodetectors.com/fisher-impulse-aq-limited And I still love mine.

Tejon is my favorite. It's not a umax though. Bandio 2 umax is the one most want. It has a ground balance. Mild ground any umax with no ground balance is good. Tesoro's are great. They have a great audio for a single tone detector.

No it's not illegal to pan for gold or metal detect for gold in California unless you are doing it where you should not. I locked the thread temporarily as it was veering into politics. Open again now. Please people, remember the prime directive on these forums. Zero politics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And be decent to your fellow forum members. It does not seem like too much to ask. Thanks.

Hi, that's a nice find. I have one from a clock or furniture ornament. Typically French, they are normally described as Empire period. That being (for mine and others like it) c1860ish Napeoleon III of France, rather than Napoleonic which has a different meaning. The wingspan just over 16cm

I have made an offer on the Lobo Super Trac

GB_Amateur, Thanks for posting the tables. I may use them in the future if I can get together the components for the measurement. At the moment, I have a local jewelry store that has an XRF scope. I am not sure how much they charge to scan a piece of jewelry, but it will tell me the gold and other metal percentages in just a few seconds. I may drive by the store today and see if they are open on Saturdays. I know during Covid they were only open by appointment, and you needed to be hazmatted up as well. I have a few other trinkets that I would like to know the composition of also. So, this may be a good excuse to get it done. thanks, Joe PS Attached is a better picture of the 4 inside the 0 but you can't see the B in this view.

As i all ready had the ML 15x12 coil i could see no reason to buy the CT one as basically i would be doubling up and also heavier into the bargain,so glad that i did not purchase the 15'' round coil. Must admit although i have had my Nox for may be 4 years or so,have never really liked it,it just does not do anything for me,although i wont sell it as it could come in handy for the odd days beach detecting etc,but decided to put the 15x12 ML coil back on it and run it in 4khz for when i am on pasture sites and i get a gut a gut feeling that items could be slighly deeper and also the ground coverage especially when i am on a club dig and we only have say 8 hours to hit the site then that is when the larger coil earns its keep.

You choose vibration or no vibration in the mi6’s menus system. However the audio will match the audio of the program that you are running on the deus control unit.(either square or pwm). Also you control the mi6 sensitivity via the control unit.

When I first heard of the pump method, my initial thought was, "Pumping is moving the coil further from the target. The further the target is from the coil, the more iffy it will sound. Plus, eventually the distance gets far enough, that nonferrous targets would sound like ferrous". So ya, it didn't make any sense in my mind, but what the heck, I tried it in my test bed. After the testing, and long story short, I won't be pumping the coil to help determine target type 😉

Good afternoon. Tell me, who knows what this eagle is from? Presumably, this is a hanging badge from the hood of a car or a decorative ornament from an old clock. Was found in Russia in the Smolensk region. I would appreciate any information about this artifact.

This one brings up some interesting points and tips.

I don't have a part # on diodes, I robbed them from another board. All that was build with spar parts I had with exception of housing and blank pcb I snagged off of amazon. Used silicone transfer paper that works on a laser printer. I highly suggest using manual feed on printer and tapeing a 3-4" regular paper leader to the lead edge with masking tape.

Great little project find ! Not much in there either. I probably have it all except the case....and a scope, (I live in a camper now.🙄) and I think I can still find DigiKey and Mouser !

...not funny, very funny!! And it will be paid several times this summer (I think). Last night waves and easterly wind, perfect conditions. I managed to get a gold ring out of the hole, but I lost it to the next wave... It sounded like "angels" ID 21 solid, again it will be...If I could get some coins. I'm already learning to the deep tone. I think for surf is another level... I'm having a great time.

Yesterday I decided to take my Legend to the beach for a morning low tide hunt. I had not had the opportunity to do this due to work and pet issues for a good month so my Legend had changed a bit. Specifically I was now running the new software V 1.11 and also had replaced the upper shaft, arm cuff and coil with the upgrades now available from Nokta Makro. After hunting for a good three hours (more on that in a bit) and heading back to the car, something struck me. The Legend, in its new configuration, is a radically different metal detector than the version that was released back in December 2021/January 2022. I field tested that metal detector for Western and Eastern Treasures Magazine for their October 2022 issue. The Legend at that time was an excellent metal detector. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that Nokta Makro could easily have locked the early version of The Legend and then later this year come out with a new, updated version. I thought back to so many manufacturers over the years who would take a model of detector, sell it a year or two, then make a few changes to it and add on "+," "II," the word "pro," etc. But Nokta Makro chose not do to do this which is, I think, remarkable. The Legend is faster, has more options, and is noticeably lighter than it was a year ago. Forgive my soapboxing here, I'm not an advocate for any manufacturer, I just use what works for me. But I thought this aspect of The Legend has been overlooked and deserved to be mentioned. The Legend is not a year old detector. If you have one and update it you have essentially a brand new model Legend. Further, if you are contemplating a Legend, do not assume it is a year old design. It is not. Now to the beach hunt. The new carbon fiber shaft, lighter arm cuff and LG30 coil make The Legend noticeably lighter and the balance is fine as always. I met up with a buddy who was using a new model detector with a harness and I asked him to check out the weight of my Legend. He did and was genuinely astonished, commenting that it didn't even weigh a pound. Yeah, I know it weighs more that that but you get the idea. That's the weight part of the new Legend. As to hunting at the beach, I was able to hunt the wet sand at full sensitivity (30) with only minor chirping. And I did not have to use the beach stability to calm the detector down. Like in my field test last year, The Legend provided excellent depth on coins and low conductors. However there was one noticeable change. Another buddy had found a very small junk chain with a different brand detector and asked me to try to read it with my Legend. At the time I was running the sensitivity at 28 and when I swept the coil over the chain I got only a small chirp. Frankly, I would have walked right over it. I decided to bump the sensitivity up to 30 and try again. To my surprise, the chain hit hard, even when I raised the coil a couple of inches. From that point on I ran The Legend at 30. For those of you who are beach hunting with The Legend, I would recommend trying to run at 30 if you can. I did not expect this much of a performance increase going from 28 to 30 and it may impact your ability to find fine chains. For the day I had a pouch full of clad, a light suntan and a smile on face. The Legend and I will be back out there again soon.

thanks for everybody's interest...and yes...I am showing off. Some may have noticed my long absence from the forums. Thankfully it was not that I was deceased or even seriously ill. Some things interfered with my enjoyment of the whole scene a few years ago and now, I am over it. Just bought the 1236X2, a Perfect early MXT, and planning my battery to attack Norway for two months this summer...details of the machines to be revealed later!

Could not agree more, usually rivers just replenish with fine flood gold, if any. Desert areas are more interesting and replenishing can be more plentiful and with more coarse gold down alluvial fans at the apex widening after strong floods. This has to do with the density of the material that is moving, and water alone (rivers) has the least density (1), hence mostly just flakes. Headding to the desert tomorrow. 🤪 GC

Hi Slavo, I use single frequency due to amount of iron and reduced sensivity to 65, 13.6 khz. ( lot of emi and this one was the quiet one). reaction was 5 on Mars sniper. some of this targets were real deep for this size of coil :).

Yes! Yes. One reason I am not buying one right now. Also, the added coil structure on the 11" coil catches more sand and water and can be a PIA when trying to swing on the sand. Personally, I would wait for a {10X something coil} and dedicate it to water only. I just do not understand this engineering concept of offset coils which make detectors harder to use in many conditions.