Cal_Cobra

I see my prediction that a new generation of Equinox would be announced this year and we'd likely see a proto at Detectival! A next gen Equinox with a control pod that (hopefully) doesn't leak, and a better rod setup to alleviate the flex and what not, better coils, and a smart screen like the FBS machines. Very interesting!

Nice hunt! I'd say you've only scratched the surface, and if you're digging IHP's there's bound to be silver there and with it's colorful history, perhaps gold coins are in the cards 🙂

An oldie but goodie, been using it to hit Nevada ghost towns for a decade.

That's a nice haul and nice display 👍

Nice hunt, and congrats on breaking into the 1800's 👍

Nice haul!! I used to use my dug U.S. clad coins for bridge toll. I'd hand them five bucks of quarters, dimes and nickles and they'd want me to wait there while they took their time to count them (not). Told the bridge toll trolls that they were getting paid to count the coins and I was not, and if it was short, they could bill me 🙂 I also started taking them to the casino and they don't care, they're happy to take your money 😂

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):

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).

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 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 🙂

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 😉

Thanks, I'll post an update if I can positively ID that button. I suspect it'll be something interesting. This particular site has produced quite a variety of buttons from the early 1800's to the mid 1800's, just never know what you'll find at this site.

That dry climate and the sandy loamy soil is generally very kind to the relics and coins. Also there's been no agriculture (fertilizers) or animal grazing (urine) to aid in destroying the coins and relics. We have a site down the road from this one that's grazing land and almost all of the silver coins come out of the ground screwed up. It's been a cattle and sheep grazing area for over a hundred years, so they've had plenty of time to contaminate the soil. I actually brought the Legend with me, updated to the latest and greatest firmware and all, but it was so hot, I simply wasn't in the mood to play with it. Most of our sites in the summer are overgrown, have cement like ground, or are just too darned hot to detect, so this fall and winter I'll be back at it and give the Legend a workout.

Thanks for keeping me honest, that's what the date appeared to be, but I'll clean it up some more and see if I can get a better read on it. It's odd that it's cruded up because most items dug from this site come out pristine, I've even dug IHPs from there that could probably pass as un-dug. Honestly this site is so full of iron, you're likely to get iron TIDs on every sweep, but I'll pay more attention next time. I have noticed this phenomenon for years on the Equinox though. I've dug iron tools (axe heads, pick heads, chisels, you name it) that produced a TID of 13. The audio is different versus say a nickle though, whereas the iron implements produce a flat audio tone and the non-iron 13's produce a bright lively audio tone (if that makes sense). Either way I still dig them at these old sites. I don't notch or use any discrimination when relic hunting, but as you I also have my iron audio volume reduced so I can still hear it but alleviate potential audio fatigue.

Thanks for looking, that sure looks like the button! I couldn't make out the letters either, which are likely key to ID'ing this one. This particular site has produced a lot of buttons over the years, quite a variety of both foreign as well as American from the early 1800's to about Civil War era.

Had a business trip to a cyber security conference in Las Vegas and wove in a side trip to my Spanish outpost site. It's been hammered pretty hard for the past ten years or so, but I still managed to make some finds. It was hot as he!! and the ground was parched bone dry. In my experience at this particular site, the Equinox tends to do better when the ground's damp versus bone dry, so I have hope that there could still be some future finds to be made during the winter or spring time, but it's definitely time to find a new site 🤠 Does anyone have any idea what the button is I found at 1:05? It's a two piece, probably Civil War era more or less, and looks to represent some European Monarchy given the crown. I ruled out Spain and Mexico already, but couldn't find something similar.

I'm going on a business trip next week where I can [somewhat] conveniently weave in some detecting at one of my favorite western frontier and Spanish sites that's hard to get to due to it's distance. I'm going to bring my Legend and Equinox and I'll try the 5x10 CoilTek at on my Equinox. I've had really good luck here with my Equinox, really opened the site up for me after we'd already hunted it hard. I may also try the factory 12x15" coil to see if I can hear some deepies.

Wow you covered a lot of ground! Monte's WTHO trips are fun and some good finds are usually made. I love these epic multi week long detecting trips, I really need to retire 🙂

Nokta Makro have done a great job with audio adjustments going back to the Racers, Impact, Multi Kruzer, etc. Super useful and I appreciate that they continue to enhance these features. Your finding of saving each individual audio mode within a hunt mode (within a user profile no less) is an example of well thought out user operation of the detector. With all the new 1.08/9 settings, I need to make a field cheat sheet for the Legend. A laminated 3x5 card would be useful. I remember the Etrac came with a little laminated foldable wallet sized cheat sheet, that was a nice touch when you were getting used to the Etrac.

Years ago I used to buy some detectors/gear from Big Boys, and they'd deal with you, and you could get competitive rates. The last couple of times I've sent a pricing inquiry it was full pop, plus shipping. Richard @ Backwoods has been one of the better detecting dealers I've worked with over the past decade when looking for a deal.

Nice hunt indeed! About 15 years ago I found a virgin scout/church camp site. It dated to 1939, but ceased to exist by the 1960's, so it had very little modern trash. The camp was pretty well over grown, but the first couple of trips there the guy I invited along and I had each dug 10-11 silver coins, 15-20 wheaties, and we each managed a couple of pieces of silver jewelry. As the non-overgrown spots dried up, we started weed whacking and moving fallen trees before each hunt, and sure enough we'd find more. This continued for about 5-6 weeks until the site finally dried up. By the time we were finished with the site, we'd dug over 200 silver coins (I dug about 120 of them myself), about a dozen or so pieces of silver jewelry and one gold ring. Also about four pieces of sterling silver flatware and some junker silver plated flatware. Because the site is a bit newer, nothing older then Mercury dimes, wheaties and Walking Liberty halves were found. I always wondered if the site had been just ten years older, would we have been digging Standing Liberty Quarters and Barbers instead.

I'm curious what tone settings your using while hunting in iron? I want to use full tones BUT I'm seeing most people are using the 2-6 tone options.

That's good to know. I've seen my iPhone affect my Equinox before, and putting it in airplane mode solves the problem (although shutting it off completely is probably better yet). I'll keep this in my while using the Legend!

I see the U.K. has declared a national emergency because it could hit 105F, which would be the highest temp on their recorded history. 105F is common in many areas of the U.S. during the summer.

I dug an 1800's San Francisco dog license and sent a photo to the dog license guru just to see if he had anything on it. His only reply was "I'll give you $150 for it!". Maybe I should've sold it, but I've never sold any of my finds and odds of digging another 1800's San Francisco dog license are slim to none, but ya never know I suppose.