Cal_Cobra

I think it was just from being in the soil for 100+ years, nothing that I did. At the end of the day, the odds are so stacked against you finding a valuable coin with the possibility of being graded without environmental damage or some other issue, it's really a wonder people even try, yet here we are 🙂 I've heard of this practice. IMHO you'd have to have a potentially valuable coin to begin with, as it's not inexpensive to have coins graded, but you get to a point where only a few points difference in grading can make a substantial difference in value for higher grading coins. My finds, and coins I've both found as well as collected over the years will stay put unless I were to fall on hard times, otherwise I guess my daughter will inherit them or perhaps they'll pay for her collect (I better start finding a lot more gold coins, college isn't cheap these days, I can only imagine what insane price tag it'll have in 15 years when she's of age to attend). Grading of all types of collectables has really changed the collector landscape, sports cards, comic books, just about anything can be graded these days, and has the potential to increase or decrease the value of collectables. One of my detecting buddies sells his dug coins if they have any value. He hits them with Ezest then flips them on fleabay, and typically does pretty well with them. I've often wondered if anyone has tried to send them in for grading and received back a "cleaned" rating. Heck I thought about selling all of my common dug silver recently with silver prices approaching $30/ounce, but I decided I'd rather enjoy the memories they'll serve up over my lifetime, which is to me more valuable than selling them for scrap. HH, Cal

The tale of two coins. Several years ago at a park scrape in San Francisco I dug two Barber dimes from opposite sides of the park. One was pretty dark, but a semi-key date, the other a common date, but it looked like it was dropped the day it was made (probably a 1906 SF earthquake camp drop shortly after the coin was minted). I had some free ANACS gradings to use up and decided to send in both coins. You can see how they graded them below, by their grading the 1906-S Barber dime is a $125-145 coin, and the 1892-S Barber dime is $275 coin based on their VF-35 grading, but they dinged it with "environmental damage" so I'd assume that would hold a similar demerit as cleaning. Here's those coins side by side: At a Nevada stage stop I dug an 1860-S Liberty Seated Quarter, it's a very rare coin and I about fell over when I looked it up on PCGS: It was hardly circulated, but unfortunately as Gerry noted on his Nevada sites, many of these desert sites have heavy alkali soils that are not kind to silver or copper coins. Even though on paper it was a valuable coin, I disliked the black crud alkali soil look and decided to preserve it. I used a product called EZEST, and the salt minerals had penetrated the coin for so many years, that it took the better part of a week of soaking with multiple changes of the solution to get the black crud off. I then used a silver foam to finish the job. It came out about as good as could be expected. I showed it to a coin collector, and he estimated that it would sell for around $3K in it's cleaned condition. Sadly had it been dug at a park with soil that had been as kind to it as my 1906-S Barber dime, it would be a $30,000+ coin, but there's only so much one can do. I've been fortunate over the years to find some nice semi-key date and key date coins. Dug a 1916-D Mercury dime (the key date Mercury dime), and the two gold coins I dug were also good dates. Earlier this year at a site I've been chipping away at for the past ten years, finally produced a $1 gold coin, an 1856-S in beautiful condition, still has mint lustre so it would be a high grading coin, probably at least a 55: The first gold coin I dug a few years ago was an 1860-S $5 half eagle found at a Nevada stage stop, and it too is a good date and in good condition, probably would grade between a 40-55: The gold coins were only cleaned with water, no rubbing during or after they were dug, just rinsing with clean water with careful daubing to remove the soil. Nice thing with gold is that in general it's not affected by the elements and will clean up nicely with gentle rinsing with water and daubing with a Q-tip or soft cotton cloth. Keep in mind that I never sell any of my finds, so cleaning is only for personal enjoyment.

Lot of variables, size/weight, alloys used, etc.

Steve are their wireless headphones proprietary or are they doing BT like Minelab? I'll likely skip the Ace Apex, but when their AT Pro SMF machine comes out, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. I'd imagine about the time Garrett's AT Pro SMF machine comes out that Nokta's SMF machine will also be at least announced, probably some time next year. Interesting times ahead!

When the Racer 2 came out I was fortunate enough to be in on a lengthy San Francisco park demo, with the park dating back to the mid 1800's (tons of great history going back to the Spanish at this particular location). It was a killer demo machine, I was able to keep up with anything from Minelab, Fisher, White's, etc. with the Racer that summer. II would find the goods if you went at a normal pace, but if you got into a hot spot or iron infested/junky area you'd be rewarded in spades by slowing down, and really listening to the ground. Time and time again one of my friends would race through a newly scraped area and get an IHP, couple of teens wheaties and an early merc and then move on to known producing areas. I'd pick through these areas after they raced through them, taking my time, filling up my finds pouch. Deep mode is great. It's clean up mode, go uber slow, be rewarded with prizes 🙂

Thanks Joel, really appreciate the feedback! About when do you think it was made? HH, Brian

You probably do have some good Turquoise shops in your area.

I checked, it says 925 Sterling and that's it. Thanks for looking!

Thanks! I'm thinking just given it's provenance that it's at least 50 years old.

On the MMK there's an Easter egg on their 3-tone mode. Sensitivity of 89 or less cranks up recovery speed at the cost of some depth, but it's also far more stable/EMI resistant. If you need balls to the wall performance, 4-tone's where it's at, but for sea of nails or combating EMI 3-tone is great too with the gain locked @ 89.

I've been sorting silver, and thought I'd ask about this vintage sterling silver Turquoise cuff bracelet. This came from a local estate, and I'm wondering how can I determine if the Turquoise is high quality, or run of the mill tourist grade? TIA!

Good grief, they'll let anyone on here now days....

All I can say is that if they come out with a next gen Equinox I'll be one of the first ones to pull the trigger on it. My EQ800 has paid for itself at least ten fold, I can only imagine what a M-IQ2 machine would be capable of!

Nice hunt Steve! Don't see many largies being dug out here, a few, but I've seen far more gold coins dug than largies.

I had that exact issue with my F75, not that the F75 was a terrible machine by any means, I made a ton of great finds with it, but it wasn't stellar in regards to TID IMHO. Interestingly I've had deep silver dimes up-average between 28-32, but that modulated deep whisper audio is unmistakable. Love it, especially when you PP it and you get no audio, you know it's going to be deep.

I've actually found that the EQ800 also up-averages deep coins, and I actually LIKE that. Once I get a semi-repeatable, high TID with that tinkly silver sound, I know the odds are that it'll be a deep silver coin.

No worries there, the EQ800 has been serving me well, and I still have the MMK, although truth be told, since getting the EQ800 dialed in, the MMK has been collecting some dust as my backup unit. I look forward to the field results on the Apex, if it takes Garrett a couple of years to launch their Apex Pro, that's fine with me. I'm sure they'll continue to milk the ATM (AT Max, not automatic teller machines) for a while and once sales tapper off on that, the Apex Pro will come to light. That's good, gives them plenty of time to get it right, and by that time the EQ2/MIQ2 machines will likely be out, as well as the Nokta SMF. All good in my book, it'll be great to have this many options. Imagine if the Explorer series had a serious competitor all the years that it reigned supreme as the deep silver seeker it is, maybe even FTP would've came to life 🙂 Sure they took a stab at the Explorer market with their CZ70, but it was too little too late IMO. Darn good machine, I know it opened doors for me, but the likes of the Explorer2 and Etrac can run circles around it for deep silver slaying in trashy parks.

Thanks Jeff. Although I look forward to field reports from trusted advisors on the Ace Apex, I'll be awaiting their Apex Pro (or whatever they decide to call it). Hopefully Garrett is listening to their prospects for features that customers would like to use (AKA "pay for" 🤠) on their Apex Pro line. I would definitely like to see them have a 50 or even 99 tone mode as long as the audio is good. For example the F75 has a Delta Pitch mode with 99 tones, and it's terrible. The audio is about as artificial sounding as it gets, very unpleasant to the ears, and just not something one would ever want to use (don't believe it was ever popular). Contrast that to multi tones on the EQ, which is highly used because the audio is non-intrusive to the ears, similar to previous generations of FBS/FBS2 machines, and conveys a lot of intel on targets, this is a feature I would like to use on the Apex Pro. I'm not asking for it to be an EQ, just have a multi-tone option.

One large benefit I immediately see with the Apex already, is that Garrett generally offers a larger selection of search coils, and doesn't lock out the ability of 3rd party coil makers to produce coils. It's disappointing that ML never expanded the EQ search coil catalog beyond the three it offers, and no aftermarket coils. I''ve seen that the Apex has 5 audio tones mentioned several times, but does it offer a larger tone option? Although it had a learning curve, I really like the 50 tone option on the EQ.

Well I did mention Garrett, just to stay on topic and all 🙂

Doubt they'll touch the Vanquish until they do a refresh on it years down the road. I suspect the next thing we'll see is an Equinox Pro w/M-IQ2 and more features that were on the CTX, perhaps the dual number ID system, GPS, color screen, who knows. If we look at the history of their SMF machines (Sovereign, Explorer line, etc) we've seen them drop their initial product, and then several years later they release a model based on the same technology, with new features, refinements, etc. Nothing ground breaking generally, but better. If you look at the Sovereign XS vs XS2A-Pro, there weren't really a lot of differences, but enough that it was a more desirable. I have heard through the detector grapevine that even as far back as their Detectival launch, they were already working on the second gen Equinox. I'm sure they've learned an immense amount of what works well and doesn't on the existing MIQ generation, and maybe they listen to their customers wants and needs with plans to incorporate those features into the next gen Equinox. Given how popular and successful the Equinox has been, they may be in no hurry to drop a replacement, and may be leveraging their engineering resources on something else. If you think about it, everyone else is playing catch-up to the Equinox bar (SMF price:performance ratio), so they may milk this for a while, and when Garrett, Nokta or (gasp) FTP (don't hold your breath waiting for FTP, you may suffocate) come to the table with a contender, then they may drop the Equinox Pro M-IQ2 machine or whatever they will designate it. I'd say that Minelab will be hard to beat for the foreseeable future, although I like that Garrett's taking a stab at it. Competition is great for us consumers, and it's great that they are finally offering these high performance SMF machines at very reasonable prices compared to the likes of the CTX, Etrac, etc.

I had an AT Pro, got it after they released it and held onto it for a couple of years. It was a very capable VLF machine. In Pro mode, their iron audio conveyed a lot of intel (never used the non-pro mode, couldn't stand that door bell binary audio). It found stuff in iron that my F75 couldn't see. My main beef with the ATP was it lacked depth at the sites I hunted (med-high mineralized soil). In tame dirt like the Hoover Boys hunt, it does the job, but put it in F75 3+ bar dirt, it quickly lost depth. The SMF functionality should resolve the mineralized ground depth loss issue, so if they get this right, it could be a real contender to the Equinox, but of course that remains to be seen, and (correct me if I'm wrong) being Garretts first foray into SMF land, it may be challenging for it to stand up to the Equinox considering ML has over 20 years of experience in the SMF arena. Fun times ahead, choices are always great, the more treasure hunting tools you have, the more goodies you take home 😀

Not too surprising, better for them to get it right than ship them out too early like they did the AT Pro when it was released. I look forward to seeing what the Apex line brings to the table, and I'm glad they went the SMF route. Hopefully Nokta will get theirs out sooner than later (I suspect we'll see an announcement at Detectival and it released in Spring of 2021 which seems to follow their historic release cycle.

Like that MD pin! I've found a few shoe supports that dated to the 1800's, I suspect that there were originally surrounded by some other mateial that's long since rotted away by the time we find them, else I cannot imagine them being comfortable.