Cal_Cobra

I do the same with the newbie juice. My hunt partner is always rubbing his coins, drives me crazy! My first gold coin I dug was caked with dirt and I had to keep pulling it away from him as he tried to rub the dirt off to see the date. I'm glad I did as it turned out to be quite a rare date/mint haha

No need to be embarrassed with that find, that's in great shape! Funny thing, a few years ago we had a killer scrape at a very old San Francisco park. It was an amazing event that lasted for months and a lot of great finds came from that site. One trip out I had dug a couple of mercs in one hunt, plus a bunch of other finds. I didn't even look at the mercs as why waste valuable hunt time (the competition was fierce at this demo) when you can examine them at home, besides when do you ever dig valuable mercs 🤔 The next day I dump out my finds pouch to look at my finds, and as I was looking at the dates, I noticed that one merc was a 1916. I've dug dozens of 1916 mercs over the years, but they've always turned out to be San Francisco or Philadelphia minted, and I remember thinking to myself before the flip to see the mint mark "come on, for once be a Denver mint mark!" and low and behold it was. Here's the digs from that days demo hunt with the 1916-D merc: The other merc in great condition was a 1943, too bad the condition on the mercs wasn't reversed, but we take what we get and I was just grateful to finally dig a 16D 👍

Thanks, that's an interesting read. Given that the example I found online as well as the one I dug are both holed (square holes) I'd assume that they weren't fans of the King or Queen, or the union of them and/or the implications that their union created.

Thanks! Nothing wrong with mercs! TomCA just bagged a 1921-D, I've not dug a 1921-D but did get the 1916-D key date merc at a San Francisco park scrape a few years ago.

Thanks Brian! Congrats on your gold coin and largie. I'm sure I'll dig a largie one of these days, but I'll gladly take gold coins as a consolation prize in the mean time 🙂

Natural electrolysis on the coin stack eh? Was it in salt water? If the Mary Queen of Scotland coin is a fake, and the original was gold, perhaps it was originally gold plated to pass as the real McCoy?

I'll take a pass on that trade 🤣 If you ever hunt with Tom, heed this warning - when Tom says " Almost like you could bend it if you wanted." never ever let him bend your finds...trust me on this one 🧐

Thanks, appreciate it 👍

Thanks. I figured they'd be common in Europe, but to find any token/coin in California from the early 1700's is quite rare. I see these are sometimes called Jetsons, is that just another term for a token? It's kind of like large cents in the U.S. They're practically jumping out of everywhere in the Eastern U.S., but in the Western U.S. you have better odds of finding a gold coin. Heck I've dug two gold coins out here, but never dug a large cent (which personally I'm okay with 🙂

Thanks Bill! My trusty EQX800. To be honest, that darned machine has done so well for me at the kind of sites I enjoy hunting, it's been tough to use anything else. I used the Legend earlier this year at some of our sites and beach detecting, but most of our sites are shut down during the summer due to overgrowth, cement hard ground, and/or excessive temps, so the fall and winter are our peak detecting times, provided the weather doesn't blow us out.

Thanks, and hopefully there will be more as we're planning another excursion soon to another site that's been productive in the past 👍

Thanks! Super unexpected, heck at first Tom thought it was kids play money, but after I cleaned it up, I could tell it was old but still had no idea what it was until I hit google haha You have to love this hobby, you just never know what will turn up!

Thanks! Kaiser sent me in for a Covid PCR test and a chest X-ray and both were negative, but they didn't give me anything until I was a bit more forceful and told them I'd really like to enjoy Halloween festivities with my four year old daughter, please give me antibiotics 😣 As expected that took care of things

Thanks El, hope you're doing well and getting out!

Thanks! Yep those are Henry rim-fire cartridges. Except for rim-fire and pin-fires, I really despise digging bullet shells, but rim-fire and pin-fires are great age indicators.

This is one of those sites I just don't know if the Manticore would open up from what I've read from Tom Dankowski and Mark Lawrie have discussed, but after I've learned the machine, I'd try it there after a good rain, I think that opens this site up a bit.

Oddly on past trips to this site we've found quite a few buttons and some really good ones at times, but aside from eyeballing the mother of pearl button on the surface, the only other button was a tiny ball button. Thanks, and HH!

Chuck what's interesting is that the ID'd example of the token I found on a French website is also holed, and in a lot worse condition. Kind of amazing the one I dug traveled by ship all the way to the west and is in far better condition. @palzynski given you're in a country I'd almost expect a token like this to be dug, can you tell us if these are collectable over there? Would this be considered a good find over there, or something common?

Love those kind of sites, nice hunting and great site 👍

Nice hunt, love hunting ghost towns 🌵🐍🤠

There's several sites I'd like to revisit once I get proficient with the Manticore. Tom D's painted a pretty good picture of it, and what could be possible so it'll be fun to put it to the test.

Tom I'm sure many would be thrilled to dig any seated half, they're not exactly jumping out of the ground these days 😁 It was a fun hunt, but I think the site's been relegated to the proverbial B list for now.

Tom D. posted some great news on the Manticore! The two items that were holding up the release have been resolved! One of the things going into this project was.................. unsuspectingly....change the way we detect. Change the way we think. Mission: accomplished. I am not yet comfortable going into any detail about this.......yet. But....... I am willing to share this data.......without divulging anything about the electronic platform. Also: Item two = Complete It'll trump nearly every aspect of EQX; albeit..... at a bit higher price tag (for good/legitimate reason). Three years of effort. Even though MC is a fair amount more expensive = I will never hunt with EQX ever again. Things could get interesting here!

I've been sick as a dog almost six weeks, and it finally cleared up last week after a heavy regiment of antibiotics. I haven't been detecting for a couple of months so Tom and I decided to detect one of his back pocket Spanish era western sites. The site is getting pretty stingy, but there's still targets here and there. Right out of the gate I dug an interesting object that looked like a coin, but I didn't recognize it. Tom thought it was probably a kids play coin. I threw it in my finds pouch to investigate when I got home. When I got home, I looked at it more closely in good light and I could see it was dripping with age, but had no idea what I'd found. I took some closeup photos so I could better see the writing on it, and after some online research discovered that low and be hold I'd dug a hammered token from 1719!! Here's what I found out about it: NUREMBERG TOKEN FOR AUGUSTE III of SAXE / MARY-JOSEPH OF AUSTRIA 1719 Diameter: 22mm. Weight: 0.78g. Origin: Hérault. Obverse: AUG III D(eo)G(ratia) POL .REX Reverse: MARIA IOSEPHA - bottom STADTT (= City of Nuremberg). Comment: It is a token minted in Nuremberg in 1719 on the occasion of the marriage of the King of Poland AUGUSTE III of SAXONY, Polish King of German origin, with Marie-Josèphe of Austria, who thus became Queen of Poland herself. Not a lot of other finds, but also ended up with a pewter spoon bowl, a Spanish period ball button (unfortunately NOT a Phoenix ball button 😞), a piece of heavy green copper that was fashioned into a kettle/spear point (very cool IMHO), and what appears to be a gold decorative piece of something fancy, not sure what but after looking it over it appears to be period. Overall a decent hunt, although not brimming with tons of finds, it just takes once good one to turn the tide. Tom found something cool too, but I'll let him share his good fortune 😁

Nah I rarely beach hunt, I'm not really a beach hunter, but I've heard of others....