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

Nice hunt, love hunting ghost towns 🌵🐍🤠

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Until you get your hands on a Manticore?  Nice finds for both of you, and count me as one who would be over the moon finding a 1858-O half in that condition.

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 😁

13 hours ago, bklein said:

Oh so you’re the guy….

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

Nice job, persistence pays off in spades in this hobby!

For some odd reason a Barber half has eluded me.   I've dug a bust half, several seated halfs, several walkers, Franklin's , and a few Kennedy's.  Heck I've dug key date and semi key date barber dimes and quarters, but the dang half just doesn't want to show itself haha  Oh well, one of these days when I least expect it, it'll turn up.

11 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

And sad true story is the Deus 2 was promoted early on as being a Equinox killer on small gold. It took me less than 15 minutes with both to see that was not the case, so no surprises here for me. That’s not to say the D2 won’t find gold nuggets. It will, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. But it’s not setting any new standards in that regard, plain and simple as that, despite what the boosters said.

To say that the EQX800 raised the bar would be to state the obvious. 

It's interesting that everyone else is in catch up mode, some successful and some not.  With the Manticore around the corner, things could get really interesting.

A roll of U.S. zinc cents scattered about the beach would likely detour him from ever coming back 😂

2 hours ago, Lynk said:

Jeff - Thank you for all this work and sharing your results.  Also, I hope you heal fast and are back in the field as soon as possible.

GotAU - Great idea. I had a minute, so I took a crack at it. It would be great to see what your students produce, too. 

If there are any errors here let me know and I will fix them.

Nice job!  Reminds me of the days when @Mike Hillisdid all the great C$ charts and graphs 👍

@Lynk could you make this downloadable? 

6 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Thanks! For me, finding two whole silvers is an awesome hunt. The button has a stippled finish around the face like the clean pic I found. I think CPT_GhostLight has something about it being a chaplain's button. 👍

Nice to see the button in the clean.  Doesn't look like a military button, seems odd to use a soldier on a chaplain's (religious) button. Nothing says praise the lord more than a Roman soldier 🙄

Pretty good hunt! That last button almost appears to have writing on it in front of the soldiers face.  Could be a civilian button, but it's definitely an interesting one.

Nice testing Jeff 👍

Interesting that for the most part, the Legend and the EQX800 reigned supreme in your testing. 

Beautiful Barber quarter 👍

Great hunting Andy 👍  

We like the same kind of sites, I love detecting ghost towns.  Most of them (especially on BLM land) have been hunted hard, but they didn't get it all 🤠

Nice digs, and hey you found jesus 🙂

On 10/19/2022 at 8:43 PM, phrunt said:

https://www.nordicsemi.com/products/nrf5340

nRF5340System-on-Chip

Dual-core Bluetooth 5.3 SoC supporting Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Thread and Zigbee

 

 

Pretty robust BT chip, geesh with Zigbee we could network our Manticores together and w/NFC we could use them to buy lunch 🙂

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

You guys got me thinking I need to return to one I hunted not long after I got the Eqx (and 6" coil).  It was gnarly with overgrowth which discouraged me at the time.  The camp was supposedly not opened until the mid-1950's and I rationalized I wouldn't find much in the way of old coins, but I've since hunted several schools from that same time period which did produce silver.  Thanks for the reminder -- when the leaves are off the bushes I'll give it a go with the 5"x10" Nox coil -- it's due to produce something for me.  😁  I'm going to have to rig up a closed bottom cover (at least) for it, though.  The vegetation there will drive an operator with an open coil right up the wall (err., tree).

The camp/picnic site I mentioned was totally overgrown.  The first two trips there we hunted under trees that for whatever reason didn't have weeds/overgrowth (both of us had ten silver days on those hunts), but subsequent hunts required weed whacking, moving fallen trees and branches, etc.  Each time we'd clear an area, sure enough we'd find more.  Apparently we did a pretty good job, as I've gone back a few random times over the years, and returned with nothing to show for my efforts.  Maybe it would be worth taking the Equinox back, but the guy I hunted that site with was using an Etrac, so I doubt the EQX would find anything his Etrac or my F75 LTD would've missed, but then again who knows.  I did hunt it with the AT Pro at the end, and it's pro mode with iron audio helped me make a nice find that the F75 missed, and it was real oddball signal.  I wished I'd recorded more of our detecting experience out there, but this was eleven years ago and we weren't too into making detecting videos yet, but I did capture this particular one: 

By the time we were finished, it looked like the camp site could've been reopened for business 🙂

That's a really cool find!  Is that a pendant or a button or? 

Love finding this kind of stuff 👍

That's a great hunt, congrats on the trime!  

Your gilt button would probably clean up beautifully if you took a Qtip dipped in lemon juice and gently cleaned the front.  I've been amazed how well it's restored 1800's gilt buttons

Jackpot! 

Old picnic grounds can be great sites.  Years ago I was at an huge regional park and a park ranger came up to me while I was detecting, and started talking to me, asking me about the hobby and as he was wrapping up his conversation he asked me if I had my detecting permit (required for this particular park system) and I showed it to him.  I think that made him happy, so he told me to come to his office during business hours and he'd give me a copy of the original park map.  I did and that turned out to be a bonanza, as many of the sites had been moved/changed/abandoned.  After checking out a few of them, we detected on spot that was an old scout/church picnic/camp area and it was loaded with silver.  The guy I was hunting with then and I dug over 100 silver coins in a month, it was really unbelievable.   Also the silver to copper cent ratio was something like 2:1, so for every two wheat cents we dug you got one silver coin.  We also got silver flatware, silver jewelry and one gold ring, and lots of neat old scouting things.  This particular site didn't start until around 1940, so no really old silver, I can imagine if it had been 30-40 years older we'd been digging seateds and barbers 🙂

On 10/8/2022 at 6:34 AM, JCR said:

... I have found a Navel Jelly soak for 24 hours is the best way to dissolve the crust on the Silver. .

Interesting, I've used Naval Jelly to decrust buttons, but haven't tried it on silver.   I'd love to see some before and after examples.  We have a few sites where coins can get crusted up, they're still fun to hunt, but frustrating when you find a semi-key date silver coin and it's all crudded up 🙄

It's always exciting when a new machine opens up a pounded site, congrats looks like your on the pay dirt 👍