Skate

You're on fire!!! 7 rings in a week. You're destroying all the normal ratios us regular humans live by.

Because instead of 3 rings I got one. It's titanium. I was out at the beach this afternoon to hunt the squeaker low tide (-.05) and to see how the swell had affected the sand movement. Finally a cut has started to form and sand is headed back out to sea. My third signal on the Excal II and you could immediately tell it wasn't a coin. Bingo its a ringo. I wish it was gold but any ring is fun to find so i'll take it. In other news it sure seems like someone is seeding the beach with zincs. I dug many nearly new zincs today and only a few aluminum balls. Usually this beach will give me 25-30 aluminum balls of crap per couple of hours of work and I dug only 4 today. I did dig a quarter at nearly 18" on the excal which is pretty deep for what we do here. Since I got the ring early on all I could think about was matching Mitchel. Instead I harvested zincs all afternoon. By the way the waves were big today and the tide was sneaky. I got a little wetter than I had planned today. Dave (Skate)

Great day! I was going to go to the beach today to hit the low tide until a parent wanted an all teacher meeting with her misbehaving child. Glad you got out and scored the rings.

Thanks Glenn you may be right. I did a search after your answer and it does appear to be some sort of a steam whistle. I knew it looked familiar I just couldn't see it. Now to find out what brand and type.

I dug this the other day at a site that is 80-100+ years old in terms of when it last had houses on it. It's around 6" tall and I think it's brass. It looks familiar enough that I should know what it is but I can't figure it out. Any help appreciated. It has a threaded end on the bottom and an ornamental cap on the top. Thanks Skate

Part of me is like wow, so cool and the other part of me is like you're killing me larry! It's really neat to see what the Equinox can do in capable hands.

If the coil is more than 25% of the actual detector then it better be a "smart" coil or it may be that I'm a "stupid" detectorist for paying that much.

The 6" is what i'd like to add for sure but cost will be a factor. I'm thinking the price will be $199 per coil.

I paid mine upfront. My dealer was hesitant to do it but I've bought from him in the past and i trust him completely so when I could take care of it i did. It was my idea not his. I didn't look at it as an interest free loan because I'm buying. I do know some people who put their names on every dealer they could find pre-orders list and are going to take the first one they get and let the rest go. Personally I think that's wrong but there seems to be a lot of situational ethics involved in detecting especially when it comes to buying one.

I think Fenn's idea of a treasure hunt is awesome. Hunting and searching for potentially 5 million gold SHOULD involve some risks. The fact that people die or have been injured is a part of life. The sheriff needs to stick to protecting and serving against crime and leave the treasure issues to someone else. I just wish I had the time and the brains to figure it out myself. Next thing you know we're going to see a group protesting Oak Island because the legend says someone else has to die in order for the treasure to be found. Then we'll have a group calling for Expedition Unknown to change their name to Expedition Somewhere so people aren't afraid to watch the show.

That's a great ring! 22k is awesome. Gold in the scoop is the pinnacle for the beach hunter. Way to start off the year!

I don't have an acid test kit. It's pretty thin. When I dug it the breath just kind of ran out of me, I was on one knee digging and I had to take a seat. I was all giddy and then after looking at it further I just couldn't see it being real. I figured some high school romeo got it out of a bubble gum machine and tried to pass it off to this girlfriend as the real deal and she chucked it.

This is the good stuff I was able to pull out of the ground yesterday and today. I have really been focusing on digging "gold" type targets which is why I have all the nickels. I managed one ring but I think it's junk(no hallmark) 4 silver dimes, two harmonica reeds, marbles, some tokens, lipstick case(I think) and the 611 brass tag. What isn't here is the 67 pop tops and beaver tails that I dug in my quest for gold. I'm trying to keep track of all my trash gold sounding targets this year so I can develop some sort of ratio of how many pop tops I dig to gold. I also dug some mystery coins, bigger than a penny, smaller than a quarter and thin. No idea what they are. This was really made possible due to the rain we finally got on Monday and Tuesday. Instead of dirt cement I had wet dirt which allowed me to dig quickly.

I was going to hit Ventura on Wednesday but decided to stay at home and play in the dirt. I probably left all the gold rings for the beginner I saw at the beach last week.

The trolls are getting out of hand. F-Mall is just about unreadable. The nox forum there has two types of threads, 1. Here's my thread of why i'm not buying an equinox. 2. Here's my thread explaining why i'm mad at minelab and their testers are fakes. I teach at a junior high and i can tell you i hear better arguments from 12 year olds about stuff than I do from some of these adults on these other forums.

I would say judy you already scored the best treasure you could find, 3 grandkids who have come to love detecting because of you. That's worth more than all the gold the equinox could ever find you.

The only detector companies losing sleep are the ones not named Minelab. According to all forum sites there are currently way more people who have pre-ordered (and paid for) an Equinox then they expect to have available production wise meaning they couldn't sell/deliver more nox's even if they wanted to. Not getting my nox by the end of January is not going to cause me to cancel my order or demand my money back. Sure I will be frustrated but Minelab will not lose me as a customer. I know that deep down Minelab doesn't care a lick about me and I'm okay with that. I don't want a relationship with Minelab, just a detector that makes detecting more fun than it already is.

My hobbies have paid for this hobby. My wife and I have an agreement. If I can figure out how to pay for something without having to dip into the budget or savings I can get it without having to get approval. I used to surf. The older I got (52 now) I'd be on my board thinking about metal detecting so I sold my surf boards and bought more detectors. I used to kayak surf and when i wanted an Excal I sold the kayaks. Same thing happened to my paddle boards, I wanted to try the CTX so I sold my boards. 99% of my hobbies prior to going all in with detecting were black financial holes. New paddles, wetsuits, boards etc. All cost money that could never be returned. It didn't hurt that great whites have been showing up all over the coast in terms of influencing my decisions. Bottom line is we find the money we need when we really want something bad enough. I know a guy who smokes a pack a day that thinks Minelab's detectors are too expensive. $6 a day times 365 days is $2190 to smoke menthols. $2190 will buy a CTX and maybe a used extra coil. It's all about perspective.

Hey Steve, I was wondering (and you may have already mentioned it) if ML had provided you with either the 6" coil or the 15" coil to test along with the 11"? I realize you may not be able to comment on this either but I thought I'd ask. I'm looking to buy one additional coil once my Nox gets here and don't know which direction to go with.

Thanks for the ideas Chase. In a completely unrelated move I had begun looking up Detect to Track and all I got was stuff on spyware on my iphone. All I read was how I was probably hacked and being tracked by hackers. After reading all of it I felt like I had to sleep with my light on. The OnX sounds like a winner and you would think all of the detector companies would have some sort of App for their higher end units for GPS and finds with a pic as a way to marry you the consumer to their product. Nearly everyone has a smart phone nowadays and it can't be all that expensive to make a go of it.

Steve being critical of the Nox could blow up the interwebs. There's a bunch of yahoo's on some of the other forums who see Steve as a shill for ML and this might rip the fabric of the space time continuum. Tread lightly here.

I was at an old site on the side of a hill this week where some of the first oil wells in Ventura county were (some still are running). This has been an awesome site to hunt over the years as its rewarded me with silver and some awesome relics. I dug this during the hunt and at first was going to just leave it as the trash at this site is immense but for whatever reason I stuck it in my bag and continued on. Last night i was bored and i remembered I hadn't taken it out and cleaned it so I did and to my surprise what I thought was junk evidently has some value. As for what it is I googled it and it's part of the brake assembly on an Indian bicycle circa 1903-1904. It attaches to the hub of the wheel as part of brake assembly. I'm not a big relic hunter but I guess I should start paying a little closer attention. Skate

Great find! That's the kind of inspiration we all need.

Thanks! I don't own any gold coins so I don't have any reference to pin what a gold coin would show up as. I'm currently in the process of trying to convince my wife that I need to buy several gold coins for "testing" purposes. So far the boss is not on board with my thought process.

My goal this year is to find a gold coin as well so the $64,000 question is what is a gold coin going to ring up on the Equinox?