schoolofhardNox

Beautiful green patina on those Indians. Great finds!

Beach hunt #3 was the third trip to this beach, and it’s definitely time to move to another beach a bit closer to home. Finally, some cool weather to keep the crowds down. Lots of guys surfing with big waves, so not the conditions I want for digging in the water. I did get to talk to one of the guys that was hunting that small patch very hard last week. He said the group of hunters hit that area for 4 days straight. Lots of gold rings, silver chains and an unusual number of half dollars coughed up from the ocean during the storm. Half dollars at 2” deep. Normally I would not believe these stories, but I hit a patch in that same area about a year ago and found similar, although not as lucrative, results. Well done guys!!!! 👍 As for me, I worked 9 hours for mostly clad and hit all the remaining areas that I wanted to do before I change beaches. Tons of trash for just a silver ring and a silver Washington quarter. I just could not find the silver layer. Funny how on other days silver was easy, but the last 3 times out, I struggled to get to where I wanted to be. But still better than sitting home on the couch. Those gold colored nip bottle caps should be illegal. 🤬 Had me thinking gold was found at least 3 times before I caught on. I am however getting tired of seeing every single hunter using an Equinox. Hope the Manticore does not sell as well. 😄 Now time to just wait for next week’s hunt.

Wow, good looking gold. Timing is everything. Too bad you couldn't hit it earlier, but you still got gold and that's what counts.

I think Garrett fills a gap between, new to detecting and mid level hunters. It's a solid niche and gives good value for the money. Is it a Minelab? No it's not, but not many can compete with the money Minelab has to put into R&D. Garrett has done well, better than Whites in terms of marketing, even though I would put White's as the more advanced detectors. The AT Max probably didn't do enough to justify it over The AT Pro, but every manufacturer gets us with a less than stellar machine every once in a while..... I guess that makes us all suckers 🤔

Is that a Master Hunter? I had one of those for a couple of days. Never clicked with it, so it went back to Kellyco. The Equinox is a good machine. It has a lot of pluses but some minuses as well. But it does work well.

Nice finds. I love the old Canadian 5 cents. Great condition coins. I also had a Coinmaster V and loved it. Hated the weight and batteries, but loved the machine. A lot different from the weight of today's machines 😄 Nice chauffeur badge as well.

Ouch ...in the face 🤕 Lesson learned, never hug a jellyfish.

Nice hunt. Either some kid brought coins from home or some club had a planted coin hunt on that beach I've found some pretty weird foreign coins after one of those club hunts. Come on, get in the water .... we love pictures of swollen limbs as much as we love coins and trash 😄

Awesome hunt. Love the Eagle R button. We don't seem to have these in New England. We get the A and I but not R, at least not for me. Nice seated silver too!

Yep this one just a couple inches deeper. Wasn't expecting that to be in the hole. Hair is not one of my wants 😄 It's been long since the early 80's. Every time it goes out of style, I just wait it out. In 2010, at my 30th high school reunion, everyone was bald or gray. I'm like who the hell are all these people??? 🤔

Could be the flagship with a reduced flagship price due to economic times. Minelab does a good job of balancing sales while kicking the competition a bit, while also just removing enough cash from our wallets to not leave us completely broke 😄 Genius really. The Manticore has all the features and improvements that the Equinox lacked, plus some. It doesn't have to go deeper to be a winner over the Nox.

That truck was DEEEEEP. I couldn't believe it was new and that deep. All the rings are 925's, so pretty fresh drops I would think, especially with 3 of them within a couple feet of each other. It's tough competition on this beach, so everyone hunts fast 😄 I saw a couple of coils swung a bit too high too. Fun in the sun 😎 I love being the weird guy 😄 By the time I'm done my hair is a mess and my eyes are red from the wind and my pouches surround me, and then there's that big battery thing and curly cord hanging from that vest....... Yep it's a sight for sure. 😜 I can't wait to hear about those hunts. There has got to be some good old silver and gold there. Hopefully not hunted hard before. Wish you luck!!!

Maybe Minelab figures it's better to agree than to fight it out with us 😄 It's kind of hard to deny the similarities between the Nox and CTX and the Manticore. Maybe....... they are not afraid of steering away CTX sales since the flagship is probably already scheduled to come out in the next couple of years. Besides CTX sales are probably non-existent these days anyways.

Thanks. I can't imagine detecting a beach without the 5000 being my primary machine. The only time I pull a VLF/ MF out is if the coins are well within reach. I even use the GPX for cellar hole hunting. Oh man, And I thought your area opened up for you. I was about to head up and follow you in. 😄 The only thing that cowers to me is the trash 🙄 The beach is like " come on in and clean us for free🥰" Those other guys think I'm weird. 😳 They always see me hunting the dumbest places and wonder if I'm new to detecting. Only once did they come over and see me dig deep. They are more interested in low slope hunting which is awesome if you are the first one there. But 7 guys hunting the same small section had me shaking my head. Unfortunately the buffalo is not stuck on a different planchet. ☹️ But at least it was big enough for me to ID it, unlike some copper coins I find. The clad quarter I found shows how bad the constant tumbling and numerous chemical reactions can be. Dissolved to nothingness after a while.

Can't wait!!!

Beach hunt #2 is done. I was #7 detectorist when I entered the beach. Apparently, this beach is producing, and the locals know it. So, I wandered over to an area that was good to me before and far enough away from the others to not get the old stink eye. It was a slow day for the first hour or so, mostly junk and some clad. Eventually I found an area that I could follow for a while. My luck changed when I found my first silver ring. But what I didn’t expect was to find 2 more within 3 feet of each other. That renewed my energy and was rewarded with another silver ring about 20 feet away. Clad was everywhere and no matter how hard I tried or how deep I dug, there were no silver coins to be found. Eventually I stumbled on to what I though was a nice, old style gold ring with diamonds. Then another golden tiny ring appeared. Both were heart breakers. No gold for me. I did manage to get two (well almost 2) Buffalo nickels. The beach can wear down coins to be much smaller than they were when minted. I call that one my penny Buffalo nickel. The nicer Buffalo was found inside the clay…. Yep, don’t let anyone tell you that there are no signals inside the clay layer. Not many, but sometimes clay layers shift and trap targets inside them. So, all in all, it was a normal high target hunt. Lots of junk but lots of coins as well. Looking forward to next week’s hunt.

Thanks NAGANT, That's the video that got me looking into the Nexus coils. I guess I'll pass on them, mostly because they are too expensive to take a chance and find out they suck in EMI 😄

That is what it is all about..... Having fun! Nice hunt and I think you have a new place to detect. Sometimes conversations with people that let you hunt turn into other permissions when they ask their friends if you could hunt there as well.

I've watched a bunch of videos showing the Nexus coils doing air tests and on newly buried dirt with a GPX 4500, but can't find anyone that has done a video showing it in real action on undug targets. Has anyone tried these coils? I'm going to assume since the videos were done in places that appeared to be away from a lot of EMI, that they probably do better in the woods than at the shore where I would want to try them. I did see them hunting some serious magnetite laden soils though. Impressive, but not enough for me to try one without hearing some feedback on them. Anyone ever use one? Thanks.

I figured out your problem. You just need a new digging tool to compliment the AQ. May I recommend a Caterpillar D5K. Problem solved. 😄

Beautiful ring. I hear the beaches of CA are getting ripped up a lot from the storms you have been having there. Odd weather helps a lot!

Not afraid of some cold.... well maybe a little bit 🥶 I really do hate cold. I'd do heat over cold any day. They're predicting a cold winter up here, so maybe I'll miss a couple of hunts, especially late January into February. Yes that is a meteor.... do you want to purchase it? 🤥 I find those pieces a lot and they are iron but barely have any iron left in them. They read rather weak and sound like deep coins. They may be parts of some old, broken drainage pipes or some kind of sand retention pieces. Fairly thick.

Thanks. Can junk be considered eye candy?? 😄 I was actually a bit surprised that this beach had so many quarters within range of most machines. Are people just digging gold signals now and not bothering with clad? This is a very popular beach to hunt, so I'm a bit shocked there were so many coin targets there. I did run it under the coil, and it read a solid 1 on the Nox. It's big, but hollow. I just weighed it and actually added some coins to make sure it could read the weight correctly. It weighs 1 gram.I'll take a free gift like that any day 🤗

So, my beach season officially starts again. My first hunt after Labor Day and I couldn’t wait to get out there. A friend text me pictures of silver he just found, and I think I surprised him by walking out on the beach to see them. 😄 He thought I was 2 hours away and didn't know I was going detecting that day. Because he found silver rather shallow at 6-8”, I decided to take the Equinox out and see how midalake’s settings worked out. It took a while to get used to it and I did get a couple nonferrous that read negative numbers, but none were quality targets. I ended up changing the recovery speed to 4 which is what I am used to. Thanks midalake for posting those settings. So, how did the Equinox do??? Well, the Equinox did not exactly hit gold, but it did get me close enough to glance to my left while digging another target and spot a gold hoop earring sitting right on top of the sand. 😍There was some pushing up of targets from the ocean recently and that was exposed. Along with that, I found a silver quarter and a sterling religious medal. A decent amount of clad as well and a greatly reduced amount of junk targets. Not too shabby for 3 ½ hours. I then switched to the GPX and dug my heart out. A lot more clad, more junk, but also a Buffalo nickel and another silver quarter. All in all, it was nice to get back to digging at the beach!

I think so too. It will replace the Nox faster than it will replace the E Trac or CTX for me. Unless....... it can't hit a gold chain🤔