schoolofhardNox

Looks like a Tombac button Generally dates to mid to late 1700's

Thanks, I'm slowly getting better. The large cent made the hunt. I just wanted to get some time in on the E Trac and get reacquainted with it. It really is a good machine considering it's age. Hope you get out to some of those churches and get some of those coins. But churches are funny, the priest that gave my friend permission was fielding calls all the time we were there. People calling him to report the 2 guys digging his church. One lady even took a picture of my friend and scolded him for hunting a church without permission. 😄 Even after telling her he had permission she still took a picture of him. Funny no one bothered the long haired guy 😆 Thanks Tom. If I had more time there I think I could have found some deeper, older coins than wheats. But first time there you just wander around and see what pops up. EMI was the depth killer there.

Some cool finds there. I had to do a double take on the locket. You can see a 194_ date coming through on the back side of it. The large cent is always a good hit. I like V nickels but mine are usually are more corroded than the one you got. That should clean up fairly well.

I just saw your 1837 Large cent. It may not work too well on that one since there is a decent amount of corrosion on it. But if you do try it be careful not to remove too much dirt, since that is what is giving you the contrast to see the date and features.

Toothpick and dry tooth brush them to death before anything else. Then if the coin looks like it has a solid, mostly pit free look to it, you can finish off with the wet steel wool and Dawn rub. If the coin is crap to begin with, it may not improve much. I like the newer large cents because they have a very deep strike, so they clean up nice. I may use a toning mixture of Vaseline and sulfur to darken the coin to a more uniform color if I remember 😄

Thanks. We have a good amount of large cents in my area, but they are getting harder to find. Hopefully there is an older section of town or some old race track or church where you may have a chance of finding one. Thanks. I'm not quite normal yet but getting better by the day. Large cents can sink real deep depending on where they be. I've found them deeper with the GPX on some fields I've hunted. The church does shoot some blanks. Not sure if they are for a funeral or Memorial Day events. The jacks were a surprise for sure. This ground was dryer, brown soil, very consistent and not many rocks at all. Looks like it drains well. Thank you. The large cent cleaned up pretty well. I just tooth picked it, followed by a wet #0000 steel wool and Dawn rub.

So, I have been MIA to detecting for the past 2 weeks, as I had my second date with Covid. 🙄 She visits me every 2 years and this time was no fun as well. 😄. A buddy of mine wanted to do an E Trac hunt, so I met him at a church built in the 1940’s but on a very old piece of land. I also brought the Equinox 800 and the GPX 5000. I started the hunt with the E Trac and a 13” Ultimate coil (that I just purchased here recently). It took me a bit to remember how to use it in this kind of EMI setting, but it worked very well finding me an 1852 Large cent at around 9”. I ran it for about 2 hours and found some memorials and a couple of wheats. I decided to switch and try the Equinox. Now the selling point of the Equinox is its multi-frequency technology, so I wasn’t interested in hunting with the 20 or 40 Khz frequencies, as I was looking for deep silver. The Equinox didn’t fare well with the EMI, so off to the car trunk it went. I then pulled out the GPX with a Detech 11” DD coil. It was noisy, but bearable as I ran it with very mild settings. The last 2 hours of the hunt were the most fun as I could almost run with the GPX and just bang out coin after coin, all around the 6” mark. This section I was doing had almost no trash or iron, just coins. There wasn’t a pull tab to be found, and besides some modern clad, every cent there was a wheat cent. So, the GPX found both silvers and a lot of wheats including a decent 1921. It was a ton of fun and I was just glad to get out and hunt after sitting home for all those days.

Some nice finds there. Definitely in an old area. Very interesting lead as well.

I generally don't reply to people when they tell me to donate to a museum or historical society, but when pressed I have on occasion reminded them that museums and historical societies are private ventures. They may seem to be tied to towns or states, but they could sell those items or discard them if they had no room or interest in them, and you would not be able to say anything. Many of dumpsters located at bigger establishments have old collections thrown out because of lack of space, lack of museum quality items, staffing or conservator budgets. Many times a mediocre collection will be forever buried in an attic or closet, never to be seen. Chances are unless your item is rare or ties in heavily with local history, it would not be displayed, since they usually group artifacts by theme or event. It is better in your hands than theirs.

I just checked my photos and couldn't find any save location information. But that may be that I use a home based camera and not my phone. I have yet to understand my new phone so I won't even bother looking for that info on it 😄

I'm sorry to hear that Simon. I was shocked to read your post. I thought by now they would have eliminated the DOA detector problem. I bought mine a while ago. It powered up but went right to the "!" symbol. JW's was showing a coil problem, yours didn't even turn on. I'm really starting to worry that this is the way Minelab is going to approach manufacturing. I could see if this was their low end line of detectors, but this is geared for serious detectorists that pay good money and deserve better quality control than this. I know it's been said that Minelab will make it right, and they probably will, but that does not excuse the fact that it keeps happening. It shows a lack of concern for people's time, money and frankly puts a downer on the image of the machine. Mine has sat for months now. I charge the battery and headphones, but there is always that stressful feeling that one day I will go to use it and it won't turn on. It's sad how companies start off with a lot of energy and seem to be really vested in making a great product that will take the world by storm. When they get big and make it, the essence of the company shifts more towards making profit. They will always make a great product, but only if it powers up.

That's a pretty good hunt. Spanish silver (and you even go the date), a tombac and the copper spike is interesting as well. Wonder if it was used as a ground for a lightning rod wire? Cool stuff!

Awesome recovery. And good job on picking the right spot.

I love Detech coils for their durability and sensitivity. I hope you do well with yours.

Awesome hunt. The junk pile would drive me nuts trying to find those iron bits. I'm assuming you have a magnet on a stick for those situations?? Great gold!

Thanks! Off season beach hunting keeps me active and preps me for summer hunting. Yeah, this was found in the dry beach sand area. Even if it stays dry (which on these beaches it never does) it would still start to slightly darken when exposed to light. It wouldn't get completely dark but would show the beginnings of the effects of sulfur or chlorine contact. I hate it when I get skunked, so I swing that anchor until the last minute. Thanks! The nox is great if you are the first one there with it. But after a couple of years and everyone having one, the finds drop a lot. That's why the PI comes out. I haven't found anything good with the nox on the wet sand for a long time now. It sits as an emergency back up machine

Got lucky on the gold 😄 I really don't care for this beach much since it has a lot of small iron. But my feelings may be changing. I find too many things on the beach, that's my problem 🤔 I find a decent amount of round ball there too. I guess it's what happens when you dig it all. I'll be back to that beach next week for a full day's hunt...... but something else may be in the works for this week 😳 Well if you aren't willing to pay postage, maybe you would be willing to pay my flight down so I can return it to you in person? After all if it's yours, you deserve to have it 😆 Rare for me to get gold these days on a beach. So much competition, and i live so far away. Last minute goodies saved my butt. 😄 Those newbies won't stand a chance on this beach. The signals were really weird. I couldn't believe some of them were quarters.

Nice! I bet the D2 will replace the Equinox for beach hunting. Some good looking, expensive rings there 😍

Nice full date Buffalo. As for the water hunt, it should feel perfectly fine. 🥶🥶🥶---- 😄

Beach hunt # 32 is another two-beach hunt. I originally wanted to hop a bunch of beaches but decided I just wanted to have a relaxing day and do my gold / EMI beach. I started working the grass with the E Trac and then a bit with the GPX, which was not fun. 😳 But I did manage to pull quite a few nonferrous targets from all the trash and iron. I then worked the shore with just the GPX. I intended to stay there but there was too much activity to be comfortable, so I decided to head home a bit earlier than I wanted to. As I’m driving I’m thinking, let’s just go to the closest beach around. I don’t hunt this beach much, (last time was probably 3 or 4 years ago), so I wasn’t expecting much. Apparently, this beach took a beating a while back, from the looks of the rocks and large boulders that were still exposed. I bet a lot of detectorists had a great time there. In my usual style, I am late to the party. 😪 I have about 2 hours to detect, so I get right to it. First thing I noticed was the decent number of targets still there. Unfortunately, they were mostly iron and some aluminum. Targets sounded terrible for some reason, and as I’m digging a very loud, choppy target, out pops a brand-new looking dime. But something was not right because it looked silver not clad. Sure enough, it’s a pristine 1963 silver dime. Not possible to be on the beach, so it had to come from a group planted hunt. No way that was on the beach very long. I can usually tell a lot from the audio on my GPX, but this time around I was having issues, as even the clad coins sounded semi choppy, like small iron. I dug what I could in the short time I had left and almost before I got back to the car, this gold item comes up. I thought it may just be plated but it ended up being 10K. I wish I had spent the day there. Maybe a return trip next week? Fun to get out in the sun.

Don't pump me up just to leave me high and dry. With a statement like that I am expecting a lot 🤨 No pressure 😄. Good luck on the hunt!

Welcome aboard. Anytime you can get out and hunt is a good thing. Nothing is better for the body and soul than detecting is.

I hunt the beach areas and not in the water, so the iron is not saturated all the time. Sometime I get some iron that just crumbles and the original artifact is long gone.

Please buy my trash 😄 Free shipping. Them aliens 😍 Gotta luv 'em. 😄 Beaches are loaded around here especially when you pull out a PI. Most better beaches go back to the 1930's. No these are salt water beaches. I can usually dig out a target pretty fast with a big shovel, so I don't mind digging the iron. Some of the coins were side by side with small iron sitting on clay at about 15". Those coins were the toasted ones and they barely survive and eventually will disintegrate to nothing.

Hard to do, but I would be satisfied if I were in a high EMI area (that I hit hard before) and I ended up pulling deep coins there with the D2 That would be enough circumstantial evidence to convince me something good is going on inside that machine. Just the fact that you can pull some deep coins in a known trouble EMI area would be enough for me to be confident in it's abilities. Not scientific but does the trick.