schoolofhardNox

Awesome ring. Sometimes you just hit a small, great area, even if it only gives you one or 2 targets.  Anytime you strike gold, it's exciting.

38 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

I would consider that an honor after the bruises healed... 😀

Geeze, bruises from us giving you guitar lessons? What kind of lessons were you thinking? 😄

18 hours ago, Joe D. said:

   Not only that, but any critics of the 5000 on the beach ain't saying much either; you've proven it's worth, time and again!! (but it's still a beast to wield)!💪👍👍

It is a beast though, certainly not for most people.  The only problem with the Manticore is it feels so light that when I pick up the GPX, I'm like "I can't swing this tank anymore" 😄

17 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Man, SOHN, it looks like the M-Core is doing a good job for you! Great finds and I don't think I've ever seen so little trash in your photos, well done!

Thanks. That trash would have been even lower if I could have started out in the low tide. Most of the light stuff came from the upper beach. Down low that stuff was long gone, washed away by the sea. It's hard for me to even believe, but all those copper cents, silver and clad basically came from a 15x30' section.  I'm sure a lot of it was left because the scoops can not get past some of the big rocks that are locked together in place. With a spade you can pry them while kneeling. Then you just have to dig blind through the water until you get the signal out. Not fun, but judging the age of this beach, worth the time. Hopefully in 2 weeks the tide will just be barely low enough to expose those rocks again.

3 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

  Lucky for you I didn't read the new finds post last night when I saw it on the index page.  Yes, finding a -CC mintmarked coin is tough, particularly in the East.  (Those lucky Western detectorists recover them like they're screwcaps.  OK, not true, but much easier to find in the West, relatively speaking still far, far from easy.)

The story of the creation, operation, and evenual closing of the Carson City mint is an interesting page of USA history.  The prolific silver production of Northwest Nevada led to its creation, but it never lived up to the need.  In other words, the demand never caught up to the supply.  That led to considerable value to some (low mintage) issues in contrast to considerably production & availability in (only) a few others.  For example, only three years of dime production (1875-77) resulted in ~25,000,000 issued.  The previous four years together produced only ~87,000 and the last year (1878) only 200,000.  So less than 2% of -CC dimes were minted outside those 3 prolific years.  Those three years are not only #3, #1, #2 (in order of date) among dimes but in fact (if my findings from flipping through the Redbook is accurate), actually the three highest mintages of all -CC coins ever produced!  Dime was the smallest denomination minted; all silver denominations of higher face value, including the elusiver 20 cent piece, were produced, as well as gold in the $5, $10, and $20 denominations.

Only the SE USA mints at Charlotte, NC (-C mintmark) and Dahlonega, GA (-D mintmark) produced fewer coins than Carson City, and that was because they never minted anything but gold coins.  Coincidentally all three of those mints had the same lifespan (24 years) but because of gaps in production, particularly 1886-88, Carson City had issues in the fewest number of years.  I wonder how many detectorists have found coins from all the USA mints....  I suspect you could count them on a couple hands, or less.

Well, school, I hijacked your thread again, but I'm putting all the blame on F350.  😁  Is that your first -CC minted coin found with a detector?  A likely bucket-lister if so.

(In case I haven't said this previously) I'm glad you have a Manticore and are giving us honest but cautious reports of its early performance.  Please keep that up.

Geeze, that F350 guy is always making you hijack threads 😬 We should do a road trip and teach him a lesson. 😄 CC Seated coins are hard to find here and are usually pretty worn out, like the  "S" coins are. I think I may only have 3 of them. I'm trying not to get too pumped up with the Manticore, because there are different situational hunts that require different settings. So far I can tell it loves saturated sand and semi saturated sand (when the tide has receded a couple of hours ago). Like all Minelab detectors, the likes will over take the dislikes as soon as more people get their hands on them.  I'm just glad I got one in time for my winter beach season.

6 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

   Well, #20 wasn't quite what I described previously, but well done just the same!👍

   Glad to see the Manti is working out for you! May the luck, and nice finds continue!🍀👍👍

 Thanks, I'm learning some new tricks. 😄 I think this is going to be a good machine. Can't wait to see if it really is. I bet you won't hear a peep from all those early reporters that could only find negative things to say about it. 🙂

26 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Cool to see you using a discriminating SMF detector and getting results like that. That's a real jump for joy to find a CC coin! 🥳 Is the CC above or below the wreath, hurry up before GB gets here 😀

You might get spoiled not digging so much trash and getting great results, but I'm sure the PI would have gone deeper.

I'm hoping to get to a river beach soon myself to test out the D2. Excellent hunt! 👍 As usual. 

 

Thanks! The CC is below the bow. The PI may go deeper but would have me digging a lot of needless small aluminum scraps. I'm pretty happy that I can cover most scenarios with the GPX and the Manticore. For tiny gold and gold chains I will still need the Equinox.  The real test is next time the tide is low enough for me to get back to that area. I have some  "thoughts"  🤔 on how to get more from there.

Beach hunt # 20 was at the beach that I just recently started to do well at. I had some friendly competition from a couple of guys from the area, that are very good detectorists. They filled me in on some of the finds that have come from that beach. It’s an older beach that has the potential to find older, silver coins. The tide was near record low (-0.8), and I was eager to give the Manticore a try on wet sand. Usually, you would use a scoop to dig, but not here. Really big rocks and smaller rocks below them. I opted for my trusty spade, but even with that, each hole takes a while to pry open. The water filling up every hole didn’t help either. 🙄  Since it wasn’t low tide just yet, I worked some of the less saturated, upper sand. Not a lot of signals but some zincs and junk. I almost gave in and pulled the GPX out but decided to give the Manticore some more time. Once I got into the really saturated sand, high conductive numbers started to show up. Most were copper pennies, but I was surprised that targets were every few feet. At first I didn’t trust the numbers because I was worried it was iron. There is a lot of iron at this beach. But they were real numbers and a couple of times there were 2 or 3 copper cents in one hole. Finally I hit a silver Mercury dime, and soon after a really clean Seated dime – 1875 CC (Carson City mint). 🥰 That made my day. I also found 3 Indians (one shot up), which I didn’t realize I had until I got home. The only piece of jewelry found was a silver ring. Ship spike were a cool find as well. A great day out and I’m glad that I only did 5 hours – I don’t think I could do more in that type of digging. I must say, so far I am very impressed with the Manticore’s ability to find deeper conductive targets. Next low tide I will be back in that same spot with some new ideas on how to get some more of the deeper coins.

7 hours ago, Digalicious said:

Hello.

I did an air test to give me an idea of how much depth is lost when the sensitivity has to be reduced due to EMI or other factors. Although depending on the ground conditions, a SF can be used to mitigate EMI.

I used the 6” coil, a silver dime, M3, and the default of 5 for the recovery speed.

30-10”
29-9.5”
28-9.5”
27-9.5”
26-9”
25-9”
24-9”
23-8.5”
22-8”
21-7.5”
20-7”
19-7”
18-6.5”
17=6.5”
16-6”

 

Interesting. Just goes to show you that increasing from sens at 23 to 26 doesn't gain you anything but noise. Even running it at 30 only gains you 1". So it's really best to know what your acceptable lowest number for sensitivity is.  On that chart 24 seems good if you can maintain it. Dropping sensitivity seems to have a greater adverse effect than raising it. 24 - 30 (6 steps up) gains you 1" -  dropping it from 24  to 18 (6 steps down) loses you 2 1/2" . Lesson is -  don't drop sensitivity too much or you lose out, and don't put too much faith in raising sensitivity - it doesn't gain you much at all. Thanks for doing the chart.

That dog is too cute!🥰 I think the nail just held multiple boards together to make a thicker beam or something similar.

Heart attack material right there 😬 And that's just from viewing your post 😄 Awesome hunt.

Exciting day of gold!! Isn't always the case that the last place you go is the place you should have started at? 😄 Hopefully you can get there before news spreads too far.

3 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Dunno, it was attached to something else that was metal plate:

I'm thinking some kind of horse tack. That's not cloth under the fastener, obviously took a lot of force to snap it off. It's real heavy. The nail is copper, it gave the same ID as a wheat penny.

This field is part of the large plantation I've been hunting, didn't feel like going too far from home yesterday 😀

Maybe a saddle decoration. Still have hopes it's military. On the two headed nail, I have one (maybe more) of those. So I started to think it's just a nail with a copper washer on the other end peened over. So I scraped mine and found that it is a washer on one end. Here's some pictures. Without cleaning both ends, it looks solid, but after cleaning, one side is peened over.

Great stuff again!! The odd gold piece is puzzling for sure. Industrial things only use what is absolutely necessary in their products, so it would have to be something that demanded resistance to the elements to justify the costs. Any satellites or space stations crash in your area recently? 😄 I'm still thinking it's jewelry related in some way, maybe part of a locket or pendant or watch, etc...  Whatever it is, it's 🥰.

My advice is just the same as others have said. Dig it all for a while, and learn what good targets sounded like and what a bad target sounds like. Once you have that down you will inevitably, one day decide to dig a bad target and it may turn out to be a good one 😄 That's how it works sometimes. No guarantees by using the numbers or tones, although tones work the best overall. A bad target (iron) close or next to a good target (coin) will make that coin sound worse, and make most people pass at digging it. But my main advice is to know the limitations and strengths of the detector you are using. If you have a single frequency machine, you will be limited to dry sand. Wet sand will make your machine so unstable, that you will be frustrated. I use 2 or 3 different machines depending on where I hunt, how sanded in a beach is or how much black sand I encounter. Look over peoples beach posts on all the different sections here to get an idea of which machines perform best, but also meets your price range. Two ways to hunt. Grid a promising looking area to death, or move quicker and cover more ground. Each way has it's pluses and minuses. You will determine your style and comfort of hunting. Good luck. I'm not sure if I read what part of the country you are in?

Nice variety of years as usual. Not sure what that big brass piece is but it peaks my interest - maybe gun related or military? 🤔 The two headed nail is cool for sure. Maybe that is how they were made and then just cut in half and pointed? Silver is never out of style by the way 😄

That makes the whole day worth it. Something about seeing gold send a victory pulse to the brain 😄

I'm late to this, but was wondering if you could attach a counter to a new member that let's just you know someone is new and is sending a lot of PM's. Anyone new doesn't know enough people to send multiple PM's. If a new member sends more than one PM, then maybe that could report to you that information. As a lot of people here, I have never had an issue that I can remember.

Very Nice!!  That's one way to make you like a new machine 😄

3 hours ago, Joe D. said:

   Beach hunt #20! Left the Manticore in the car! No need for it today, as there was a carpet of silver coins across the beach, with gold jewelry in between, laying on the surface....

😴😖 I'm awake; I'm awake dear!!

A little treasure dreaming never hurts!! Better luck on #20!💍💰🍀👍👍

NOoooooo.............. That's exactly the kind of pre-hunt thinking that got me into trouble in the first place. 😄 Next hunt will be worse than this hunt. It will rain molten aluminum and iron will jump from the sea. There 😊  Set the bar low and you won't fail. 😉

1 hour ago, strick said:

Well you want to talk Idiot...heres one for you....several years back I was all gun ho to detect after driving 2.5 hours to the beach so I hit the ground running...signals were everywhere...darn ground noise from the recent erosion/black sand I figured so I turned the sensitivity down and re ground balanced.....the machine was still falsing a lot. It was then that I noticed it was every other time I took a step and finally realized that the new rubber boots I had recently bought had steel toes 😄

strick 

Huh ...... 😞. I've done that too. 😄 But in my defense, the guy at the store swore to me that they use hard plastic inside the boots for their durability. 🤔 Never did buy anything from that store again. Next time the pinpointer comes with me.

56 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Would you please explain.  I'm trying to figure out how that would be worth the effort.  Is the toy truck too far gone to figure its manufacturer & origin?  I'm always curious if people find the original Matchbox vehicles (marked "made in England by Lesney").  I don't remember ever finding one.

Good on you to admit your faux pas.  I've done that before (multiple times) although not to the extreme result you suffered.  But that's because my sites aren't so sensitive to the Eqx 800 settings (i.e. no saltwater beaches, etc.)

I scrap electronics for fun 😄 I can smash that puppy and extract the board in less than a minute. Seriously, I recycle metals and electronics for their components. There are buyers for boards and I just collect them until I get a lot.

I was a bit shocked that the modes differed enough to cause the land version to be noticeably different from the beach version. It's not that it was unusable by any means, but more that it did change it enough for me to notice the difference it was giving me towards iron. I just found it to make the iron iffy enough for me to dig it. I was way more confident in beach mode with the iron. Who knows, maybe just a fluke. I won't be able to test it again for a couple of weeks. I want to hit the grass and try for some more silver from the fields, next trip out.

Beach hunt # 19 was at the same beach that gave me gold and silver last time out. This was going to be a full Manticore hunt. Got up very early to be there just before sunup since it was going to rain/snow in the afternoon. I prepped everything and was psyched to get going, dreaming of more silver and gold. What I forgot to plan for was that I would be an idiot that day. 🙄 Yep, seems that last time out I tried the high sensitivity people were wondering about and also switched from Beach Mode to All Terrain Mode. A seemingly unimportant technicality. So, I hit the beach running and drop the sensitivity down to 25 and start hunting, but notice the machine is really sparky this time around. Then I notice that the method I use for identifying iron isn’t working well today. I was very disappointed that my system was not working. ☹️ I detected for most of the day with very little to show, except  that I had a lot more iron than I wanted. I was a bit bummed and lost a little faith in the Manticore. I decided to try another program  but them I noticed that I was not in beach mode. What a rookie move. 😬 Switched over and all was well except that my time has nearly run out. Oh well, it’s just like the old days when you pack everything for a great relic hunt but…. you forgot to charge them Nicad batteries. I will not make that mistake of rushing to hunt before verifying my detector is set correctly again. So, no gold or silver, but I did find some weird stuff. A Garmin GPS which I will scrap out for its PC board, a cool, old pad lock, and an unusual amount of big lead, including a nice, unmarked ingot. So, the second trial of identifying iron on the Manticore will have to wait a while. I may try a grass area next hunt to see how the iron responds to my system of IDing it. Still nice to get out hunting and always better than working. 🙂

I find that all the time 🙄, except mine is made of iron 😄 I'm surprised your still alive and didn't have a heart attack. Saying, "Great  Find"  is an understatement.

That is some great beach hunting!!!  😍 Awesome finds. Hurts to hunt like that, but well worth it. More storms coming in, maybe time to change beaches.

I do the picture route. It has the finds (good and bad), the detector used, and the amount of time spent. That is the reason I put that information on the pictures I post here. They then go into a folder with the date of the hunt. If my hard drive dies, I'm toast 😄 But long term for my beach hunts, I put all the total coins and jewelry into plastic bins with the beach labeled on each. My relics I just put in boxes or display cases. Important hunts, I have bagged them and labeled the place where found. When I die, no one will care and the kids will Coinstar everything 😲...😆

Not enough time on it to notice the negatives yet. It's pretty lightweight and I didn't notice any issues swinging it but I haven't had a full hunt with it yet. Hopefully I will get out Thursday and spend the full day using it at a beach. Haven't done a relic hunt yet, but on the beach the iron is manageable. Any iron I dug last time out was by choice or with the pinpointer in with other targets. Only got really fooled twice, but I'm still learning. I think that the issues will come later after some wear and tear on the units. Hopefully it doesn't leak. We need some southern guys to take it in the water. But for me, no complaints so far.

7 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Great Hunt again, SOHN and congrats on the silver and gold! And thank you for your real wolrd report on the Manticore. It looks like it's working well for you right out of the gate. I always enjoy your posts.

Thanks. I'm hoping my luck continues. I'm hoping more people can get there machines and see if they feel the same way as I do about it.

1 minute ago, F350Platinum said:

Had my share of fun with them today, the D2 does a pretty good job of getting around them but it's hard not to dig something that gives you a 94 now and again! 😀

You are definitely doing great vis-à-vis the EQX 800 for sure. It's quite a bit better from what I see in your posts. 🙂 

Yeah nails suck 😄 unless they are rose head nails, then they are ok. So far so good, but I'm really liking the target response a lot better than the Equinox. It's a decent improvement over the 800 for sure. It's more precision like over the older Nox. I wonder how everyone likes the 900 over the 800?