schoolofhardNox

I just looked at Breen's book and those two coins used "French Bronze" 95% copper 5% tin and zinc Wheat cents are 95% copper 5% zinc (no tin). So I'm going to assume that the lack of tin had something to do with it? But I have also found old Wheats that had that green, IDK. Soil probably has the most to do with it, but I still find a lot of 2 cent coins that have that green look vs wheat cents.

For some reason some Indians and 2 cent pieces can take on that beautiful dark emerald green patina. Nothing better than pulling a coin from 1865 and seeing that nice green.

WOW on the cob !!! Great find. Some early buttons too. Nice way to start the (almost) new year.

Fairly good since nothing was real deep. I dug a couple of #1's and all were foil unfortunately. I think nickels were 12. I was digging it all so I didn't pay much attention to the numbers. I was just happy the Equinox was making noise in that type of sand. The silence was killing me before I switched to gold ?

I'll take a little global warming if I can hunt the beaches in January without three winter coats on ? Nope it's really hunt #15 ? If I run them from Labor day to Memorial day, it's one continuous season. If I do it by year, then I have a big gap during summer when it's off limits to detect (or not worth the long trip down for after hour hunting). Tomorrows hunt is going to be a cold one for sure ?

It was better but both worked nicely. I just ran them at 20Khz.... seemed smoother than multi. Sensitivity around 20. A bit chirpy, but when you hit a target you know it. At least you can hunt since the beach modes don't work very well at all in that environment.

Beach hunt # 15 is done. Decided to do a very trashy town beach that I have done a couple of times briefly. Was a very low tide and I was hoping it would expose some lower sections that I haven’t seen before. No luck….. just more sand. I probably should have pulled out the GPX, but I decided I wanted to see if the Equinox can get some deep finds along with having the benefit of discrimination. I must say sometime the EQ does not do so well and this beach probably has the most concentration of tiniest black sand than any other beach I have done so far. Barely any signals down low so I decided to try the upper dry areas for older finds. This is an old beach that goes back to seated coins or earlier. I noticed right from the get-go, that I was not getting through the black sand with any of the beach programs. A dime at 2” barely read and this has happened before, so I tried the gold programs. Gold 1 worked well and got me around 5” on that dime but also hit hard on tiny aluminum. Gold 2 was a bit better, so I was happy with that. I didn’t have the day I was expecting to have target wise, as this beach should have more targets, but when I got home, I did notice that there is still some potential here for future hunts. I scored a buffalo nickel by default when I was digging a hole with 3 nails in it. Going over the pile I dug out to get those nails, I got that buffalo. But later on, I noticed one of the cents I found was a wheat cent along with an older spoon and 2 square nails. Square nails on a beach are rare for me and I think they probably come from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. I did manage to get a fresh drop with the silver earring. Only 1 junk ring that for a second made me hopeful They guy I ran into detecting had 2 rings, one being silver and told me they were deep. He was surprised how sanded in it was at low tide. The funny part was that I thought because it was going to be light rain, that I would be almost alone on the beach, but apparently every New Years Day they do a cold plunge into the water to celebrate the New Year. Yep, about 150+ people with kids all over the beach. ?Hey, it wasn’t the best beach hunt, but I did get silver, a Buffalo and had a fun time out with pretty warm weather in January. Not too shabby!

I just tried using the EQ 800 with the gold programs at my last beach hunt. At least now I can get 5" on a clad dime instead of 2" in the black sand ? So I guess my choice of machine would be a PI on that beach ?

On my way to my next beach hunt tomorrow. It will be a cakewalk compared to that pond hunt ? Thanks. Without the ring, I would have just found a crusty Indian and a war nickel. The ring saved the day for sure.

He may be putting together a couple beach hunts as a lot of YT's will do. Or maybe he is lucky and has a target rich beach. My area is sanded in, so 2/3's of the lower beach is dead zone with just a couple targets showing up here and there. Even with a PI, it's sparse. The upper section still has targets since people still come out during our warm days. My choice in sparseness would be the PI.

Going behind some of those guys has huge benefits. they clear all the surface trash for you ?

Hopefully I won' t run out of time and the deep freeze hits. I wanted to cross that small running water but chickened out. I didn't want to be that guy that gets stuck in the mud and has to call for help ? They already had one of those for the fire department to practice on ? I will go over to the better side next time. This hunt i just wanted to get used to what I was up against. I really didn't expect that many targets to be so shallow. The ring made it all worth it. Probably will be soar, since I didn't take anything to drink with me. ? I opted to take a spare set of mini headphones with me in the spot usually reserved for a 16 oz electrolyte drink. I've had some headphone issues lately, so I didn't want to trudge back up that steep briar filled hill until I was done for the day. It did help that the targets were shallow and very close to one another. I could actually dig 2 or 3 targets without getting up if they were close enough.

Thanks. I could have just used the Equinox and hunted differently. Had I known that this was going to be easy, shallow digging I would have done it differently. But I could have missed that ring because of all the different sizes of aluminum that may read the same as the ring, so I decided to dig as many targets as I could dig, until there was no more room in the pouch ?.

Thanks Joe. I wish I had not procrastinated as the pond was bare for months. Target are shallow and I could have used the Nox for most of the hunts. Live and learn

So today's hunt was not at a beach, but at a place that I should have been hunting all along! I thought I missed my opportunity (kind of did) to hunt a very old drained pond. I could not find a place to park, so I kept putting it off. That was in the fall of 2020. They said the dam repairs would be done by January 2021, so I forgot all about it. Last week, I have a client that needed a scrap electronics recycling pick up, so I drove to his new house which just happens to abut the pond. Now this pond is HUGE and a lot of people have been pounding it for a year (at least 30 people that I heard of. Many nice coins and rings have come out of there, including Seated coins. Oh well. So I asked if I could park in his yard and go down to the pond and he said - anytime. Now because it has been dry for over a year, except with a small river flowing down the middle, lots of vegetation has sprung up and makes it impossible to hunt. It's very boggy in about 90% of the pond now. The side I am on is not the popular side that has been used for a couple of centuries, but I figured I would start there and maybe return some other time. Also being cold, some of the desirable area froze solid. I brought the Equinox and the GPX 5000 for this hunt, and decided on the GPX even though I would be in areas with a lot of iron ( I assumed). I was amazed that the iron rejected extremely well and most of the iron I dug was out of curiosity. This was a 4 hour hunt and I had to dumb the GPX down sensitivity wise in order to not go nuts. Targets were everywhere. This was going to be a low conductor hunt because of all the iron, as my primary goal was finding gold! I knew there would be a lot of lead, but I did not take into account the sheer number of small pieces of aluminum that I would encounter. I worked non stop and got a lesson on trashy pond hunting. I'm glad I did it and glad that I found a little bit of gold, silver and even a very crumbling Indian cent. Man o man, do humans pollute!!!! ? I will be back if the weather doesn't freeze over everything soon. I'm glad I had a chance to detect it after all. ?

Welcome aboard Johnny! I see you got a military discount.... Thank you for your service!! Don't fret too much about selling your machine, sometimes things get in the way of doing what you originally intended to do. It's a good hobby to keep one entertained, especially if you need alone time (like I do ?). Unfortunately there are no shortcuts to enjoying a new machine. The best you can do is read up on it and follow people's advice (especially if they are from your area and are successful). Why reinvent the wheel right? I appreciate a lot of the more talented people here and read their post trying to see if what they say will fit my type of hunting. My advice to you, for whatever it's worth, is to pick a machine that you think you would feel comfortable with and stick to it for a while. Sometimes you click instantly, like I did with the GPX 5000. Other times you need to get hit over the head over and over before the machine clicks in (like the E Trac for me). But there isn't a better hobby when I just need to put the world aside and roam the beach all day long!

I do a fair amount of older beaches In New England. In sand that is not mineralized, I would stick to the EQ w/15" coil all day long over a PI. I would probably run it with recovery speed at 1 or 2 if I could handle it. Sensitivity as high as I could get it without falsing. In that scenario, I would have excellent discrimination and maximum ground coverage and depth. The PI would probably not give me any advantage and would actually hinder progress, speed wise. Now bring in some mineralization or worse yet, what I call banded mineralization, and the PI's rules in the depth category. On my beaches, the sand is layered with tiny bands of magnetite in-between clean sand layers. The EQ struggles terribly in this situation making the disc function irrelevant, since I'm not getting any depth anyways. Coins at 15" sound faint and sweet on a PI... on the EQ they sound like.....threshold ? In respond to the trash targets with the TDI vs EQ, I think that I would try and find slope areas where the lighter targets get washed out to shore. Only there would I use the TDI. The other thing is that if I were running the TDI in a certain area and didn't get anything deep, then I'd switch to the EQ figuring that area is sanded in. Only break out the TDI if you have a reason to do it, basically mineralization or if enough sand is removed and you are getting close to a hard packed clay layer. When I get that close to bottom (within 15-20") only the PI can reach them targets before they get sanded back in.

I did PCGS with some silvers and colonial coppers - all dug. Never submit a copper coin that is dug. ? It will fail every time. They did slab a Seated half dime and a Mercury dime. The half dime was just an XF and had even color. The Mercury has some luster to it, so I think your coins would have a decent chance to grade properly. Never mention they were dug.

I'm not a rock guy, but it looks like smoky quartz or iron stained quartz.

I use 2 tones. Tried 5T and 50T but found that by running hot, it was harder to tell what was 1 of the 50T vs a false tone. In two tones I can tell false tones better. I don't worry too much about numbers since corroded zincs and corroded bottle caps can read in many of the ring ID's. Also bigger aluminum foil can get into the small ring numbers. So I skip the Target ID's all together. Now that's not to say that I don't get excited about seeing the number 1 or 9 when you are in an area that does not have any aluminum foil kicking around. It's just easier and faster to listen for one mid tone, rather than 50 different tones. I watch a lot of videos of guys working a signal for eternity, trying to determine if they are going to dig it or not. I can have 3 targets done by then ?

Great finds! Love all the rings!

Beach hunt # 14 was a couple of weeks ago and I’m just getting around to posting it. I wasn’t expecting much with a weak low tide and a never ending sanded in beach, so I just enjoyed using the 800 and the 5000 for some fun in the sand. Nothing much notable except maybe the complete herb grinder ?... ? The following week I did a day’s work looking for structures and trying to ID finds without digging any of them. Archaeologists are fun sometimes. ? They actually wanted to see if any structures were around that could be found by their iron nail components. This is a no dig site until permission is granted. Also, nonferrous guesses on what they may be (flat buttons, coins, etc.) I used the E Trac for this with an open screen – two tones. Fun, but not as much fun as actually digging them up! Last week I took a break during the holiday, and it had nothing to do with the 28 degree / 17 MPH winds that were scheduled for that day at the beach.? Hoping to get a couple of beach hunts in soon. All is good and I’ll be glad to hit a beach soon. (getting kind of antsy!)

I would wander everywhere until I found old stuff. Then pound all those areas hard. The answer to your question on why lady Liberty evolved is simple. Metal detecting was born and lady Liberty is trying to get away from all you hole digging varmints. She was just fine sitting until someone dug up her sister and put her in a pouch. ?

Great hunt. Now you have a couple of areas that had old finds in them.

Merry Christmas to you as well. Hope you get some gold! ?