schoolofhardNox

Beach hunt # 10 was a little different this time around. I picked up a used E Trac specifically for finding deep silver on grass settings, and that is what I tried to do for the next 7 hours. I didn’t even touch the beach sand for the whole day. Except for some headphones problems (both sets), I had a decent first hunt. I am not new to the E Trac, since I owned one before, so that helped me a lot in setting it up for this hunt. The grassy area I hunted was one that a fellow detectorist says was hunted many detectorists and had been hit for many years. He and his friend alone pulled over 500 silvers from there. I believe it since the beach area has produced a ton of silver for me. So, my hopes were high, but a bit hesitant since it had been worked over well. They definitely cherry picked that area for silver and purposely left many copper cents. I did manage to get 4 silvers and I’m I am happy with that. I mostly went for high conductors, but I did try for some gold as you can tell from the pull tabs in the pictures. The E Trac did just what I remember it doing well. If anyone has used a specific brand of wireless headphone on an E Trac, I would love to hear how it turned out and what model you used. Great weather and just plain fun detecting 🙂

I'm going to melt all my aluminum into one big pull tab and bury it a foot deep for the next guy 😄 My line to people I talk to on the beach is" "I'm an unpaid sanitation worker". They just look at me funny after that. 😶

Yep, I'm rich from that hunt! 😁 That round thing is junk. Probably the front part of a button. I just picked up a used E Trac, so a little beach dirt hunting for part of the day on my next hunt. The E Trac was a great deep silver machine.... let's see how it stacks up against Equinox, Deus and a bunch of other machines that have pounded that field. They reportedly took well over 500 silvers out of there. We shall see.

Thanks Joe. Hopefully I will get back into the swing of finding some good things 😄, otherwise you can drool over my aluminum.

Nice scores! That first ring looks crudely make, like a casting made at home. I'm thinking you found someone's try at making their own ring, and doing a decent job of it. There are little pits on it that makes me think that. If it is home made, then it most likely would use gold, and the markings may be the maker's initials. The 699 may in fact be the purity, if they had access to an XRF. Just speculation on my part. I'd bring that one to a jeweler to see what they think.

Yes it does. It was the only coil that day. I have more at home but the 12.5 was my favorite coil RIP #12 😆

Awesome find. That's just short of a full troy oz of .999 silver

Beach hunt # 9 this past Thursday. Nice day, sunny and warm. Met up with a forum member and it is always nice to see him and chat. I wanted to take the GPX into shallow water and see what lies deep, so I decided to fill a sock with beach sand and weigh down my coil. I zip tied it to the shaft and rested it on the coil……Bad idea! 😄 I think I ended up breaking a wire inside the cable going into the coil. The coil just screams when I’m swinging it, like it is responding to a huge target. So, In my haste to get going that morning, I did not pack a second coil. Prior to breaking, I did start hitting a nice line of copper pennies including 3 wheats (a ’10, ’37 & ’44). I think my coil was almost broken anyways since it’s over 3 years old and gets a lot of beach and woods use. So, I’ll be looking to get a replacement soon. Pulled out the Equinox for a rare above the knee water hunt. Waters were quiet but I did manage to get a little bit of clad and what I thought was going to be a stupid zinc penny turned out to be a Ruger 9MM bullet. Next time I WILL be more careful shaking the scoop around. 😲All in all, it was still fun in the sun. I may return there as I just picked up a used E Trac to do some deep silver grass hunting. Some will say use the Equinox, but the target ID on the E Trac is more to my liking.

I would take a 14DD coil this is just a DD coil and not tied in with the EMI/Salt function. I would sacrifice the stock 14" coil for an X coil like that, or would love to see another after market coil manufacturer do one with Minelab consent. Detech would be my favorite choice, but that would probably never happen.

I bought that original Eagle detector when it came out. I can tell you it did not go 30% deeper than the Coinmaster V Supreme 😄 But it was a fun machine and kept me interested in the newest and brightest things. I was with White's for the longest time - CMV Supreme to DFX. Whites for sure was a top brand, and I do think the Eagle was the first widely promoted "smart" detector. But we were using discriminators way before it came out, so maybe digital smart is where I put it. That is about the time I lost that analog sound that I loved so much. "Chirpy" is how I would describe it's responses to targets and ground signals.

Especially if they can stretch the target ID range out so it is not so compressed like the nox has. That is one thing that we lost that the E Trac and CTX had developed quite nicely.

Beach hunt # 8 is over …wheww! I know some cultures have no problem with the number 8, but I have never had any luck with it. I didn’t realize it was number 8, but it sure whacked me a good one. I changed my predetermined beach location to my favorite beach, because the storm brushed the coast enough to impact this beach. Although the tide coefficient was very low (I think 35) I was hoping the storm surge would still reach up high and pull a lot of sand away. So did others, since I talked with 5 other local detectorists there too. It did put about a 1 foot cut across some parts of the beach, but it also pushed sand all the was up to the top of the beach. Sometimes you just can’t figure out when you are going to get that big removal of sand. So, no gold, no silver, no jewelry of any kind, but a good dose of very rusty bottle caps and other assorted junk. I did do a little beach clean up as I was about to leave the beach. I saw a video on ocean plastic and one thing that stuck was that some of the missing % of plastic that should be in the water when they did a test, was missing. They concluded it’s not sitting on the bottom, or floating around, or very minute particles, but it is trapped below the sand and only surfaces when there is a great deal of ocean disturbance. So, as I was walking back to the car with my tail between my legs, I decided to pick up any plastic that I saw. I probably will do this from now on. And even though my greatest finds were copper Memorials, 😭 I still enjoyed the day!

Fixing the EMI issues would help me with the 6000 and using mono coils on the beach. I had high hopes that the mono coils would work, since I've always used the DD coils. When I found out that the 14DD coil on the 6000 does not operate like a normal DD coil does, I didn't realize that it's more like a 7" coil and not like a 14" coil. I knew it was different, but I thought that was for EMI or salt compensation. I didn't realize it would act as a smaller coil does. So in a way I don't think I will be able to ever get the depth on a beach that the 5000 can, unless they fix the EMI issues and I buy the 17" mono coil.

Awesome gold! All it takes is one good hit to make all the rest of the bad days be forgotten. 🙂

I was just thinking about that. Maybe they didn't get it right on how the African market would perceive the new machine. They don't want tiny gold. That's a waste of their time. They want deeper, bigger nuggets, not small shallow gold. Maybe that may even be the reason they called it a GPX and not something else, hoping they would buy it because of the 5000. If that's the case it would be a huge fail on their part. I guess if the African market dries up and you can't get a used 5000 anywhere, we will know 😄

I can't see the battery being an issue at all. We've always bought 2 batteries if you wanted more that 8 hours detecting time. I've done it for every Minelab I owned, until the equinox would not allow it. I even have a spare for the 5000. Considering how short the battery life is on the AQ, 8 hours on one battery seems like an eternity😄

Canadian Bank token. Nice token!!! I love finding those. Great shape too. Funny, placing your coil down and finding something good occasionally happens to me when I hunted old cellar holes too. You walk into a site, swing your coil and get a great hit right off the bat. It definitely sets the mood for that hunt. Someone probably thought that signal was clad and moved on. 😄

Without Joe's battery the machine is not practical for the avid hunter. 2-3 hours just doesn't cut it in the real world. Imagine finding a big gold ring and your battery dies. You have to exit the water and be very careful on installing the other battery and hope it lasts for at least 3 hours. Joe should be labeled a "Saint" as well as an unofficial member of the design team 👍

So you are probably finding them cars from a house that once stood on that road?? That was a good hunt with the silver earring and spur part. That may be a gag loop that you found. Love the green patina on the '11 Wheat. I hunted an amusement park in the late 60' through most of the 70's, and all the Indians and wheats were that color. It just screams OLD!!!

That's funny, I hardly ever find forks, mostly spoons (all silver plated brass or SS) Just 1 sterling spoon from probably over 40 spoons found. Cheapskates in my neck of the woods 😄 For some reason I get bored when the beach is sanded in and I am walking and swinging for 10 minutes without even a peep. I can't stand the silence. Probably since I'm a long way from a beach and usually only have one day off per week (self inflicted)🙄, so I want maximum time digging. If I was retired and detected daily, I would probably not mind a little silence.

I actually choose to dig all those targets. 😄 You could easily not dig the big iron just by sizing the target and a lot of those little iron targets, if they are closer to the surface, will blank out, so you know that they are iron. The bottle caps, as long as they are within 6 inches, are so loud and wide of a signal that you could ignore them too, although you would probably ignore shallow quarters as well by using that method. No big deal missing some clad. I dig them for the exercise and most importantly for cleansing the top layer, so I can hear the real faint targets later this season. That's where I get the silver and occasionally some gold. It's just the way I detect on the beach. It's definitely not for everyone, but last year it payed me back in dividends as far as silver was concerned. Now on dry land it's a different story. I could never match my silver count with a PI on dry land. On dry land I would be way more restrictive on what I dig and only hunt deep, rounder targets for older coins. Small nails at depth will fool you, but using the coil to check the dimensions of targets can eliminate some iron. Shallow, non ferrous targets would not be much of a challenge to find.

Beach hunt # 7 is done! I tried another beach that was older, but trashy. I lasted I hour and decided conditions were not favorable for me to get down deep enough to hit the old coin layer, (if there even is one). So, I traveled to my normal beach, knowing that good targets would be dwindling, if conditions are the same there. They did, as targets were sparser. This isn’t much you can do about that except enjoy the day and be happy to be out detecting. For silver, I did manage to get an old, worn-out Mercury dime, a Washington quarter, and a tiny Turquoise ring. Enjoy life!

Awesome find, just tucked away all those years waiting for someone to notice it 😄 I think I have only heard of one 6 pence found detecting in the USA on Long Island. Quite a few pine tree, oak tree, and even a couple willow tree coinage found, but almost never NE coinage. The holy grail of colonial coins to be found here. I was lucky enough to know the person who hand engraved dies and reproduced a lot of colonial coinage. He even has a huge screw press in his back yard 😵 Here are two examples of his work. This is the closest I will ever get to finding any NE coinage 🙁

Nice chunk of a gold ring. Sharp design, no wear on it Great ring!

Boy that place kills the silver and copper..... Paper thin, some of them. But that gold never thins out 😄 Nice scores!