schoolofhardNox

It's a Massachusetts state seal button. Not sure if these are classified as Mass Volunteer buttons. There are quite a few varieties. Not sure on the dates, but I think some are pre Civil War as well as Civil War. Hopefully someone can help you out better. Possibly could be MS31 in Albert's button book (Record of American Uniform and Historical Buttons)

Agreed. "Simple" takes away the ability to tweak the machine and maybe stumble onto some really deep settings. That is one reason in the past I loved the Eagle Spectrum from Whites and now the GPX from Minelab. Both machines offered enough incremental settings, allowing minute changes to each control. I'm not much for a machine that takes that away just to please new people to the hobby. Save that for the low end machines. Part of the fun I've had over the years is figuring out these tricks to getting great depth.

Is it durable enough to stand up to rocks, dirt etc...? I'm thinking try what Steve did, but also drill some small holes to let out the water and instead of gluing it to the coil, use those drainage holes and secure with some zip ties. That way you can clip the zip ties and the cover comes off. I zip tied my CTX large coil and it worked well.

I usually dig everything, but after a while I get tired of digging through rocks for copper pennies. For some reason at this location, the copper pennies jump to the 30 - 35 range mimicking quarters and halves. Must be a combination of high salt content, black sand and the rocky environment.

Thanks. For some reason this beach has given me 3 of them. I rarely find them anywhere else.

The half dollars always surprise me. I stopped digging the high conductors because most were pennies and I promised myself I was going to look for just low gold sounds. But I couldn't resist that one signal. Every target I dug that day required me to rake my shovel sideways to pull 8" of rocks away. It's a hard packed beach, since most of the sand has washed away. That Zincoln is actually what is left from a copper penny. This area has a lot of coins that degrade to nothing eventually. The silver is protected to a point by the crust it develops, but the coppers just degrade over time. I quickly brass brushed the silver to show some detail. The copper pennies wipe clean when you dig them. Then they tone a bunch of colors when they are exposed to the oxygen in the air. Only in some areas do they come out bright and clean like that.

That's quite a number of missed targets. I find the Nox does respond to targets that should have been found previously but weren't. Some of them at fairly shallow depths. A return trip is definitely in order.

One war nickel from the hunt but not in that picture of nickels. Somehow one of my pictures did not post. Here it is with that nickel.

Haven’t had a lot of free time to detect but did take yesterday off to hit a beach. I had to try out the new aluminum handle on the GPX. Works excellent and does not snap like the stock one does with a heavy coil on it. I found the usual junk, but surprisingly not too much. There were quite a few brass targets to get the heart pumping that looked like gold at first glance. The normal junk jewelry was there along with a spoon handle that may be nickel or silver. No sign of brass/copper. Not magnetic. I’m a little surprised at the number of nickels still to be found. A little bit of clad with some great toning on some of the copper pennies. For the good stuff: A Walking Liberty half, War nickel, silver Roosevelt, and a dated Buffalo. In the good jewelry category, I was again surprised to get a small signet ring that is unmarked gold, also having a nice toning. Must be 9k with the base metal toning. It buffs right out to look a solid gold color. Old lettering I’m only guessing early 1900’s to about 30’s?? Also got a class ring that hopefully makes the return a breeze, considering it has the person’s full name in cursive inside the band. Definitely before we considered identity theft LOL. And the final surprise of the day came from this gorgeous crucifix. Gold marked 10KN. The N part is new to me. Wondering if it means plum gold? Anyone know? Just a great day to be out and enjoy the good weather.

I'm leaning towards a buckle of some sorts. Hard to tell from the picture, but I think I see a rust spot in the middle of the buckle that goes over to another rust spot on the point of the buckle like the iron prong (tongue) would leave if it rusted away. I have a couple of colonial window sill sundials and the look a lot different.

Yep, I liked his old videos a lot. Then he started to get too animated and I lost interest. Early on, he was a wealth of knowledge and I loved seeing him work on preserving his finds rather than trying to act more. I liked him when he was more straight forward. I rarely watch him now.

Great finds. 2 Connecticut coppers, a nice Tombac button and I believe your other copper is a British George III copper. Some of those British coppers can be counterfeits too, so a little research on the date should help you. Also, counterfeits ring up much lower on your machine. It's either a half penny or a farthing. Nice digs.

I assumed he was talking about the pin pointer and he was asking why he could not just use the tone only, as an option. It's not really a dislike of the vibrate mode, just the fact that you can't separate the two unless you only want the vibrate mode. I would love only the tone mode (alone).

I have noticed. It's not a deal breaker mainly because with gloves and headphones on I barely feel the vibrate anyways. Add a little dirt in the speaker holes and you can't really tell there is a vibrate mode. I do feel it drains the battery more that I would like. I wish it was able to be disabled in some way though.

"Better" is a hard question. What is "better" for one person may not be "better" for another person. I've used the MXT but have not used the Deus. I have seen the Deus being used at projects I was on. I have used White's detectors since the early 70's until the earls 2000's, I have used Minelab since. I have the Equinox. I really think you should find some people close to you that have those machines and try each machine out for a bit. But if you really want an opinion, I would say that the Deus would probably sound and respond more similar to your MXT than the Equinox would. To be better, we would have to know what you are looking for, and what type of soil you had, what kind of EMI (interference) you have, etc... Probably you should watch as many You Tube videos as you can that have each of those machines, so you could hear and see how each one works.

That's the first one I have seen that says they actually truly get at least 9 volts. Have you used them phrunt? I'd be interested in them. Other ones I tried didn't hold a charge long enough to make it worth while. Also reliability was terrible as many of them died within 2 years or less. How about lithium's? Anybody know of any good ones that work and are reliable?

And one heck of a beach machine too.

Congrats on a super hunt. I bet you go back and pound that place all over again. I find a nice steady, slow to mid speed swing works best for depth (as far as coil control is concerned). Good luck there and keep us posted. That breast plate is perfect!!!

Funny, the same thing is happening at the New England beaches too. Weird

Anyone who offers you up a chance at finding Dragoon buttons gets my vote What a great hunt. You found a nice assortment of finds, enough for a nice display case. Nice quality finds. You must have dug a lot of holes. That is the only way to get used to the Equinox. Sweet hunt!

Thanks. The silver count was a nice bonus to a really great day. I usually can ID the wheats, with only a few exceptions. This hunt I did not separate the memorials vs wheats. I did remember that I saw only about 5 wheats, with the majority as copper memorials. I think only 3 zincs in the bunch. But this hunt is a example of how layered the beach really is. Most of the coins were probably lost early to mid 1960's. Some newer coins were found close by and there is always a crossover in layers. Because of that layer, I got more silver than usual. Move up just 10 years and the silver count would drop, as well as the wheat count too.

Wow I go to work and all hell breaks loose LOL. Chase, I didn't mean anything by saying what I said about returning the item. I would of course return any item I could verify proper ownership. But there is really not enough info there to satisfy me. I did Google (actually Bing) it, but I think I remember reading search engines give priority to most popular and not most accurate word search these days. So if someone posted they lost it, that would probably be on page 1000. It did not turn up any results for me when I searched it, but I did not spend a lot of time going deep into the pages. I have returned 2 nice rings but both were known losses and I was able to find them for the owners. As far as the booing part, I took it as a light hearted joke and not a serious jab at you. All is good I hope

Thanks everyone. My wife informed me that if that ring had actually fit her finger, it would be hers right now So far most of my rings have been small The Mercury dimes were in a constantly wet area. They develop this huge black crust all over them. We call them "cookies" around here. They continue to disintegrate from the inside out until there is nothing left of them. When you crack them open you can see the imprint of the coin design on the part that breaks off. Eventually they just degrade to nothing. Chase, if I put out a message showing that chain, I would have a hundred people a day telling me that those are their kids names . Unfortunately it would be hard to find the real owner. I finally gave up trying to return the half carat diamond ring I found that had a serial number on it. Zales said they do not keep track of those numbers....it is the buyers responsibility to contact the lab that engraved it. In other words they don't care, just buy another ring from them. Sad but true.

A couple of weeks ago during an extreme high tide, I put aside 2 days to hit two different beaches to see what I could get at low tide. Those visits are a good example of how not to plan your hunt rigidly. Both days I focused on the wrong thing and at the end of each hunt I found a patch that helped save the day. One of those days was an area that I re hit yesterday, some 2 weeks later. It produced 2 silver rings, silver earring an pendant all in the last hour of the hunt. Yesterday it was sanded in a bit more, so the targets were deeper, but focusing on a productive area rather than having a master plan, payed off. What I wasn't counting on was that every hole I dug was in an area that was packed with a sand and cobble stone mix! Solid as concrete. I use a pointed spade and the only way to dig was on your knees with raking the rocks out of the hole. I slept well that night I dug 134 holes trying to focus between the silver signals and possible gold signals. I abandoned the small gold which reads #1 on the Equinox because this beach has a lot of black rocks that also read a solid #1. Since digging was extremely hard, I opted to ignore most of them. So here are the results of an all day hunt. I remember a post about nickel ratios in parks vs gold, so I'm including my ratio. It is way off of what a park gets and what some other beaches get, but if you hit the right area, you can get these results. 20 nickels dug (including 1 silver war nickel) vs 3 pieces of gold. Most of those nickels dated early 60's and older. This is why beaches can not give you the expected ratio as this will not be repeatable every time out. It's beena little while since I hit gold and I was starting to give the equinox the old "stink eye" look. But it's back on my favorite list now The chain hit at #2, the ring at #8 and I think the stud at #3 or 4.

I want to get an XRF so bad but just can't justify the cost. The ones I've seen start at 15K and go up from there. I wanted to get one for my scrap metal business as it grows bigger. But secretly, I want it to test all my detecting finds