schoolofhardNox

William Wood was authorized by King George to mint farthings and half pence for shipment to Ireland, hence them being called Wood's Hibernia. I'm thinking it is one of those, but I am having difficulty with the reverse design, possibly not matching up. Hopefully someone that collects colonial coinage can get you a better ID on it.

1st copper looks like a 1723 George I Woods Hibernia Half Penny, the other one looks like a George II Hibernia. Nice early site you have there. Should be some Spanish silver there as well. I would dig every non ferrous signal there.

Thanks. Can't hit the silver every time, but usually when you hit an area that has consistent depth for coins, you will get multiple silvers if the area is old enough. When almost every copper cent is a wheat, silver is almost guaranteed to show up. Yeah the deep holes are no fun, especially if you start the hole off target. Come on with the 10 month wrap up 👍. You won't look bad. In the end it's the fun and thrill of the hunt. I bet it's tough up there as winter sets in. Here, I can always go to the south shores and hunt the beaches and even the grass if it's a sunny day. But soon enough it will be beaches only. The good news is that the crowds disappear when the temp drops below 40. You think I dig big holes now? Wait until the beach is empty 😆 Thanks Joe. I don't have much choice but to dig deep. The guys that hunt around here are pretty thorough at hitting all the good targets that they can reach. If you happen to hit the beach right after a good storm, you can dig some shallow gold. But wait a day, and the gang of detectorists have plundered all the gold 🙄. Better late than never has no meaning here 😄. Looking forward to getting reacquainted with the AQ. Unfortunately (but also fortunately😄), that is where the good stuff lies. At this beach, I can't even reach the next layer where the 1920's coins (and gold) should sit. It would take a hell of a storm to expose that layer. But I think it would be very exciting to be digging seated, barbers V's and of course, early gold rings. Believe it or not, you get used to the big coil after the shock of using it the first couple of times. Plus I just repeat to my self..... you want to post a bunch of zincolns or do you want some silver? 🤔

Thanks. 40's/50's seems to be the most popular era I can reach. Deeper is the original 20's/30's layer, yet to be exposed. As for the AQ, if I can get the USPS to do what they are supposed to do, I should have it in about a week or two.

Beach hunt # 11 was back at the silver beach. It started out with a shallow (6”) Buffalo nickel that might have been tossed on shore from the most recent storm. That’s a great sign that there was some nice sand movement in the shallow water. But soon after that it was slow going in the hot spot area, so I ventured past it and entered another area of interest. That area was recently bulldozed upwards to keep sand from washing away during the winter months. I hit it before, and it didn’t give up much. But the recent storm must have pulled just enough sand to give me some nice silver, as well as some really deep spoons and a chunk of sheet lead. Both the square lead and the biggest spoon was at 24” I am still using the 17 x 21 SEF Butterfly coil on the GPX. It hits the deeper quarters better and for the real deep bigger items, it has a sort of elongated ghostly sound. Hard to pinpoint the deep ones, so my holes get even wider. Most of the copper cents were wheats, some in the 20’s and 30’s. Even the Jefferson nickels were early dates ranging in the 30’s -50’s. I’ve had some luck in this area before, so I knew it had silver, but I’m not usually able to reach it. An enjoyable day hunting one of my favorite, more local beaches.

Yeah the 17x21" coil is also grabby even when dry. I agree, get some wave action on it and then hit the dry sand and you are in real big trouble 😄. It's like swinging the weight of 2 GPX's. I am pleasantly surprised that it does give me some extra depth, but also hits harder on larger coins at medium to maximum depth. It also hits big iron at some unnecessary depths 😠. Not the most fun coil to use, but well worth it when you need a bit more. Thanks. When you are having a beggar's day, you start looking at bling like it's real 😄. I'm not complaining because without it, how could I justify a 4 hour round trip 😆

Wow tons of stuff. Nice hunt. So did you like hunting by tones?

When the top of the soil dries out, but deeper in the soil is still wet, I find that to be the best time for getting deep stuff. Too much surface moisture (for me) has never been a good thing. I'm hoping it's good for you in that buckle area.

Congrats on the old buckle pieces. I love looking at the 17th century stuff. Hope you can find and focus in on a hotspot. I never pay much attention to someone else hitting the spot before me. Unless he shows you coppers and Spanish by the boatload 😲😲😲, then and only then would I worry 😄. It actually makes me focus and want to find something he missed. 🧐

That's an odd looking ring. Nice find. I almost want to make it into a tiny watch 😄

Nice tokens and relics. Just a note on the alien probe.... I usually ask them if the probe can be a Garrett and not some cheap China junk 😅 Must be kinda scary to be out there and have your vehicle die on you. Of all places 🙄

I'm 50/50 on watching his videos. He gets the entertainment part of You Tube, and he is bearable when he sticks to detecting. Some of his informational views on detecting don't align with how I hunt. I usually lose interest when these guys and girls start traveling the world. Being an Ambassador for XP is probably good for XP. It won't sway my opinions of them, as the are (in my opinion) the most influential and direct competition to Minelab. Merrill is only my choice from my second batch (tier) of detecting videos, when I'm bored. I watch him only when I can't find a new video from DetectorComparison or the Hoover Boys. He's in the category with Stealth Diggers, Dig that Beep, Detecting America, etc...) Not bad, but not my first choice in viewing. In my eyes, XP doesn't even need anyone to push them. They make a fine machine and if you watch a lot of videos, the Deus II is replacing a lot of previous Minelab machines. Now they are using a Deus. Kind of like Minelab did to Garrett when they started to take over the detector of choice in videos.

No GPZ for me, unless I want to be single again 😄 I do poke at the 6000 and I'm not knocking it's ability to find small gold (and more). For finding small targets (like the tiny brass beads I was looking for) it smoked my 5000. For me the problem always has been the labeling of the machine as a GPX in the first place. I would imagine that boosted sales a bit, but in reality in isn't anything like my 5000. I bought it thinking it was the next in line and would be better than the previous version, but for what I usually use the GPX for (beach and relic hunting), it is not better. So it sits on one end until someone else is unhappy with their 7000 and mails it to me. 😆 Bookends are better in pairs.

I've had to use electronic contact cleaner on my potentiometers and switches. I never seen those little switch covers. Talk about durable, at one time I could hardly turn the potentiometer to change timings 😬 Sprayed it well and it works fine now. I think I'm going on about at least 4 or 5 years of hunting beaches with the 5000 and it's like a tank. I would buy one of the X coils if it gets me more depth than the DD coils do. Cautiously optimistic to see what happens.

If they are getting ready to sell, and they sell to another investment company, then not much will change. The only way to recover from the spiral is to go back to being a private company. It's being done more and more these days. If technology is at another slowdown or hitting its limits, then we won't be getting much of an improvement in consecutive models. Like others have said, just a new paint job and a tweak here or there. Minelab limiting you to their coils, or having us wait until they decide to license coil production to another company, is another reason to be dissatisfied with them. They can do these things (along with price hikes) for a while and spin the investor reports, but eventually it slows down enough to be a problem for them. What they should be doing is making sure customers have durable and stable operating machines so that they can come on forums, You Tube, etc and show how wonderful and productive these machines are. But if people are talking about price increases during harder times, coil ears breaking, speakers not working.... then the mood to by Minelab's products is taking over the gains they made from the Equinox coming out and making old places new again.

Those silvers ran so fast when they saw that monster coil. I was picking up radio stations from Moscow 😆 The elbow and some other parts were sore for sure. Funny how different beaches are from each other. The silver beach has extreme EMI, while those 2 beaches have low/moderate EMI. It was quieter on the severe EMI beach. Must be the type of EMI is different.

This is a classic sign of a company that is slowly spiraling downwards. When you concentrate on profit first, and making a great product at a reasonable price 2nd (or not at all), you will eventually turn more and more people away from your brand. Shareholder pressure to continuously make more money can kill any company, no matter how big or small. I don't think there are enough customers that will pay the extra price without at least giving Garrett and other manufacturers a serious look. My next purchase will be a Deus II.

Looking forward to hearing about the black sand beach and also the EMI capabilities when you have a chance to put it to the test. Thanks for doing that Simon. The 6000 for me is uninteresting, no matter who makes a new coil for it 😄. I now use it to prop up all my other detectors. Makes a great book end🤔

Beach hunt # 10 was a bust. 😭 (cry baby 😄). I was going to return to the silver beach, but I figured it was done, so I tried 2 different beaches. Never do that !!! 😞. Neither beach was kind to me, but time is short when the sun goes down fast, so traveling 30 minutes to a third beach just didn’t seem worth it. These beaches really need to be torn up a bit from a good nor’easter. Come on nature, take some sand away …. please? It didn’t help that I wanted to try that 17x21 SEF coil out at a new beach. That coil is really not meant to travel back and forth across a long beach. With that snowshoe, you park your butt in a small section and crawl around slowly. Oh well at least that coil is getting some use considering I have probably only used it a handful of times since I bought it. So, lots of junk, some clad and not one silver piece. Better luck next time. Still fun to get out and hunt.

I second Skull Diver's advice to put a magnet across it. Hopefully it does not stick. But if it does you will have your answer right there .

1/8" headphone jack. That will be the first thing to break 😄 Yeah, that shovel scares me too. I can just see the NO DETECTING signs going up everywhere 😔

Right now I'm not a Manticore fan 🙄 I think my coil is degrading, since I've lost a lot of depth on targets. It's been getting killed by a couple of Deus 2's on a project I am on. If it wasn't for the good old days of Minelab 5000 technology, I would be without a quality machine to hunt with. I've tried single frequencies, reduced sensitivity, increased sensitivity multiple programs, did a reset etc.... it all leads to the same thing. It's definitely not the same Manticore I had when it was new. So right now it doesn't compare to the GPX at all 😆 I guess I'm just tired of the Minelab quality control. And yes I know you can send it in.... that's not the point. It will sit in the closet until a non Minelab coil is produced. So maybe someone with the 5000 and the Manticore can compare the two and see how it stacks up. All I can say is thank God I have a backup 5000 to my 5000.

Hey Tony, I run the 5000 with the disc set at 5 for no apparent reason 😄 Most of the iron is out of the range of the discriminator with the exception of the bottle caps. But the main reason I dig everything and pick up some surface bottle caps is because they mask the layer I need to get to. 10" to 16" is the usual range for the silver I am after. Mostly the targets I want are a soft whisper or just sounds like ground noise. I usually have to clear an area of the junk targets most hunters leave, so that I can re-scan the area later and get the deep stuff. The other reason is that I'm getting older now, and I'm a firm believer in the "use it or lose it" mentality. I get my exercise by digging a lot of holes. I usually don't eat for before and during the hunt, so I get a mini fast in. It works for me and even though it is tiring, it builds my stamina. I did that hunt and today did 8 hours digging for an archaeology project I work on. 2 days is enough to make me hate detecting until next week 😆

Thanks. Never a dull moment when you find an area that is close enough to get some deep targets. I'm constantly amazed at how many coins are still buried deep. Every once in a while you have access to some of them. I've hit this area many times and always get silver (and Buffalos) for some reason 🤔 Yeah 16 is mostly the limit. Anything beyond that is just plain luck that what you heard was actually a target. At those depths it's mostly ground noise or just EMI tricking you. But sometimes you get lucky. I don't get those depth in fields that's for sure 😄 I tried rubbing them right away so that they wouldn't turn as black. All it did was expose how terrible they look and I added some more scratches to them 🙄

Beach hunt # 9 is a return trip to the same beach that I did last week. This was going to be a scouring and expanding hunt of the small area (approx. 30’ x 20’). I also wanted to try out some larger coils I have and opted to take the Detech 15” Spiral coil, the 17x21” Detech SEF coil and maybe the Coiltek 14” Anti-interference coil, if there was any time left. I left the Detech 18” DD coil at home, figuring it probably would not add anything to the test. I started by using the 12 ½ inch coil I had on the machine and went straight to another section of the beach where I have never been able to get any deep coins. It is far more sanded in than the area where I found the silver from my last visit. No luck there, so I switched to the 15” spiral coil and went back to the silver patch. I remember it feeling heavy and it is. 😄 Worked about 2 hours in the patch and did not hit any silver. Did get a Buffalo and a Wheat, so it did pick up some missed coins. Then the 17x21” coil came on. Each of these coils ran in the cancel mode as this is the beach with the Accela / Amtrac train that is just about right on the beach. The 15” coil was the noisiest coil, even in cancel but only when the trains were actually passing by you. The 17x21 handled that better. Both coils ran relatively quietly when the tracks were powered down a bit. I was glad that such large coils were usable with the heavy EMI. Depth was solely dependent on the level of EMI that they were exposed to. I ran the 17x21 coil for about 4 hours. I also expanded the hunt length and width wise. These coins were not easy to get at, and most were at the 16” mark. One Mercury dime was a surprise, since I thought I was going to be digging some ground noise, but it ended up being silver. 🥰 The large coils were harder to pinpoint since cancel mode shifts the pinpoint from center to the left side of the coil. Also, it was hard to find the target with that 17x21. Took a bit of time for me to figure out what part of the coil I should use as a guide. Fun times. All in all, I did better that I thought I would do, but swinging them coils is way harder than the 12 ½” coil I am used to. I’m done at this beach and if I get out next week, I’ll be looking at trying a new beach.