schoolofhardNox

Didn't do the magnet on it, but the rust tells it all. It was found with two other wheats, so I'm assuming that it is a steel cent. If found alone, I would just think it's junk. It's in the picture with the clad coins in the copper cent row, at the end. That rusty glob is it 🙄 Too rusted to get any details on it. You may find one by accident if it is in a pocket spill of other coins. I have found a couple that way in the parks.

I was able to try a TDI SL for a couple of land hunts, and it is a good machine. Never tried the Beach Hunter version. The problem with a new to me machine is that it would take a while to get the best settings to equal or surpass the depth I am getting on the GPX. I can regularly (consistently) hit coins at 15" with a nice solid (but faint) sweet sound. I can vaguely hit coins to 20" on occasion. The more EMI in the area, the shallower those numbers become. The beaches took a good hit from those storms, but if you are finding that zinc at a foot, you are in an area that is filling back up with sand. That is the problem I am running into the last two hunts, hence why my silver count dropped and my zinc count rose. Tell me more old wise one.😯 Where can I get some of those? Eventually I will have the unit so watertight that it will weigh 10 lbs 😄

Today's beach hunt was at a different beach. This beach is small and has incredible EMI from the (dual track) electrified train rails. I can only hunt when they un-energize the tracks, usually for about 20 minutes. Then they re-energize the tracks and I have to wait , sometimes 30 minutes. But there are deep silvers to be had, so today it was all GPX territory. Only 3 silvers, but one was a worn 1903 Barber quarter. The usual clad, some copper pennies and possibly a steel cent in the mix too. Anytime I get silver is a good hunt. But now back to work until next week's hunt.

Oops sorry. I forgot that not everyone beach hunts. Most times the silver coins come out a gray color. But every once in a while they are brown like clad coins come out. Usually my pictures will keep the lesser value coins together. This includes clad coins, copper and zinc pennies and any older non silver coins like Buffalo, Indian, etc.. I then post all my silver coins and silver jewelry/relics in one shot. Gold is rare and always in it's own picture. Total silver count for that beach in 3 visits was 57 coins and the chain, medal and spoon. I do not clean them yet, but will eventually after doing some more reading on how to do it. That gray corrosion hides a lot of blemishes in the surface. Sometimes it's better to leave it than to see what's behind that mask

I returned to that same beach again for what was going to be a decent low tide. I must admit I was kind of tired that morning and it showed in my not so smart strategy. Basically I used the wrong detector, with the wrong coil, during the wrong part of the tide recession. That's it in a nut shell😆 The beach was starting to sand in and my use of a 14" coil for the GPX on a very wet, black sand area, littered with iron was a bad choice. I should have let the sand dry a bit and used the 5x10" coil. Also used the Equinox with the sand too saturated (11" coil), and it performed marginally. For my area, it is better to let the surface of the sand dry a bit and let the saturated part be below and not surface, for the coil to see. All of the silver was found in the dry sand with the GPX early on. Also by shifting to a lower area, you can see the ratio of zinc to copper pennies was way different than the other two hunts. So even after 50 years of detecting, I am still able to make some rookie mistakes 🙄 But I did get a great silver spoon at 20". It was a ghost signal that I chased and it ended up being that spoon. I think it reads-1HAS.W.Kennard&Co 925. I'm heading out to another beach tomorrow to see what it holds. I need to give that beach a rest for a bit. The fun continues.........

I wish I lived close to that area. I would be in those hills wandering and detecting. Eventually I would stumble onto something😄 Great pictures!

Thanks Steve. I can almost understand why there are not many people posting a GPX on the beach. Mostly due to the damage that the salt and water can do to an expensive machine. I have already had to spray the potentiometers to un-seize them and my on/off switch is acting like it got some sand in there. It will need replacing soon. They way I hunt, I'm surprised it lasted this long.😄 I'm sure the PC boards are taking a hit as well. Or........ maybe no one wants to let people know how well it works on the beach🤐 After seeing Phrunt's coin hunting adventure, I think I am going to borrow his way of posting subsequent hunts on one post for my beach hunts. So here it is - the return to that beach. A decent amount of silver, not much clad (that's good) and the copper penny to zinc penny ratio is still high at 54:3. Also the usual boatload of iron which is my punishment for digging all those silvers. After all the world loves to be balanced.😉

Two of my favorite designs for dimes. Love finding Barbers and Seated. Mercs are nice, but those two scream older!!! Nice hunt!

Thanks. That's just the good stuff 😊 I dug a lot of iron. Nails and big iron. No bobby pins because the ocean cleansed them out to sea for me. No aluminum either. Only the deeper, heavy stuff remained. That's why the high coin count. Mostly only coins and iron. That is a dream scenario for a GPX. Deep coins, and not a lot of non ferrous junk.

Me too, but not that many 😄 They do sound fairly good and some can be pretty deep. 108 coins is a lot of digging. It never feels like you get that many coins until you get home and start counting them. Then you realize how many targets you actually dug that day.

Oh, I should have said it was for the GPX 😄 I have a beach that the train is about 20 feet from the top of the beach. EMI like you have never seen. When those tracks are energized, no machine can operate there. You can use quiet modes or on the Equinox you can use 20K or 40 K, but depth is reduced significantly. I was just wondering if covering the top of a coil would hinder the signal emitted from it in any way?

Thanks. It had me going for a while. It's very thin and the part of the Emu(?) looked like a wing when viewed sideways. It was very dull until I cleaned it up a bit. I thought I had found an early US half dime (Flowing hair or Bust style). Those are extremely rare to find. But it was not to be 🙁 These beaches were very popular after WWII, so I'm thinking a soldier may have brought it back. I can't wait for next week to get back there and see what is left.

After finding a decent amount of silver on my favorite beach the other day, I had to get out there again. A storm had just passed and I wanted to see if the silver continued in my new area. I had a lot of competition, with 8 other detectorists. But they were all hitting an exposed area like piranhas 😄. I was alone in my area. I used the GPX for this section because I needed the extra depth. I wasn't expecting this good of a day. A total of 34 silver coins, a silver chain, a silver religious medal and a nice 14K gold and ice? cross. I can never seem to get a good shot of anything that sparkles with my waterproof camera. 137 coins for the day. My copper to zinc penny ratio was threw the roof at 62 copper to 2 zinc. That is what a good storm does for you 😊 I won't be able to get back until next week, but I'm hoping I can start where I left off. Fingers crossed.

So...... could you wrap the control box in anti- EMI cloth to cut out the interference?? How about the coil? Would some form of cover on the top of the coil (not the bottom obviously) work as well, or would it cause chaos with the signal sent into the ground. I would love to shield my whole machine in some way.

Well I made it to the coast on Friday on the last day of the storms in my area. Winds were 22 MPH and the waves were huge. How those guys could para surf is beyond me. I found a fair amount of very green clad and wheat pennies. Got one Buffalo nickel too. I was not able to get to the low part of the beach since the low tide was not very low, and the surges were very unpredictable. I used the Equinox exclusively and got hammer many times by those rouge waves 😄 The GPX stayed dry in the car! Even though I know the gold was out of range, I still got a decent amount of silver and an earring that may have a gold post, if you can count that as gold 🤔 Was a fun day out and I made sure I had glasses on all day. I did not need my eyeballs dried out and sand blasted.

I'm not an expert on the GPX but I'm guessing 4 feet would be a challenge. I would say it would depend on how hot your soil is and what timings would be possible to use in that ground. The timings are everything for my deep silver coin hunting and I can fairly, regularly find an American silver dime up to 18 inches (45.72 CM). If you could use the deepest timings then maybe. I'm thinking the gold guys may have a more refined answer for you. Just my two cents on depth in my type of hunting. EMI would play a huge part in it too. You would have to have almost no warble from EMI, otherwise that faint signal would be buried in the warble

Thanks for the chance of winning some nice gifts. Congrats to the winners.

Very nice of you to do this. Please include me in.

You're not going cheap on us with the lower model are you Steve? How could you resist that "new high tech bionic computer Main Chip" for just $200.00 more??? Minelab is safe 😄

I came here because I was sick of the drama on other forums. I also hated the "experts" there, that had to convince you they were always right. In reality, this site is my last hope of online group discussion. If it ever goes bad, I will not be on any other metal detecting sites. Life is only fun when it's fun. When it becomes a chore, I move on. Thanks Steve for not letting it degrade like others have.

Everything you are finding is exactly what I have found at my favorite picnic site. I really think you are close to areas that have more finds. In my site, I knew I was at the better part of the area when I started to find Barber coin spills. One of the best areas was between two big hills, kind of a wide gully of sorts. Keep an eye out for areas like that. I hope to see more from that place. Good luck there.

I will probably never own a GPZ, but do own the GPX. My perspective on this, however unimportant, is that Minelab ignoring its customers only deepens the riff. I can not believe they can not make a coil work within 6-8 months. I think it's all management that is the issue. It's rarely the engineering side. Whatever the reason, they do not technically owe anyone an answer. However, we do not owe them our loyalty either. Loyalty is earned by trust. Right now I wish that the next generation of PI detectors would be released by Minelab and Fisher. Then I could choose who I trust more to get my money.

Your are in an area that was lightly used for picnicking. If you continue inward more, you may stumble onto the main area that everyone used. Look for semi private areas that have nice raised pieces of land. Expect seated to pop up. Also dig targets that are semi good. There are hat pins that have some steel attached that may ring up funny, along with other mixed metal items. I've found some bottles too in areas like that on the down slopes.

I agree. I hunt the Connecticut and Rhode Island beaches when I can. I live in western MA so it's a bit of a trip for me. Always 4 or 5 people on the beach. When it's sanded in you have to get creative or you will go home empty. That's where technology rules. If it wasn't for my GPX for the deep stuff, I would be looking for small gold with the Equinox on the sanded in beaches. One of these days I'm going to try them NH beaches just to see if I can pull anything out. The guys and girls up there are good at what they do.

Me too! Or at least waterproof my GPX ?