Compass

That's a sweet chunk of gold Jerry - your patience paid off - congrats!!

Thanks JCR, It was hard working in the surf but satisfying as well. Thank you VL, Yes, it was fun but controlling the 12" coil in the surf was a bit challenging. Thanks Hunterjunk, I am always after gold but happy with the nice silver too! Thank F350Plat, Great question. At one beach some signals were as deep as I could hear them. At another they were extremely shallow. Targets were few and far between for the most part. Even the trash was scarce out in the surf.

After not doing much detecting during the past few months I finally got back into it with 3 beach hunts this past week with my TDI BeachHunter. The first hunt produced 16 pieces of jewelry, a couple being silver, but no gold. The next hunt yielded 8 rings including a 10K white gold band and a silver "cardinal virtues" ring. On the last hunt I found 4 more rings including a very thin ring that tested as 14K but had no markings and a massive 18.3 gram .925 silver ring from Mexico. It's been a slow year for gold finds so far but the months of August-October have usually been good to me because of hurricane generated swells at the beach and my trips to a few local lakes. It feels great to get out of the heat and enjoy the coolness of a quiet beach in the dark early morning hours. The only downside is that once I get back to my car I discover that most of my finds are not as good as I originally thought they were. 😔 https://store.dailystoic.com/products/four-virtues-signet-ring

Thanks Skull diver! I only have the 11" stock coil and have been trying to decide between the M8 and M9 for a smaller coil and the M8 sounds more to my liking. Nice finds BTW. At least the bride and groom most likely never knew that they were duped.

My wife and I went to Bryce Canyon for the Ring-of-Fire eclipse last year and it was an amazing place to see it! For the total eclipse we are taking a cruise to view the event at sea. Hopefully, the weather cooperates!

Lots of great advice in the previous posts. Hard to advise someone if they should get into metal detecting or not. After advising many people over the years, some develop an almost fanatical passion for the hobby and some lose interest quickly. Most on this forum are more likely to be the true die-hard treasure hunters. There are different types of beach hunting - dry sand, wet sand, working in the surf, detecting on an ocean facing beach, wading in a back-bay location, snorkel detecting in shallow water and probably more. My comments are mostly geared toward wet sand and surf hunting where most of my finds are made. Something that I did not see mentioned was the dynamic nature of beach hunting. Yes, there are more and more detectorists out there and it is more competitive than ever. True, the beach gets replenished all the time but Mother Nature has a tendency to "swallow" up those targets and allows them to be found when she so desires. Most of the time they are covered by several feet of sand and out of reach of any metal detector. However, when the right conditions occur - usually a combination of tides, wave energy and wind, tons of sand can be moved putting targets within reach of metal detectors. Most of the public and probably many forum members here would not believe what is still possible to find at the beach in these current times. Last year I had several hunts with those ideal conditions and found dozens of pieces of gold jewelry and many old silver coins. During this past storm that raked the California coast I know one beach hunter who found 9 pieces of gold jewelry (I saw them right after he found them) one day and 14 the following day! Even he was shocked. I don't mean to imply that anyone can jump right into the hobby and expect these kinds of results but someone who has the right equipment, experience, stamina, patience, knowledge and determination can still achieve amazing things despite the competition. On the other hand it is possible for someone with a cheap detector to go to the beach and find a $20K diamond ring during their first hunt. You just never know!

My understanding is that my TDI Beach Hunter is essentially a TDI SL in a "waterproof" case. You might find more information if you seek out info on the Beach Hunter. I love my Beach Hunters and they have been my "go to" beach machines for the past 3 years during which time I have found around 100 pieces of gold jewelry with them. I don't know if you meant natural gold or gold jewelry but I don't know about nugget hunting with the SL. The SL/BH is pretty sensitive and I have found BB sized targets but it won't compete with designated gold machines. IMO it is one of the better detectors for use on black sand beaches where other detectors may struggle. It gets decent depth although I think other pulse detectors may have an edge in that area. The best thing that I like about the BH is the "ground balance" feature that can be used to separate high and low conductors. There are times at the beach in the wet sand when the heavy surf has washed away much of the lightweight trash leaving behind heavier targets in dense concentrations. In these conditions I will often set up the BH and only focus on digging the low conductor targets (high tones). It is a risky and debatable technique since you could miss silver, bigger gold targets (>10 grams) and higher karat gold but you won't wear yourself out digging clad when you are after gold. Besides, after you have found a few gold rings you could always start digging everything again. Some might say that you could do the same with a non-pulse detector with TID but heavy black sand usually makes TID wildly unreliable.

Finding the rest of that belt buckle is awesome - what a difference it makes when added to the original piece. Well done... again!

I think gold but regardless, that is an eye-catching ring. The settings look decent so maybe the stones are real??? Well done!

What a beauty - well done! Nice one to capture on video too.

It's always a bonus to get home and find out that your finds are better than you first thought. In this case, much better! Congrats!!!

"The early bird catches the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese" Nice cheese M!

Thanks Jerry, Good to see you as well. I went back to that spot where you first saw me and it was a waste of time so I returned and found the gold - lesson learned. I hope we get more target-rich hunts like that this winter. We were joking about all the dimes we were finding - I wound up with 97.

Simple, but my friend who was hunting in the same area found a silver Tiffany heart pendant that I think was on the keyring because I saw this listed on their website(see picture). It would have been sweet to find the whole thing but we both went home happy!

Thanks VL, Yes, I've been blessed to find some nice things recently and hoping that the winter storms continue to move some sand on our beaches. Thanks 350, I agree that it's great to "recycle" our finds when possible. My wife, daughter, sisters, aunt, nieces(7) and sisters-in-law(4) all have rings that I have found metal detecting. Personally, I wear a gold neck chain that I found in 2016 but have been trying to find an upgrade ever since. ?