NCtoad

Nice finds!   I never regret finding silver.  

That’s a double “hell yeah”!   Are you saying that those are new finds from a permission you’ve had for a long time or are those some finds from a while back?  Either way you still get the double hell yeah.  Lol

Once again, great finds!   That field is really producing. Oh, and that fifth pic down looks like a fertility ring!   Lol

8 grams of 14k deserves a “Hell Yeah”!   Congrats on the gold, silver ring and the merc, and on getting out, Jeff!

Any gold makes for a great hunt, especially when it’s totally unexpected.  Congrats Bob!

Congrats!!   A silver thimble is on my list.

I just detected a new permission today  that was nearly 5 acres with a large house and gardens.  About half of it was really annoying as the neighbor had one of those invisible dog fences right on the property line.  I tried different programs, lowering the sensitivity down to 80, and even single frequency (which seemed just slightly better), but nothing worked.  
Any ideas?

Congrats on those nice finds Bob!   I’m beginning to think the 9” coil is really the goldilocks size of coils.  I’m surprised other companies like minelab don’t offer a 9” stock coil.  

8 hours ago, Rick N. MI said:

They are both great detectors. If you have a concentric coil on your Mohave then there no sense in getting the Silver umax. If you want an extra detector for a backup it would be great to have.

Thanks and yes it has the stock 7” concentric coil.  Just was wondering if the SSumax had something special going on inside.  I know it’s 10khz verses 12 for the mojave, but I don’t see anything else that makes it all that much different or better.  

I have a mojave and have always been interested in the silver sabre micromax.  There’s a silver sabre with the brown 8” donut coil for sale on the friendly forum and was wondering if it has any advantages over the mojave. I’ve read about how good the SS umax is and it intrigues me enough to consider buying one. However, if it’s similar in performance to the mojave, I can’t see any justification in buying one. 

I’m almost embarrassed to post this after reading about Cal’s awesome token.  But I had already taken the closeup pics so here it is.  With the time change I have about 45 minutes max to hunt my nearby permission.  Got this one tonight in a spot where they have cleared more trees.  One more thing:  I have that bad habit of rubbing the dirt off to see the date.  You can see the fine scratches on the neck area.  I’m glad it wasn’t a 1916 D! Lol

Congrats on that awesome 18th century token!   I was just getting ready to post my latest find, a 1919 merc in very good shape, when I saw your post.  Compared to what you just found it’s like finding a zincoln!   Lol!

Dang Bob, you’ve earned a “Hell Yeah” for this hunt!!   Nice finds!

Nice finds CPT!   Do you know what that item in the middle of the second pic is?   It almost looks like it has a Rolls Royce insignia on it, but it looks like a lid from a jar.  

Nice finds Bob!   Maybe as winter gets here the weeds will die out enough around that barn to get a search coil in there.  With finding two silvers inside, there’s a good chance of finding more around the exterior perimeter.  

5 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

One thing I can see it as useful for is a backup. If you have the WSA II or + headphones, you can put the puck in a bag and swap it out rather quickly should your remote have a problem. Also if you have a second coil and shaft, which I am going to have soon, you have a full second detector.

What coil do you have now and which coil will you be buying?

I’ve never used the puck as the master.  I really like the remote and if XP had offered a package with the remote, WSAII headphones and no puck, I would have bought that.  I’m debating on selling the puck and buying the WSAII headphones or the WSAIIXL headphones.  For me the weight savings is pretty much negligible plus the remote feels much more ruggedly built.  
 

My other option that I might do is:  if XP offers a smaller elliptical coil, then I would keep the puck, buy one of the two headphones and another shaft for two different setups.  That would be much more expensive than my first option.  In fact I could probably pocket some $ by selling the puck and then buying the headphones.  
 

Am I missing anything here?

14 minutes ago, JCR said:

Well that is neat. I dug my first Barber Half this afternoon. Also 1901. No mint mark & very worn. Also a 1888 S  Liberty Seated Dime in Good condition, No date Buffalo Nickel & 2 No date Wheats. Our shovels match too!

Wow, that’s crazy!  The one I got has an O mint mark.  From what I could find out it’s a semi-key date.  I have yet to find a seated coin!

3 hours ago, strick said:

Nice work Toad. Ive only ever got one Barber Half and it was stained pretty good. The one you got there looks to be in great shape. Liking that car as well. I keep the old antique toy cars..the modern ones go in the trash or give to a kid if there is one near by. Is that a ring in the photo as well? 

strick 

Thanks Strick!  That thing that looks like a ring is (I think), a piece of an old odometer from a car or tractor.  

I was getting a little depressed as I’ve no new sites that are very promising for silver.  I took yesterday afternoon off and went detecting to a site that has produced well in the past two years.  In fact a couple of weeks ago I dug a 1922 half crown (50% silver) from this site.  Well yesterday didn’t turn out like I would have liked it to, but I did end up with a model T hubcap and a 1900 crusty V nickel.  

This morning I hit a small site where I’ve pulled a walker and a merc along with quite a few wheaties.  Today was a bust for silver, but I did get a wheat, a buff and a tiny old toy car which I thought was really cool.  

This afternoon I went to a permission I have that has produced well but is really starting to slow down.  In fact after about mid summer it was too grown up to hunt.  The owner is clearing the land to build a new house but no new work had been done until about a week ago I noticed some guys with a track hoe are clearing it again.  The weeds have been cut and a lot of the trees have been pulled out.  I did go out there after work Thursday and got a deep wheatie that was 9” down and gave a very nice signal in my modified sensitive program.  That gave some hope that maybe there’s still some silver that I missed.  So this afternoon I hit what used to be an old dirt road on the property and got another model T hubcap.  I meandered along and went to a part of a field that’s at the opposite corner of the property where the old house stood. I had been over this section several times before but there was a tree that had fallen that I couldn’t get under before.  Now the tree has been cut and moved so, well working my way back to the car, I detected the bare ground under where the tree trunk had laid.  All of a sudden I get a real nice high tone reading 96-97.  I thought for sure a silver quarter, but about 5-6” down out comes a 1901 O barber half dollar. The hole was where my shovel is in the pic.  My first ever barber half and my fourth silver half of the year all others being walkers.  

My depression suddenly disappeared and I ended the hunt on that happy note!

3 hours ago, abenson said:

 I’ve been reading some forums and watching some video on the Silver Slayer program for the XP Deus 2. Using notch seems to be the ticket to make the D2 perform well on coins in iron and modern trash. I had experienced a similar phenomenon while hunting for gold nuggets a few months back where I notched out iron on a site that was littered with nails. This resulted in me finding a .40 gram nugget. So, I got to thinking how would using notch work while detecting extremely trashy ghost town sites? Well, I tried it out this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised with the results. Those of you that hunt ghost towns know that it can be very challenging to pull good targets from all the trash. Not only are there hundreds of nails, you also have to deal with tin cans, bottle caps, stove parts, bolts, etc.

To help deal with all the trash I developed a program for the D2 I call GHOST, for ghost town hunting. It uses the same principles as the Silver Slayer program but at the same time is nothing like it. The GHOST program is set up to find tokens, nickels and IHP or higher coins. You can make adjustments to it to include Chinese cache coins and 3 cent silver if you like but my intent is to cherry pick the most common coins and tokens. I’m sure some of you will agree that you could spend hours in a small trashy area of a ghost town picking through the targets and analyzing every target with different programs to try and get everything possible. But not all of us have that kind of time so that’s where the GHOST program comes in. It’s meant to pull the best targets possible in the least amount of time.

Here is the way I have the D2 setup for the GHOST program. Based off the FAST program. Sensitivity 90, Audio response 4, Silencer 2, Bottle Cap reject 2, PWM audio, Reactivity 3, Notch 0-10, Disc can be setup for anything up to 10 but don’t go above whatever you have notched, 5 tones-first break will be whatever you have your disc set at, second break up to 58 232 Hz, third break 58-62 (or a little higher if you like) 750 or so Hz, fourth break 62-80 550 Hz, fifth break 80-99 901 Hz. In my video the Hz may vary and really you can use whatever Hz you want. The point is to make nickels and IHP/tokens stand out. Now the nickel range you can bump up a bit to 64 or 65 but I find most Jeffersons come in at those higher numbers and I’m really only interested in the Buffalos and older nickels.

Having the D2 setup like this really makes for a more enjoyable hunt experience in my opinion. Nails are totally illuminated. Bottle caps and flat tin can easily be ID’s through broken audio. Very little flat tin type targets give a good audio response unlike other setups I’ve used. Coins, tokens and other relics that fall in the target bins, give clean audio and visual responses. For those target s that fall in the bins you have at lower Hz settings, they can be analyzed individually to determine if you want to dig them.

So now for the proof. I went to 4 different ghost towns over this last weekend. One is on private property which the owner has allowed hunting on for decades. I have personally been there 30 or 40 times over the last 30 years. I’ve used the Equinox, ORX, Deus, Simplex, Racer 2, Explorer, Fisher CZ 6a. eTrac, etc. over those 30 years and never brought more than one coin/token per trip home. Until now. Day 1 we didn’t start hunting until 2 pm. First good signal in the 90-93 range, right next to a fallen down wooden shack with lots of nails around, up pops a 1944-D dime. Not as old as I would have expected but silver non the less. Second good high tone signal in an area littered with flat tin and nails turns out to be a 1902 barber dime.

Day 2 spent most of the morning exploring some other ghost towns in the area on 4 wheelers. Didn’t get the metal detectors out much because it’s BLM and you really should only be searching for minerals or newer relics. Sad because most of these towns have been used as party spots for decades, leaving beer cans and bottle caps littered everywhere. I did pick up a few newer pennies around some of the fire pits. About 3 pm we decided to go back to the private property and search until dark, giving me about 4 hours to find something.  Got a number of high tones in the 83-88 range that all turned out to be items such as aluminum caps, a thimble, drawer pull, harmonica reed plates, etc. But then I got one signal in the 90-93 range and out pops the oldest coin of the trip an 1853 seated dime. Keep hunting along and pulled a few targets that were in the nickel range that all turned out to be brass odds and ends. Then 1 hour before we were ready to leave as I was working my way back to the truck I got a signal right next to a piece of flat tin 95-97 range. But after removing the piece of tin I was still getting 95-97 and it turned out to be an 1894-S Quarter. Now you can say that nobody ever swung over those targets before or a host of other things. But me personally I think the D2 has something special going on when notch is used.

I did a video of the trip below. In the video I show all the audio and visual ID for the coins so you can get an idea of just how good notch works on the D2. Thanks everybody!

 

 

Abenson, you deserve a “Hell Yeah” for not only getting 4 silvers, but for getting them out of a site that you’ve pounded for years!   I agree that there’s some special mojo going on with the deus and notching.  Congrats!

My cheap and easy fix:  I removed the corresponding section opposite of the break and used two zip ties to hold it in place.  Very secure, even more so than when it was new.  

7 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Steve, I would readily pay $40 to $50 for a carbon fiber or other properly sturdy extension that attaches similar to the 3D printed versions that don’t hold up. I don’t need your beautiful shaft/arm cuff upgrade for what I do but I get tired of chasing my XP detectors down hills and over cliffs😀

thanks

Jeff

It almost seems as if XP designed those feet on the armcuff to attach an extension to.  It has those molded in nubs that these aftermarket stands are using to keep their extensions in place.  I’d sure like to hear an explanation from an XP rep as to why they made the stand so short.  Otherwise, I really like the stock shaft.  

2 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Mine broke months ago. Its was the one in the second photo. Nice idea……..wrong way to produce it. 

Thanks for posting this Jeff.  That’s the one I was going to get because the ears are wider and look stronger, but I’ll look for something else now.  

I bought one of those 3d printed aftermarket stands for my D2 a while back. Well, it broke last evening.  The little “ear” that clips over the too short deus stand broke off and now it won’t stay attached.  I’ll try to remember to post a pick when I get home from work.  I bought it off of ebay from a seller named manxkat5.  It doesn’t look like he’s selling them anymore. Here’s a pic from a different seller with the narrow ears like the one I had 

My question is:  has anyone else had one break and what, if anything, did you replace it with?   I don’t want to spend $15 on a part that’s going to break every 4 or 5 months.  Are there better options?  Here’s a link to one that has wider ears but it costs more:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175321515599?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=tjwVIf_yT8q&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=aM-gh_K9QNO&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I really liked the stand because it kept the detector from constantly falling over.  But, like I said above, I want one that’s not going to break so easily.  The ones in both pics above say they are printed in PETG for strength and durability.  I don’t know what the one I had was printed from.  Is PETG going to hold up?

Here’s a pic of mine: