Erik Oostra

i don't think this little patch has a patch on Phrunt's cointopia.. but i'll give him a good run for his roses.. 🌹 🌹

there's a gold rush happening up in Queensland as well.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-05/gold-rush-in-outback-queensland-as-prospectors-comb-cloncurry/12518732?fbclid=IwAR0ThohnSK_uXPVGZ9RRP8vGWAlfcEseLqbvpP6hox_yxxNAZenqamK4Hec

I'm exaggerating a bit of course but this little patch has yielded a few silver coins each time i search there.. this morning's haul..

back at my secret little patch.. just after a really high-tide, seems there could be a few more coins there..

I was wrong again.. it's another florin.. i'll get it right one day!

It's soaking in vinegar at moment.. i'll post a pic when it's nice and shiny..

Thanks Hunterjunk.. I went back to the patch yesterday morning, found a few more pennies and 6 & 3-pence.. I've yet to get off the beach itself and onto the grassy area that runs along side it.. i'll leave that until i find no more coins in this patch.. i'm sure there's more silver there and hopefully a sovereign.. i'm digging every faint bleep, even if there's no target ID number on the display.. there's very little metal rubbish on this beach compared to the others, so digging is usually rewarded..

thanks again for all your advice there Phrunt.. i'll keep those target IDs in mind when i go back there on Monday morning.. i'm gathering more info on what that bay looked like a hundred years ago and where the first buildings were.. finding out about the local history has been just as much fun as finding these old coins.. shame about the sovereign this time, i really thought i'd finally found one.. but i'll find one yet!

Talking to an old timer at the pub last night, it turns out that the little patch near the old boat ramp was the site of the island's first hostel.. he recons that in the old days this was one of the more popular bays.. funny how perceptions change as to what makes a nice bay.. these days only the locals walk along it and all the action is just down the road at Alma Bay.. i'll widen my search around this patch to include the actual site of the first hostel.. there's a sovereign somewhere there just waiting for me to find it..

Goldpick has worked it out.. it's not a half-sovereign, it's a silver shilling.. that'd nicely explains the very high target ID..

you're spot on Goldpick, it's a bit of a shame bit i'm still stoked with it.. that would also explain the high target ID.. I'll keep hunting for those sovereigns..

Sorry Geof, didn't mean to stand on anyone's toes.. your photo is very close to the patch.. very funny to see.. when was this photo taken? Did you have a detector with you? you were right again Phrunt, it's not a half-sovereign.. it's a silver shilling..

phew! that's a relief..

The gold half-sovereign got less and less gold looking the longer it soaked in the vinegar.. got a bad feeling i stuffed up, i should have left it as i found it.. this is what it could've looked like..

Australian pre-decimal coin patch along Geoffrey Bay on Magnetic Island So far I’ve been very lucky at finding ‘old’ pre-decimal Australian coins along the island’s bays (although I’m yet to find a gold sovereign).. most of them have been very corroded King George or Queen Elizabeth pennies (with a big kangaroo on the other side), half-pence, 6-pence or 3-pence and I’ve found one silver ‘ram’s head’ shilling.. This morning I found an awesome patch at Geoffrey Bay, a bay I rarely detect along because it always seemed an unlikely place to find anything worthwhile.. More fool me.. It’s a longish bay with a row of houses along it, and I drive past it on my way to detect at other bays where tourists and locals hang out.. But looking for somewhere different, this morning I decided to have a go near an old stone/concrete boat ramp.. Here I found a little patch with 2 silver florins (a King George and a Queen Elizabeth), 2 silver ‘ram’s head’ shillings (both King George), 4 half-pence (all King George), 5 pennies (including a 1919 King George penny without the kangaroo), some 3 and 6 pence and best of all a Queen Victoria gold half-sovereign.. It’s still soaking in vinegar but I can just make out the date: 1887.. The patch was remarkably clean (no bottle tops, ring pulls or other crap, including decimal coins) and nearly every time I dug a hole I recovered a coin.. A more modern find was a copper dog tag belonging to a dog called Nelson (it’s also got Nelson’s phone number on it).. If you’re wondering what I’m going on about with all this King George or Queen Elizabeth stuff, in my head I’m dating them according to when the queen was coronated in 1953, so in the real world probably not that old.. Decimal coins were first introduced in 1966.. From 1852 to 1931 all Australian gold coins were struck from solid 22ct gold.. Gold half-sovereigns were minted from 1871 to 1918, whilst sovereigns were minted until 1931.. Silver coins minted between 1910 and 1945 contain 92.5% sterling silver. From 1945 until 1966 silver coins contain 50% silver (both florins are after 1945 but one of the ram heads is before). I’m so used to seeing the queen on decimal coins that it always blows me away to also see her on all these Australian sovereigns, florins, shillings and pennies.. Both the silver florins, one of the ram’s heads, one of the half-pence and the 1919 penny are in good shape considering they’ve been on the beach for so long, especially the penny which is the shiniest of the lot.. these coins were buried about 40 to 50cm deep a few metres above the high-tide mark, all the other coins were very corroded (as is usually the case at the other bays). Sadly the Queen Victoria gold half-sovereign is a bit worse for wear.. it also didn’t help that I hit it with my steel shovel so the old girl’s got a great big gash to her head.. But in this little patch, Queen Victoria is the top dog in the family hierarchy.. so this coin makes the list of favourite finds.. if only because it’s always good to get that ‘first discovery’ sort of feeling when digging up this sort of coin, especially in a spot I drive past a hundred times a day.. After a long soak in vinegar and a hard scrub I can make out it’s a ‘Jubilee Head’ half-sovereign as opposed to a ‘Young Head’ half-sovereign.. these coins sell for a small fortune in top condition, but I won’t be selling this one any day soon.. Just a quick technical question: I’m using an Equinox 600 on Beach mode 1, and the gold half-sovereign read a solid 26 on the target ID.. Why is it not reading 1,2 or 3 as you’d expect for gold? Is this because of purity? Where 24ct would get very low reading? Thanks to anyone who can help me out on this question, it’s been bugging me..

$36.40.. plus 1 x 'old' 2 cent and 4 x 'old' 1 cents.. also an Euro and a NZ $1.. but best of all, there was a photographer shooting 5 topless girls in the early morning light (i thought i'd be the only one there, so did they).. needless to say i dropped the detector straight away and watched the show for a while.. i didn't take any photos of the girls but when i got back i did get one of the coins (sorry about that)..

G'day Steve, would the QEDs meet your criteria? I've been looking for a cheap but reliable PI detector since I've moved further afield from Magnetic Island.. for the past month I've been looking in the catchments of the Closhey River, Barron River, Musgrave River and Davies Creek in Northern Queensland.. I based my searches on the location of known gold mines.. I'm ready to make the big leap from my Equinox 600 and Chinese Gold Bug Pro, both of which indicated gold in one small patch along the Barron River (the Nox consistently read 01 to 02 and the GBP 39-40-41).. my son panned the soil that i dug up (we couldn't see anything by eye) and he got two tiny little flakes.. I don't have any photos to prove this, you only have my word.. the truth is that we lost the bloody things on the way back.. we didn't have anything to put such little pieces in so he knotted them in the corner of his shirt.. I changed his mind about this halfway back down the river and told him to carry them in his mouth.. in the confusion he lost the only pieces of gold I've had a hand in finding.. but at least now we know where to take a PI detector.. Anyway back to the point, I've heard quite a bit about how good QED detectors are on hot ground, which all these river catchments were.. Are they as widely used in the USA? Can you form an opinion about these detectors one way or another? Thanks for your advice..

My 100th post on Steve’s forum! Thanks a million Steve for all your love and support! Thank you to all other forum members (too many to mention by name, even if I knew it) for helping me celebrate this humongous occasion! ‘Dig deep then dig deeper’ Yours truly, Erik..

Crikey! just finished reading all the above reaction to this Equinox update and what Minelab is really up to.. Here's my conspiracy theory: In this update Minelab didn't change a thing! When you watched your detector getting uploaded with the latest and greatest nothing was happening! Minelab is merely gauging the market to see if this sort of feature is popular, or what other frequencies folks are yapping about.. they do this by monitoring forums like this one.. they are looking for fools like me who say great things about non-existent updates (see above post).. it's all a great big placebo effect! (my Foxy Noxy really did work better, i swear).. with the information Minelab harvests from forums it's better able to judge how to market future detectors, without having to change a single thing on its current models! Well there's my two bob's worth..

Thank you for this GKman, I've installed this great update on my Foxy Noxy (600) and it seemed a fair bit stabler on the beach this morning.. i know it might be an odd coincidence but i was also digging deeper than usual.. where did you come across this update? it's not on the Minelab site..

When the coronavirus reached Queensland, Magnetic Island decided to go cashless. Cards only! This has led to a sharp drop in the amount of coins recovered, a severe enough situation to take a serious hit on my weekly beer money.. I’m not the only one complaining, other beach hunters on the island are in similar strife.. The virus outbreak has been a double whammy for us; not only are there no more coins to be found, there’s also no more tourists who could otherwise be counted on to lose their jewellery in the sea.. Are we the only ones suffering from this dreadful dilemma? Or are the rest of you in as much grief as we are? Having said this, there has been a bit of a silver lining.. I’ve been forced to get creative and am now hitting the island’s historical sites.. So far I’ve found a few more old pennies and shillings at the old school (a wooden structure with a palm thatched roof first established in the late 1800s).. I’ve also been back in the hills with Foxy Noxy and its new 6’’ coil to go over the old gold diggings.. No luck yet but I’m ever hopeful, getting a better feel for the island’s geology and how it all fits in with where the gold diggings are situated.. I’m casting my net a lot wider to include obvious creek catchments and the surrounding hills..

I fully agree but I was also a bit surprised by how the general public can view our community.. although i've had a few encounters with people who saw me as a 'scab' (someone preying on the misfortunes of others).. I also didn't realise that in England these 'bad apples' had a name: Night Hawkers.. does sound pretty exotic..

This caught my attention.. didn't know it was as bad as all that.. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jun/02/theres-a-romanticism-about-nighthawking-but-its-theft-when-metal-detectorists-go-rogue