Glenn in CO

Nice gold specimens, thanks for sharing!

Our thankful nugget is not the many gold wire and leaf specimens I and my wife have recovered over 30+ summers here in Colorado but being able to experience all the good and bad times we spent detecting those prize specimens. The memories and stories that we are able share make it seem just as exciting and satisfying as the day we found them. Here is a recent wire gold specimen I finished cleaning and mother nature was sure in rare form we she created this one:

WOW! What a bucket lister😲

Really good video from Gary Blackwell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g8yNa0oQFs&ab_channel=xpmetaldetectors

Glad you had a great time, detecting a site like this can discourage a lot of people because amount of trash. I think all of us are still learning something every time we are out detecting, at least me anyway. I think the more hours we put on these detectors, great finds will come our way.

Outstanding finds👍, hopefully you can come back sooner rather than later to hunt that area again.

Thanks for the compliment. The tokens are aluminum, I found the same tokens more than a decade ago at this site that were in better shape, I didn't find a 25 cent one this time which would made a complete set. The miner's tag is iron and I eyeballed that tag, since it had a number on it I couldn't leave it there to eventually rust away. Digging a lot of large sounding targets on these last two outings hoping there might be a railroad lock or some other unique item. Anyway it's great to see this site come alive again.

Thanks F350 and Againstmywill for the information. I sure needed Saint Benedict (catholic medal of exorcism against evil) help that day because that was evil and brutal.👿

I soak the items in hydrogen perxiode to remove most of the dirt that were in the first set of photos. Then I used Andre' pencils on the items shown in the second set of photos with the exception of the Barber dime. The Andre pencils do a great job on cleaning corrosion on items such as copper, brass and aluminum. The area that is available to hunt is very large in size, I measured it on Google Earth and it is a 1/3 of a mile wide and 3/4 mile long. The area where the houses, stores, school and mine buildings are located measures about 1000 ft wide and 2400 ft long. We were very surprised on the amount of non-ferrous targets that were still in ground, maybe being masked by the large amount of iron on top and below the surface.

I'm using two different fast mode programs, one with pitch and one with 5 tones. Using different notch setting, along with different bottlecap and silencer settings to tame the iron that these sites have. Still experimenting with the settings, trying to find a custom program that will be my go to program for these type of sites.

At a recent club meeting a couple of friends and I discussed hunting an old coal mining camp again that we had hunted a couple weeks prior. We had some success on the first visit to this site, but I wanted to see if some adjustments to some programs that I made on my XP Deus II would yield some better results. All of us are using the XP Deus II since this spring and have used them on club outings and on our own outings to sites that are loaded with cans, nails and ferrous Items that make detecting these sites tough and frustrating. I and many other people have detected this site many times before more than a decade ago, so it became one those so called “pounded sites” as finds had greatly diminished over time. The day started with breakfast at a local café that resulted in talking with some old timers that lived and knew about some of the coal mining camps in the area that resulted in some information on potential hunt sites in the future. We then headed off to the site and then split up with me starting on the far end of the site and the other two on the other end. This site has an abundance of cholla cactus, so it makes detecting interesting at times, but the wind was blowing steady that day at 30 mph with gusts of 60+ mph that made even more of a challenge. This coal mining camp was in existence from 1898 to 1935, so there is a wide range of ferrous and non-ferrous finds from that period to be found. I came away with a 1912 D Barber Dime, 1890 Indian cent, religious medallion, thimble, some buttons, miner’s ID tag, two 5 cent and one 10 cent tokens, a cuff link. Also found was what I thought was a coin because of the reeded edge, was a wheel that turns the wick for an oil lamp (stamped Kosmos-Brenner) and a small brass case for matches or toothpicks? The tokens are not from this coal mining camp. Wonder what the letters mean on the reverse side of the religious medallion? Some of the junk found.

Gary Blackwell has a new video on the new 13 inch coil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vVI5by5apc&ab_channel=Themetaldetectingskillschool

Chuck, I sent a email to Steve Moore requesting the same, hopefully some other forum members will help out.

Hey Steve, is there a chance you might attend the Garrett Memorial Hunt in April?