Tom_in_CA

Great photography.

Nice job. A silver dime at 10" deep, with a fair enough TID to cause you to suspect it, is good turf depth !

sweet !

GB-Amateur, I agree that numb-nuts like this don't help our cause. But on the other hand : I assure you that purist archie types will hate md'rs NO MATTER HOW SQUEAKY CLEAN we are. To simply be seen detecting by purist archies (even at entirely legal spots), will cause them to have kittens. They do not think that ANY private sector digging , for old cool things, is appropriate ANYWHERE.

The soil was very kind to that IH. Nice job.

Thanx PimentoUK . Now I understand.

Persons in England and Europe detect "Stone Age sites" all the time. It's just that *some* are sensitive protected historical sites, and others aren't. And I got a chuckle out of the idea that he'd just be getting tourist junk anyhow. Haha. Because, yes : There's lots of tourists that visit this particular site, right ? Hence bottle caps & pulltabs. But if you talk to the hardcore guys that hit the farmer's fields of England and Europe (where stone age to Roman era villas once stood) they will tell you that they can some times go ALL DAY and not find any modern object Ie.: no pulltabs or bottle caps or modern coins. Thus , yes, this guy is a Rookie for his ability to choose which sites to hit ! 🤣

Wait, hold on ........ Am I understanding this correctly ? He "posted on-line" ? (I presume show & tell ?). Ok, then pray-tell, did he put "found at Stonehenge " ? WTF ? 🤪

This is how us guys did, back in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, when discriminators were new, and motion disc. was new: We were SO happy to FINALLY be able to reject foil and tabs, that we did JUST THAT . Doh ! Oh sure : Kiss gold rings and nickels goodbye. 🙄 Sure. But it was fun to get silver coins, at a time when silver melt value was reaching all-time highs back then. And sure, we had enough brains to lower our disc. control setting for the beach. But for junky inner city parks, no one was being a hero in relic-dig-all mindset. I can think of a certain park in San Francisco, where I can dig a couple of silvers, and 10 or 12 wheaties, any time I'm passing through there. And I'm using the settings you describe. Some other might gasp : "Oh no, you're loosing depth or might miss a gold ring !". But guaranteed, if they thought they were going to be a hero and strip-mine there, they wouldn't last 30 minutes, before reality hits them upside the head. Doh !

Do a google images search for "Compass 77b" and "Compass 94b" These are circa 1972 to 1975 -ish, all-metal TR machines.

When you say "valuable objects hidden within walls" , I assume you're talking about larger sized objects, right ? (caches, and things like box and jar sized stuff). Right ? Not individual coins, right ? Then if you're talking about cache hunting in walls, then ironically, the less sensitive the machine is, THE BETTER. Doh ! So for example, and old school 77b auto or 94b auto, would be perfect. They do not see individual nails. And are wimpy (depthwise) on coin sized targets. Or simply get a 2-box machine (although that would be difficult to man-handle sideways on walls and ceilings). A 2-box machine will simply not hear anything smaller than a soda can. Thus the perfect discriminator for nails, single coins, wires-in-walls, chicken screen (for reinforced plaster/lathe walls), etc...

Although the Chinese cashe coin might not be worth anything, yet I still love finding them. Because like your post shows : They are indicative that old key-date stuff is close behind 🙂

Great play-by-play. You have an excellent ear for turf-cherry-picking !

Good question. Some of the hardcore guys hunting the Placerville to Grass Valley corridor told me they were in the $50 to $100 melt value range, per day, on average. That was when gold was hovering at $2k per ounce several months ago. And these guys are hardcore. So ... probably not going to be replicated easily , nor worth long drives to "fish for $50" if you're not in a local scene where good spots are known to be. But if their claims are even remotely true (even if you could say only $25 on average, after taking out fish-stories), it seems like better prospects than angling for gold rings. But that depends on where you're hunting. Some southern CA & Hawaii beach guys (where there's lots of warm-water swimming) have higher gold ring ratios than cold water beach guys. And also depends on if it's beach hunters that *strictly* wait for mother nature's storms to erode. Then, sure, gold ring ratios rise. But those time frames might only come a few weeks in an entire year. But if the question is just about dudes that ply the sand boxes and dry sand beaches, then I'd say that nugget hunters will average more, in-the-end, assuming they're hard-core nugget guys in right-spots.

Oh my gosh, that is absolutely beautiful ! Drips with history ! Strange how many French coins were showing up here in CA during that super early American period. Was France one of the countries where Gold rush fever struck, and thus French folks were joining the rush to CA ? We've found a few French coins of that era (whatever date would have been in circulation @ the early 1850s) at coastal sites of the same G.R. date range. Good job and great pix !

It was only a memorial penny now. But within a few weeks, it will be wheat pennies. Then in a few months, it'll be Indian head cents. By the end of the year, it will be large cents. BUCKET LISTERS WILL FLY PAST ! And within a few years : Any gold coin *newer* than 1850 will bore you to tears ! 🤩

31 silver, in a single hunt, from a normal routine turfed park ? I think I heard from your buddy about that, who was with you that day. But as I keep trying to tell you : It's not fair for you to compare your tallies with ours. Since we've determined that you're not human. You're a robot. Tsk tsk 😬

Now go back, and pass any/all coins that are less than 6" deep. Leave the clad for the next guys 🤣

Looks like a random rock to me. 🤔

Great show. I love those fresh-reveal-sequence pix !

Good report. Thanx for bringing us along ! Our west coast beach erosion season (at least where I'm at), can start as early as November-ish. That's when sometimes an early arriving Alaskan winter storm (d/t winter starts earlier, the further you go north, eh ?), can kick up swells that come all the way down to central CA, as early as Nov . By Dec. for sure. At *any* time of *any* year there can be fluke swells that roll through. Like an equatorial storm that sends swells all the way north to our part of North America . Those would be south swells. But the ones from Japan And Alaska tend to be NW to W direction.

Dan, I know your physical limitations put a damper on how far you can travel, and how long you stay out in-a-stretch. But would your ability allow you to do a 2-ish hr. drive southeast of you ? A buddy of mine discovered a small town park that, apparently, only past Whites, Garretts, etc... have done. Never had deeper seeking guys there I guess. He easily snared a dozen silver. Even back to a barber or two. Ie.: still had ample of the classic fluty 4-star signals to pick out. Park dates to 1900-ish. I stopped by their with Cal Cobra, on our way to somewhere else. He was using his 800, but .... he despises park turf hunting, (he's strictly a relic type guy). So it was no-match, and he quickly wanted to leave. But not till I'd pulled 3 or 4 silver, and multiple wheaties. If you and your etrac hunt buddy are game, let's all hit it.

Yes. But you're forgetting one-small ingredient : You're a robot, and not human. So it's not fair to compare us mere humans with robots. Tsk tsk. 🤔

Chase, I saw Raphis' post regarding the "diminishing returns" we're seeing in the last decade or two. Versus, yes, the advancements of 20 to 30 yrs. ago. There is no dispute that as time goes on : We hit a point of diminishing returns in depth and performance. Because, yes: There is only so much signal you can pump into the ground, and there is only so much information you can get-back-out of that signal. Agreed ! And : No amount of better/faster/smaller computerization changes this fact. Ie.: No amount of "faster and smaller" changes the laws of physics. So I'm totally on-board with what you and Raphis are saying. It's a given. Ok ? However, when someone comes on to a forum, and says they're experiencing 2x the silver results of detector X over detector Y (in this current decade), then.... it's to be expected that there'll be some curiosity floating. As to how X & Y stack up to each other. Ok ? 😬

The way my buddies and I solve this "subconscious bias" effect , is two systems : A) to purposefully flag poor targets (eg.: suspected nail, corroded zinc, etc...) and say "what do you get here ?, and B) to show them an area that's several feet square (that might have multiple signals), and say : "do you hear a potential deepie/oldie from somewhere around here ?" But not show them the exact spot. Otherwise, you are right : People will tend to "hear" something (and say "yes, no problem"), if it is pointed out to them. EVEN if they are trying to be totally honest with asking themselves : "Would I have heard it on my own". It's an easy self-conscious bias lull to fall for. I saw this happen when a dealer in CA had just gotten a newly introduced machine. We agreed to meet up at a certain zone of a certain park, where there was still some deep silver for those-in-the-know. The idea was, that we'd flag signals, to see how this new machine stacked up against known-machines . And each time I'd finally find an iffy deep "potential deepie silver/wheatie" type signal, I'd call him over . And sure enough, each time, he'd regale me with positive assessments. Of how he most definitely hears it, and would have chased it, etc.... But after an hour or so, of 3 or 4 such flags, I noticed that he had not yet called me over to check any suspected oldies from his perspective. Or if he HAD called me to check a flag, I might have said "shallow clad that I'd pass", or whatever . In other words, the flagging only seemed to work one-direction. So my suspicions were immediately aroused. So I flagged a purposeful pulltab or nail false, and other such things. And without revealing my TID-call, I called him over and asked "what do you hear here ?". He naturally assumed I was showing him yet-more deepie silver/wheatie signals. And so, one by one, he regaled me with assessments of how he thought they could be deep silver/wheaties. My trap was sprung , and I told him "I was just testing you" (and we'd proceed to dig junk from the test spots). BUSTED ! haha Anyhow, there IS ways to overcome the test-bias, and gain valuable information. So too is there ways to overcome the factor of "experience level". Or "settings levels". Ie.: To just immediately toss out results because "one person has more years experience md'ing". Or settings levels where : "Shucks, I guess that person didn't have his settings down right". I think there are ways to factor in and correct for these as well.