Tom_in_CA

And if you're interested in selling, drop me a line.

Chris, glad to hear that you've bought the book. It's guys like that who do a lot for our hobby, and deserve support. Whenever compendiums like that are made, it actually spurs the interest among buyers and sellers and hunters. And in this day and age of the internet, it's hard to make $ off going through all the effort of compiling such info into a book. Since, let's be honest, people will eventually get it digital somehow, which lowers book sales (one unfortunate aspect of the net, to any would-be-authors). So thanks for getting his book, he deserves it. Now go find some more so you can look up your future prizes ! And a shout out to anyone else @ finding G.R. buckles like this : Get Max' book too !

Sorry, I don't know why my 2nd picture is upside down 😞

Yup. The off-center shield is the tell-tale bust dime. Congratz ! Not easy to find Bust coins in CA Your buckle is rare and valuable. Here you go, thanx to Max Bell's great book: Here's the description of your buckle @ the 6th picture down :

I like ball buttons , @ the middle right of your first photo !

Doh ! My bad. I saw "V3" and assumed he was talking about the Whites.

Huh ? "Enhancements" ? " Advantages" ? If these advantages are what you're after, then why are you looking at the Whites V3, in the first place ? I don't understand 😞

I love that gilt button that simply says "Gilt" on the back. Those are the absolute earliest of gilt buttons, where it almost seems the lettering was hand scrimshawed into it. They just drip with history. Good show !

Cal-Reg, a couple of things : 1) If you google "Ghost towns" + "CA", then ... sure ... you're going to get hits like Bodie, and other such colorful *obvious-to-the-history-books" type tourist trap spots. 2) Then ... sure... none of them are going to be "MD friendly". 3) But you have to realize that these are only the ones/types that are a) still standing b) colorful tourist traps 4) But there are HUNDREDS of little burgs that faded to nothing, and are nothing more than a vacant cow pasture, and not a tourist-trap sensitive monument. These can be singular stage stops, trading posts, short-lived miner tent cities, etc....

What ?? Did you just find that gold coin ?? That's the holy grail hole-in-one for every md'r ! Nice going dude !

Good show. Good pix. Good play-by-play. Sheesk, these east-coast posts are starting to look like the British posts ! 🤪

Yes, he is a legend for deep-turf cherry picking. And is currently swearing by the Nox (over his prior SE pro). HOWEVER: He runs around hunting with an Etrac user (which is commensurate with an Exp. II). And they keep even with each other's tallies. They can each equally hear and "call" each other's flagged targets. Hence, no, the Nox is not beating an Explorer in turf. But yes, I'd love to duel with Raphis sometime again. Because EVERY COTTON PICKING TIME I say I spanked a Nox user up here in the turf, then a Nox-faithful is always quick to rationalize : "They must not be experienced enough" blah blah. But if Raphis (who is an acknowledge deep-turf-pro) were to come up short, then this would finally, once-for-all end that debate. Because no one can dispute his prowess. Unfortunately, he's in Southern CA, and I'm ~5 hr. north of him.

Dances: It's been so long now, since my short trial with the Nox (I got a very early release, d/t we'd been on the waiting list, since the very beginning ). But at the time I tried it, there was ALREADY beginning to be inputs from well-known well-respected voices . Ie.: I could avail myself of pro/con discussion even at that time. So ... yes ... I would have tried all the tricks. Which I assume would also have been the "50 tones". The full tones would have been only natural, since that's the way I've used my explorer, after all. About the ONLY control I didn't spend too long with trying, was the recovery speed. I had opted for a tad-higher recovery speed (since I run my Explorer on "fast", and it doesn't have a depth compromise on the Explorer). So I had assumed I wasn't sacrificing depth on the Nox, so-long-as I listened carefully for faster "beeps". But I learned later on, that the Nox isn't that way. There IS INDEED a depth loss when going faster recovery. And a depth BENEFIT (albeit with the drawbacks) when going to slower speeds. So for my "balls to the walls" depth and TID needs of turf hunting (where cherry picking and depth is the order of the day), then the Nox disappointed me. But that might have been because I didn't opt for slower recovery speeds. Which could have improved depth and TID (with the inherent drawback of less separation though). I have since hunted with experienced Nox users, and ... no .... they can't trump my Explorer in the turf. Yes they excel better in iron-ridden conditions, but not in turf, IMHO .

Hey there Dances : I got the Deus just for ghost-townsy iron-ridden sites. Ie.: a specialty machine. For all other sites (like this that is not that badly iron-ridden), I am intending to keep using my Exp. II. I know some guys use their Deus for ALL their hunting. But so far .... I'm not there yet.

Good to hear from you El ! I was swinging the machine Brian refers to ask the "Dino 2k tank". The Exp. II. See how evil and mean he is ? 😝

Got 2 more Phoenix buttons yesterday. Brian ("cal cobra") and I got out to one of our "backpocket sites" . This site has given up reales, early seateds, and 2 gold coins over the years. It is now super pounded and stingy. But we went to ply our luck yet again , looking for more stragglers 🙂 Here's a small #30, and a large # 27. Also a pix of the other age indicators I got. Eg.: Green blacksmithed copper slag, etc... Hopefully Brian will chime in with his finds. How many phoenix buttons did you get Brian ? 🤔 🤣 We love finding these. They've sort of become a "sport unto themselves", and value has become secondary these days (it's SO niche, that not many ever get bought and sold these days). Here's info. about these buttons for anyone who's curious.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_buttons https://www.jstor.org/stable/25616604?seq=1

Tim, the XS and the II were similar. There was some hardware issue on the XS : The rod-stem easily broke, which was solved with the II. And another bell & whistle change that I can't recall right now. But they were the same, for the most part. The SE Pro, however, was the incarnation in the line-up that , among other things, had the following change : It had a very increased recovery speed (even when you chose the slower settings). Which, at first blush, sounds like a good thing to have, eh ? So that you can get in-&-around trash better, eh ? But this appeared to come with a loss-of-depth. Because your deeper targets did not have enough time to register an accurate ID, and you might therefore be passing deeper stuff. For example : I bought an SE pro once, SIMPLY to take the Sunray probe off of it. And my intention was going to be to float that SE pro on ebay, after I took the probe off. But while I had it, thinking it was identical to my Exp II, I took it for a spin. On the wet salt beach, I got a few deep nail signals, which I passed. After 4 or 5 such "deep nail" signals, I FINALLY got an iffy signal, with a slight hint of conductive. It turned out to be a clad dime that was ONLY about 7" deep. Which surprised me, because it SHOULD have given a better signal, at that depth. So on a hunch, I went back to the "deep nail" signals, dug them, and THEY TOO turned out to be very deep coins. HHHmmmm. So I floated this observation on a forum. Several other long-time Explorer users, who had come up through-the-ranks, concurred with this observation : That the SE pro suffered from criticism that you had to triple-scrutinize each deep signal, hence more apt to miss a fringe deep target. Versus the II (or Etrac, or CTX, or XS, etc...) that would get the hint of conductive on the first-pass over it.

depends on location of the "silver coins". If it's a relicky iron-riddled location, then your Nox will do better (at seeing through and averaging and separating). But if you're talking about deep turf cherry picking , then I say the Explorer XS is superior. JMHO.

My grandparents were from Brawley. So I hunted a few of the parks in the area, and pulled silver "back in the day". Nice bunch of silver you got there !

Abenson : Your tallies is the stuff of legends . And to answer your question: I SAY that the GPX can't be used in iron-trash, haha Another thing I would add to this thread/conversation, is that I would not include cache finds into this. Ie.: It's possible for someone to find a jar or whatever, filled with 50 gold coins at a single sitting. But for purposes of this question/conversation, it is for individual fumble fingers losses. Not caches.

thanx. But it won't help. The area has been under agriculture (furrowed row crop , leaf veggies) since the turn-of-century.

Since "nostalgia" is the theme of this thread, here's another. It's not mine, but it's someone I know : Back in the early 1970s, there was a lady archaeologist here in California. And she wanted to get her 12 or 13-ish yr. old son interested in history, digging things, etc.... So for some reason, she gave her son a metal detector for Christmas. So he could play "Junior archaeologist", or whatever. Probably just some Heathkit or BFO of of that era. However, it was good enough to find coin-size objects. So the kid would follow his mom out on to some of her projects (she was digging some western contact period sites, at the time, with the local university or whatever). And I guess, back in those days, there was not the animosity between archies and md'rs. The little tyke was ignored , and looked at as harmless. After all, that's his mom that's duly-authorized, and ... no one paid the little tyke any mind. BUT HE FOUND some wickedly old stuff when snooping around the archie digs and scrapes. Since, of course, they were working in sensitive monument type sites. And naturally, when the kid moved off to normal turf, school yards, park, beach, then naturally, it was only clad, foil, etc.... So he wised up at a very young age, and quickly became bored of anything that wasn't seateds, reales, etc.... TALK ABOUT SPOILED AT AN EARLY AGE ! By high school age, he partnered up with another local high school kid, and the two of them went on to do some hair-raising Indiana Jones type antics stuff all around CA and NV.

Great pix and play-by-play. Love the de-brief satellite pix captures ! And go figure , ONLY an east coast colonial area md'r can walk out his front door, into the nearest random field, and presto, reales, gilt button, etc.... Sick Sick sick 😒

Dances-with-Doves: So how many gold coins total for your career ? No, I've never found 2 in one day. But I did get 2 in one week once 🙂

When it comes to urban turfed parks, I agree with you. That is NOT the place to "be a hero" and angle for gold rings, IMHO. Maybe nicer cleaner athletic turfed fields (that are devoid of picnicking and eating, and are strictly for athletic frolicking motions). I've had this debate with other md'rs before, who are AGHAST that anyone would ever reject tabs or foil. They'll say : " But you might miss a gold ring ?? !! ". And when you turn them loose, and watch them "be a hero" and strip-mine junky turf, they quickly tire of turf hunting. Or ... at the end of the day, you show them your 10 oldies (wheaties & silver), they can't understand why they only have a single oldie, and you have 10. They seem to think they can have the "best of both worlds". But it never works out that way. Instead, they get sick & tired of digging 100 to 200 aluminum junk items , for the off-chance at the lone-gold-ring there. And feeling like a fool in nice-manicured turf for so-many-holes. I keep telling those folks: "If gold rings are your agenda/goal, then WHY THE HECK are you torturing yourself at blighted inner city BBQ pits and manicured turf ? Why not just simply go to where the demographics and ratios are better ? Namely : Swim beaches. Or at least, turf that's strictly athletic. Or P.T. courses, sand volley-ball courts, etc... Then sure : Strip-mine away. For ghost-townsy relicky sites, sure, I enter relic-dig-all mindset. But on inner-city turf, I opt for cherry-pick mode. And .... sure, kiss nickels goodbye. It's just for deep silver then.