Tom_in_CA

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

3 hours ago, Tiftaaft said:

Over the Explorer II or the Explorer SE (Pro)?  Not arguing... XS is a GREAT machine... just interested in your thoughts Tom.  ~Tim

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 !

26 minutes ago, abenson said:

Location, Location, Location and dig everything is the key, at least for me. I've done it 3 times.

1st time 1851 $1 and 1851 $2 1/2 in the same area about 50 yards away from each other both using the Minelab GPX.

2nd time 1854 $1 and 1852 $1 first one with the XP Deus second one with the Minelab GPX found in the same day but actually hiked to a different area about a 1/2 mile away.

3rd time 1853 $1 and 1852 $1 first one was with the Minelab GPX second one with the Minelab Equinox 600. Found same day in the same general area but over the hill from each other.

Who says you can't use a GPX in iron trash?

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.  

7 hours ago, geof_junk said:

Have you looked the area with google earth it might give you a different view.

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 🙂

1 hour ago, Dances With Doves said:

When I use my  explorer in the turf  95% of the times i am going   for   coins. I dig low hits when i am at the beach or in the shallows.

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.  

1 hour ago, Dances With Doves said:

 Do you guys  ever find Jesuit rings in California in your old spots that you hunt?

We've found mission era rings.  But they're just copper rings.  With various design, or icon on them.   After looking at a google images page of "Jesuit ring", I would say that I/we have not found *exactly* like those. 

But if I change the image search to "Jesuit fur trade ring", then yes:  We find those type varieties.   I just always assumed they were Indian trade trinkets.   But sure:  Since the missions, and their outposts, were the first European toe-hold here, then naturally a lot of the items we found have a connection to the church.  Since, at the time, the crown and the church were co-mingled, and the churches (the missions) administered the lands on-behalf of the crown.  So go figure, we'll find super early crude crucifixes and medallions, from time to time, at sites that pre-date CA statehood.

1 hour ago, matt said:

Will do. I live in Sacramento, but need to start going down that way more to deal with family business. That would be great to get together some time. Most likely my Mom would know Gary. I guarantee he would have known my family. The old homestead farm is actually on Blanco Road. Also have a ranch on West side of Cooper Road (Blanco area) and then out in Alisal at Old Stage Road. My family were big lettuce farmers.

Sorry to hijack your thread CVISChris!

Well, at the risk of further angering Chris, for us hi-jacking his thread :  That area west of Cooper Rd, was exactly the where the El Tucho rancho was located.  Unless you mean the northern stretch of Cooper Rd, up closer to Hwy. 183.  Then that's different.  Although I've wandered the fields up there too, because of hints at old diseno maps.  And found midden in the field of locations (ceramic shards, tile, etc...).  And then we break out the detectors 🙂

El Tucho is shown on certain topo maps .  Since rancho boundaries system was the infancy of the current mapping system of CA land, after all.    And you can google "El Tucho" aka "Las Salinas", to get more info.  

And as for Old stage Rd, we've pinned down multiple adobe sites along there, and bagged reales and early seateds, buttons, etc....    Stop by next time you're down this way on "urgent business", and we'll pour over maps, names, dates, etc.... I grew up here.  And hunt with a guy who knows all the old-time names as well (his family is multi-generational ranching/construction).

On 2/5/2021 at 4:03 PM, Dances With Doves said:

Hi Tom. What was  your total from your spilled cache on silver about?

This was a barn (long story about why anyone would have been detecting there, TO BEGIN WITH, so I'll have to leave out that part of the story).   But suffice it to say, the location of the barn had something historical that goes back to the 1830s, so a few people, as early as the late 1970s, had gone around it, and in it, to try their luck.

Imagine their surprise , that instead of finding coins/targets from the mid 1800s, as they were looking for, that they instead started finding lots of silver coins.   Just common date roosies, mercs, silver washingtons, franklin halves, walkers, etc.....   Needless to say, they were a bit confused, but ... on the other hand .... weren't complaining.

I recall that the original guys mused "must have been barn dances going on here" .  Yet that theory didn't quite fit, because they NEVER found pennies.  Only dimes, quarters, and halves.   Hmmm

I joined in on the story, in the very early 1990s, because I too read the same historical citations.   And then I went and hit it, I too was met with lots of scattered silver coins .  So I then realized "this must be the barn that the other guys I talked to, had mentioned a decade or so earlier".   I have since pieced the story together (aided by talking to the owner .... long story), that these were the result of broken-open jars of silver coins, that had been inadvertently spread out all over the barn floor, and out-the-door and into the immediate environs, of the barn.   D/t every year or so, the farmer would take a Bobcat tractor to scoop out all the cow manure .  And had been inadvertently hitting these jars, and scattering their contents.   This explained why some of the coins were coming out in clumps (all-end-to-end stacked, etc....).

Does that answer your question ?

22 minutes ago, matt said:

..... Now I just have to get some time to go down there and look around a bit....

What part of CA are you located in now ?

When you get down this direction, drop me a line and we can join up to go over some maps.  And I'll show you what I know, where I've hunted, etc....  Is your family familiar with the late Gary Breschini ?   He was a local archaeologist and historian, who traced his roots back to the Blanco district ranching area.  Which is the area you alluded to, between Salinas to Marina.  We used to pick his brain continuously about places to detect at !   Anyhow, drop me a line when you get down to my area.

12 hours ago, matt said:

Not to change the dialog, but Tom my family settled the Salinas Valley in 1854. We tore down my great grandfather's house built in the 1880's after the Salinas River flooded in the late 90's. I've been thinking about going out to the old spots my Mom told me about where they used to picnic.

Have you ever had any luck detecting the old farmlands between Salinas and Marina? It's all private property, but I know a few people out that way!

Matt,

There were/are several recorded recurring Salinas River picnic spots, that past md'rs here have sleuthed out.  Ie.: Where the townsfolk would go out in their wagons or Model T's,and spend a day @ picnic, swim, etc.....   But all of the are utterly worthless to md'ing.   Because prior to the mid 1960s (heck, even later, till-the '90s, as you say), the Salinas river has periodically flooded out, as you know.  Such that any "beach" you can point to NOW, is NOT the same beach that was there even 10 yrs. ago.  Sand is washed out, and new sand-fills in, blah blah.  And any grove of trees along the banks of the river has been silted out, and jungle-like terrain.  And then the govt. has gone in and made levees along each side, for vast lengths.  Such that all the terra-firma near-to-the-river has been utterly altered over all the decades.

Yes I've detected several of the "Blanco district" settlers-era homesteads, if/when I can substantiate that they've been gone since early on.  Because, naturally, if they're still just the location of modern ag. farm commercial centers, then they're just going to be a giant junk heap.   So we've tried to isolate a few spots that had structures on them, yet were *gone* by the 1910s/20s.  And are nothing but row-crop land now. 

We found one location in the vicinity of East Garrison / Reservation Rd. area (south side of Salinas River), that gave up multiple seateds, a few reales, and a $5 gold.  All dated 1830s-'60s.  

The one location that has always eluded me, was "El Tucho".   That was several square miles of land, that was a Spanish , then Mexican land grant rancho area.  And historical citations hint that there was a community of people living there at various mission-era times.   But as for exactly WHERE, on the vast acreage, that this location was, we've never been able to pin down.   You can see the boundaries of El Tucho on maps, no problems (topo maps, etc....).  But that doesn't tell us where the actual homestead/habitation (adobes, or whatever) were.    It was somewhere out @ what is now the Blanco store/ Cooper Rd. area.    Do you have any clues ?

I was 14-ish, in about 1975- ish.   Had been following around a fellow school chum (7th grade ?  8th grade ?), who had a Compass 94b or 77b auto.  He ran the detector while I dug the holes for him.   We'd find clad, and an occasional wheatie or buffalo nickel.  I was hooked on the concept !   I rushed out and found my own machine to buy.  With all the money I had saved from my previous summer job picking apples ($100, which was a lot of $ to a kid back in those days), I bought a used Whites 66TR.    That's a circa early 1970s all-metal TR machine (similar to the 77b, but not quite as good).

All I did, for several years, was just elementary school yards, and the yards of old homes in our town.  Never had enough brains to use headphones, etc.... The depth for coin-sized targets was 3" or 4" tops.    Maybe 5" on a quarter if I really pushed it.  It had no discrimination (other than innately passing small iron).  So I dug a lot of foil & tabs.   I was limited on where I could take it on my bicycle around town.   Never had the concept or knowledge to do anything more exotic that turf.  So it was merc. & silver roosies, and teens/20s wheaties at the absolute oldest.  I remember finding a high percentage of silver washington quarters in those days.  But go figure:  In the mid to late 1970s, silver had only been out of circulation for 12 or 13 yrs.   And the 66TR was better at bigger objects (quarters), than small objects (dimes).  

Then in 1980 or so, while in High school, I got a Garrett Groundhog.   I don't know why I didn't have enough brains to get a 6000D.  Since those were FAR AND AWAY better, in that era.  Doh !  But news didn't travel as fast in those days (not like now, with immediate access to pro/con discussions of machines).  So the VLF/TR era was "slow to die" in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

5 hours ago, CVISChris said:

GB. I basically found a collapsed fireplace and went to work around it.  I covered very little of the area. There is no time limit so it’s mine to detect and I trust me I will.  
caprock, thank you for the info and the cool picture. I appreciate that.   

Well if you want some company, then your "best long time friend Tom_in_CA" is less than 2 hrs. from you   🤣

We were just hunting a spot in the Gustine area @ over the weekend !   Regret to say we just got age-indicators , but no quality period coins or buckles.  

Welcome to the elite and exclusive seated coin club.   And my friends and I are green with envy on the buckles.   Those are the sought-after badge of merit in CA G.R. hunter circles.

What part of the central Valley are you in ?  I'm @ the Salinas/Monterey area.  So it takes me a few hours to reach the Sierra foothills G.R. sections.   Envious of you guys that are a tad closer !  

If any of you wants more of this type stuff, I'll sell  you "genuine California beach trash" at HALF what that guy is asking.   But it's only because I'm a nice guy, and just trying to help you fellow forumites out.   Friends and family discount, if you order before the end of next week !  🤣

As a long-time wet-salt-beach hunter (hunting after storm erosion on our beaches):  It looks like a copper penny (pre 1982) that has gone in-&-out on the surf many many times.   And yes, they can have smaller dimensions than a normal penny, d/t the erosion/wear.     We find HUNDREDS of those type coins , and just toss them in the garbage.

That's what yours looks like anyhow.    And how that got to a fresh-water still-water-spot, I dunno.  😳

Good to see a CA report action.  I was passing through So. CAL (on my way to some land-hunting objectives), on 1/29.  I hit Santa Monica and Manhattan beach.  The storms/swells had *just* gone by the day or two before, and I was hoping that some residual action was maybe still there.   But it was as you said:   Rather disappointing.  And other So. CA guys reported the same thing:  Not as good as they'd have hoped.

We had some action up in my part of CA (Monterey Bay beaches) during that event.  But nothing earth-shattering.

Tell your mate "Thank you".   I love old-times detector nostalgia, so that was a great video.   He was swinging a mid 1960s vintage Fisher in those clips.   I'll bet the depth on coins was only 3", eh ?

Question:  In that fellow's career, how many gold coins (individual fumble fingers losses) did he find ?

I've been at it since I was in 8th grade, which was about 1976.   I wish I'd kept track of all the silver coins I'd found, so I could chime in on your question 🤪

I would not count caches (yes, even spilled ones) into the total.  If you're talking of singular fumble-finger-losses, then a cache or broke-open-cache is not in the same category.   Jamflicker & Dan ("Raphis") are finding them one-fumble-finger loss at a time.   I too, decades ago, got into  a location where jars of silver coins had apparently broken open by a farm plow.  And spread out into a field and barn area.   Such that sometimes you'd get 5 or 10 silver coins all fused together.   That's different than the 1-at-a-time that Dan and Jam do, as you know.

Also, there's different niches.   Ie.: While that might be the most merc's from turfed So. CA parks (or ANY USA parks in-a-given-year), yet there's other niches.   Like notice they find few, if any, seateds.   And there's guys that have no desire to knock themselves silly for  roosies and mercs in junky turf cherry-picking.  And might only end the year with 10 or 12 silver coins.  Yet every one of them will be a seated.   So as you can see :  Different niche categories of skill. 

Sweet.  Just utterly sweet.  Those are the kind of age-indicators that just DRIP that a serious rare coin is right-around-the-corner.   And the history of the "westward-ho" movement that they paint is priceless.   You're making me and that pesky Cal-cobra fellow wonder why we're not getting our @sses in gear and heading to more hunting eastward your directions !    🤪

Ok Cobra:  You ready for a road trip ?   haha  🤣

nice.