Raphis

9 minutes ago, Tom_in_CA said:

I do not know anything about this.   Did you ask me to help with a suit-case and I said "no" ?  I'm totally confused about this.  🤔

 

But you knew I had a bad fibro flare up in 2006, right?  That’s why I joined the CA Kinzli forum that year, and purchased my Explorer to help me gradually reduce my symptoms over time and get back into the hobby I thoroughly enjoyed when I was in my late teens/early 20’s.  
 

I didn’t ask you to help me with my suitcase up the stairs that day...I just took my time, one step at a time.  I really thought you knew I was in a flare?  I was around 60-70% of my normal self on those hunts in SF, but I’m so glad I made the drive up there on my own...it gave me a lot of confidence in the following months to improve my conditioning and hunt as much as I possibly could.

11 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

Noooo!😱 Tell me it ain't so!!! I jut thought he was waking up on the wrong side of the..... Country!!🤣👍👍

I know for at least one night back in May, 2007, he woke up in a dive motel room down the street from Golden Gate Park....because I was in a room at the same motel one floor above him! He knew I was in a fibromyalgia flare up  (lots of pain/fatigue that year), but he insisted that I lug up my heavy suitcase up a whole flight of stairs to my room that day.  Whatever schemes he concocted to handicap me before the big hunt didn’t work .  😅🤣

3 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

That was one heck of a S**t sandwich Raphis!! You should work at a gourmet deli!!😂🤣👍👍

Tom regularly brings out an individual’s dark side! 🤓🤣 

15 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Frankly, it just feels like you have some axe to grind with Raphis.  From what I gather, it is because he is only singing the praises of the Equinox as compared to his Explorer vs. what you apparent,y consider a more capable Equinox predecessor and rival, the eTrac.  And/or you have something against the Raphis/Equinox that goes beyond the typical detectorist friendly rivalry chop busting.

It’s because Tom can’t forget one hunt nearly 15 years ago where 30+ treasure hunters gathered for a winner take all, old coin deepie hunt at  Big Rec Field (Golden Gate Park) in San Francisco (May, 2007).  Many of the best left coast old coin hunters were out in that field (including Tom and myself).  I took first place in points for my assortment of old coin digs that day in the field.  The machine I was using?  My brand new (a little over a year old) Explorer SE with orange Coiltek Platypus Elliptical coil. 🤣. Maybe Tom just never forgot that day when a newbie Minelab hunter from So Cal captured 1st prize at a field that had been hunted hard by the Nor Cal locals for years.  I can’t think of any other reasons Tom holds a grudge....but his reale, gold coin, and Phoenix button tallies, not to mention his dripping old relics, way above average historical research, and communicative/ argumentative skill sets will always crown him “Stud Muffin” man in our hobby forever!! 😂

 
Tom, however, did redeem himself later that day after the competition hunt at another nearby SF park with a pocket spill of super oldies.   👍🏼🤗

6 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

The landowner I have been getting permissions from lately has visited me a couple of times while I was out digging, he is very impressed by the way I dig. So much so that he let me have a go at a much newer house. I'm hoping to parlay that reference into a farmhouse that someone is living in.

Raphis, sorry I missed this one. That's a heckuva haul of swag from a tough place!

Thanks for your reply, F350Platinum!  So true about how digging/plugging properly/meticulously can pay off big time with business/property owners and groundskeepers, not to mention the general public at the places we all hunt.  I have witnessed some very bad plugs/digging in the parks I detect in my area over the past decade.  It’s obvious that there will be a % of hobbyists that want to purchase their first machine, yet have absolutely no idea how to properly recover their targets out of the ground.  And many haven’t thought thru the process of digging...they are mesmerized over the treasures they hope to find and have paid little thought to the labor/aspect involved in making the recovery while leaving as small a footprint behind as possible.

3 hours ago, kac said:

Other interesting piece is the clasp of some sorts, had a pattern on one side and kind of a flap on it. No clue what that went to

That resembles an old suspender clip with a decorative design on it.  

52 minutes ago, Cascade Steven said:

Raphis: I just found this thread and wanted to congratulate you on your finds.🙂

Thanks Steven! I just made the post yesterday afternoon.  Good luck!!

I sure wish I can see days in the 70’s soon!  Temps hit 100 today here in So Cal🔥. What size coil are you using on your Nox?  

The Indian Wars Eagle button is a cool find! 👍🏼

Thanks for doing those tests and making the videos! Per the Nox 800 test, did you try maxing out the recovery rate and/or zeroing out the F2 IB? Curious how changing those parameters may affect the outcome of the test.

3 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

Sometimes I'll try to make it a bit obvious. For example, I've been hunting for a bit and have some trash collected in my trash pouch. If I see a park employee or "civilian," I'll not only make an effort to pick up trash around me (which I do even if I think I'm not being watched), but I'll empty my trash pouch in a nearby trash can so other people can see it.

I do the exact same thing.  I also don’t start digging a plug when someone is staring at me.  They stare at you like you’re from another planet! 😅. I know many park groundskeepers in my area.  One particular groundskeeper always asks me if I found any of his old, buried gopher traps. Another worker, after speaking with him, went to the same high school as I did, while another one always stops whatever he’s working on to come over and say hi!  I gave him a silver half dollar one day, and he always lets me know when they’re going to be doing any trenching/digging for future upgrades to the park.

51 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

Bottom line: I am firmly of the belief I am breaking no rule, law or regulation. But there's the law and there's what people try to enforce. So I try to tread (and dig) carefully.

I respect that viewpoint!  You can’t please everyone!  There’s Debbie Downers in every city who don’t want you to enjoy what you’re doing.  They try their best to ruin your day! I had a guy who called the cops on me one day for detecting in “his” park 🤣. About 15 min later, a cop shows up and walked toward me and my buddy detecting.  We walked toward him too.  He pulls out a notebook, ruffles thru a few pages, and said he saw no laws/ordinances in the city preventing us from detecting.  He asked us if we found anything valuable....we showed him a few silver coins, and he was very impressed!  He said he would be interested in buying a detector for himself and asked us to give him some recommendations.  He was one of the “good guys”!! By the way, that guy who called the cops on us was watching us interact with the cop from a distance.  When the cop left and we continued to hunt, he tried to walk away from us, but my friend got closer to him and spoke to him that we were not doing anything wrong....he said he lived across the street and his kids play sports in the park, and he didn’t want his kid breaking an ankle on one of our holes.  I had to laugh at that one because I’m very meticulous about how I make my plugs and about leaving open holes in a park...that would be considered vandalism!  The guy was clueless!!

1 hour ago, mh9162013 said:

But I take this approach to avoid major digging in parks.

But I also take this approach b/c most of my parks are fairly new and I don't expect them to have much silver. Additionally, there are so many clad coins, I can't bear to skip over them out of principle.

Thanks for your reply!  It is interesting to see someone else’s perspective/views on turf hunting. Obviously, you have to conduct your turf detecting within the parameters of the city/county you live, in addition to your own vigilance/precautions about digging deep in your parks.  Thank God where I live I don’t have a “can’t dig deeper than 4” rule imposed on me.  If that was the case, I’d probably be beach detecting 100% of the time.  There are over 500 parks within a 50 mile radius I’ve hunted in the past 15 years that have old coins below 6”.  There are only a few parks in certain cities where I live, along with a couple of counties that don’t allow digging in their parks.  I have used a lesche hand digger (or equivalent hand trowel) since I owned my very first detector almost 4 decades ago.  I have a few buddies that started using the long handled (waist/thigh high) diggers, but I refuse to use one.  Those long handled shovels are very conspicuous (they attract many looky-loos).  I’m more than comfortable digging on one knee with my lesche hand digger.  I have dug thousands upon thousands of 6” and deeper U-shaped plugs over the years.  I tell people I’m a surgeon when it comes to digging in the turf, since I have dug so many and perfected my technique over the years.  I place my dirt on a square piece of rubber inner tubing, and replace nearly all the dirt back in the hole.  Sometimes I discard 1% of the removed dirt from the plug in order to let the top of the plug sit flush with the top of the ground (when the dirt is on the dry side) after I stomp down on the plug with my foot.  The city Lawnmowers we have over here can pull the plug out of its hole if it is sticking up too high above its original height. 

1 hour ago, Joe D. said:

  Great post Raphis,

 And follow-ups by all! You definitely have the Nox, and your skills, dialed in to your intended targets! Keep them poppin' out of that trashy ground!!🍀

   I do have some sorta unrelated questions, since you have so many hours on the Nox/11" combo! Any issues with coil tabs breaking?, and in line with that, do you keep your coil loose, and able to swing, or reasonably tight, in a fixed position? And what kind of life are you getting out of the coil washers? Also, wireless ML, or aftermarket, or wired aftermarket headphones? Thanks!!👍👍

Thanks for the reply Joe.  When I bought my Nox, I also bought a Detect-ED carbon shaft (upper and lower), and a package of their rubber coil saver (washers) inserts.  These washers (when the proper sizes are used) slightly protrude above the plastic cavity where they reside in the lower shaft.  That will keep the coil ears from bending inward when you tighten down the nut.  So, No coil tab breakage for me.  I don’t lock down my coil nut...it’s just tight enough so I can easily rotate it up or down with minimal pressure, but it won’t flop downward on its own when I raise it off the ground.

I started out using the Bluetooth headphones that came with my Nox, but after 6 months of use, I wanted to go back to a wired headphone.  I think the wired headphone is better for hearing the true deepies (those real faintly discernible targets).

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Do you ever ignore dTID's above Zincolns, assuming they sound like good coin candidates?  I know some claim they can tell a silver dime from a clad dime or copper Memorial and I don't doubt there is some separation under the right conditions, but I've always erred on the side of not getting too hung up with trying to dig only the best targets.  For example, I dig a lot of aluminum screw caps which dTID right where most of my Wheaties hit.   My ear isn't good enough to distinguish between the two, other than possibly cutting between loud ones (more likely screwcaps) and faint ones (more likely Wheaties).  In my case there aren't so many of those trash targets that digging them overtaxes my time allotment.

I ignore a ton of targets between 20-25 tID on my Nox.  There’s a catch though....those targets that I pass up are typically shallower than the wheats/silver I’ve been finding at that specific site.  More specifically, a dig-able target, for my sites, typically equates to at least 4-bar depth on my Nox.  Every one of those targets in my two pics I posted were showing at least 4-bar depth.  If I have a 27 or above tID, I dig those every time, regardless of depth.  Sure, there’s parks with lots of gopher activity that I’ll dig less than 4-bar depth, but it’s not the norm.  Yes, I may just pass over a shallow, small sterling ring that id’s in the 20-25 range, but if I were to dig every 20-25 ID target at the parks I detect, I’d have $4-$5 worth of new pennies/dimes, and a whole lot less oldies. That’s not how I want to hunt.  A Successful hunt for me first and foremost is determined by how many oldies I have in my pouch at the end of my hunt (in relation to the difficulty of the spot I’m hunting).....the total amount of clad I recover is a distant second.  Even so, it’s surprising how many clad dimes/copper pennies I do recover though, because they were at 4-bar depth....I’d hate to estimate how many 1959-1969 copper pennies and 1965-1975 clad dimes I have recovered over the years, but I know it is a very high amount!
 

Forgot to mention, there’s also incidental clad dimes/pennies I’ll end up digging because they were part of a pocket spill of new coinage that I initially ID’d a quarter signal in, or the spill cumulatively ID’d above 25.  Also, I do like how the Nox up averages the ID’s of deeper targets.  I know some hunters may find that a negative quality, but the up averaging allows me to dig very small pieces of copper or smaller pieces of sterling at depth...I have found some cool items at depth with my Nox I don’t think I would have dug with my Explorer.  I’ve witnessed on many hunts the Nox up average very deep 20-25 ID’s in the mid 30’s.  

3 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Nice haul there, as always.  Your "month or two" is more like my half year, and I'm probably putting in more hours since I have less responsibilties leading to more time to detect.  But quality (skill) tends to beat quantity (time).  Glad it's not a competition.  😉

A significant difference (and there are likely quite a few others) between your sites and mine are the number of hours they've been detected previously.  One would think that would be to my advantage, but it doesn't seem so obvious, especially with your results.  (Many more variables leading to those result comparisons, though.)  Regardless, you give me hope that there are plenty more worthwhile targets in my ground, I just have to figure out how to find them.

BTW, are the pennies in that pile (LH of the last photo) all Wheaties?  I assume so since the only reverses I see are Wheats and I don't think you'd mislead us by making sure all the Memorials are heads up!  If so, can you give us a silver dime to Wheat penny ratio?  (And I'm assuming you don't ignore either of these targets, even if you can separate them by dTID.)

Thanks for the reply, GB.  When I used to avg over 500 silver coins a year, I was digging nearly 50 silver a month, but I was averaging almost 4 hunts a week back then, and my hunts were 6-8 hrs avg.

You also have to take into account the foot traffic of the parks I’ve hunted in my locale to yours over the years.  The 40’s/50’s era where I live was booming...lots of people, great weather, and the parks were packed throughout the year.  That equates to a lot more coin drops (and trash drops).  Some of the parks where I have been detecting, I have recovered over 300 silver coins (and counting).  There are also a handful of parks where I’ve dug over 200, while most are under 100 silver coin parks.  I don’t have a lot of Barber/Indian penny era parks where I hunt (under a dozen), yet I have found barbers in 40’s and 50’s era parks.

Aside from 3 wheat era Canadian pennies (grouped on the right side of my wheat pic), and an older cinco centavos coin, the rest are wheat pennies (even the chopped pieces in the upper right).  I never post my clad coinage (just not my style), but I do find a decent amount of quarters and incidental dimes/pennies that I thought could be silver/wheats on every hunt. My wheat:silver ratios have always averaged around 5:1 since 2007.  Sure, I get some hunts where I’ll find over 20 wheats and maybe one silver, and also hunts where I find 5-6 silver and just the same number of wheats, but if there’s been a trend each successive year I hunt, I’d say my wheat:silver ratio is slightly declining to near 4:1.

On 9/5/2021 at 6:55 AM, Tom_in_CA said:

So, Re.: the current the Nox vs your old-school arsenal :   What would you say, to the assertion by "certain persons", who say that:  When push comes to shove, @ the time of comparing flagged signals, that their Etrac can/could equally "call" the targets ?   And/or that : At the end of the day (when averages are done over-time, tallying multiple hunts) that :  There's no appreciable difference between your Nox tallies vs their Etrac tallies ?   Are they full of sh*t, or.... what ?   🧐

 

 

Hello Tom! I know we’ve been over this discussion a few times now, and Chase‘s reply to your comment would be near verbatim to my reply.  That “certain” person you mentioned is my long time hunt buddy and is a highly capable E-Trac hunter on land.  Calling someone over to listen to a flagged signal is much different than finding those obscure signals on your own...I remember one day last year, my Etrac buddy and I went to a well hunted park we’ve been to many times (almost 2 dozen) over the years.  This hunt, however,  was my first hunt there with my Nox. At the end of the day, I had found 13 silver and 27 wheat pennies....My buddy ended up with 3 silver and 18 or so wheats.  Most of the coins were rather deep and obscure targets in higher than normal mineralized ground.  You could surmise my buddy just had an off day (he’s always on his game), or the Nox was superior to the Etrac, or I’m generally always finding more oldies than my buddy does on any given hunt we’ve been on over the years.  It’s hard to draw an exact conclusion, but I clearly remember all the hunts I had at this park over the years with my Explorer, and that one initial Nox hunt was the most oldies I ever found at that park in a single hunt.  “Some things just make you go hmmmm“...Food for thought...🤣

4 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Nice job. Deep finds are hard to do at trashy parks. Speed is your enemy 😄 Since you found Seated and Barber, you already know there is another layer lower than most people can figure out on how to get to. The constant renewing surface trash is slowly making it impossible to hit that Barber layer. It gets harder and harder every year to finds a clean enough section to punch deep. Looks like you are hitting that '50's layer solidly. Great selection of rings too. You need that bulldozer guy to scrape off 6" for you. 🦺

Thanks for the reply!  Nearly every park here in So Cal that I’ve hunted (the count is close to 500), is fairly trashy.  Like I mentioned to Phrunt in my reply, I’m in my element when it comes to finding deepies in trashy turf.  I look forward to it and have much confidence that I will find deeper, keeper targets hiding in the trash. The Nox has upped my game since my Explorer SE swinging days...It picks thru the trash better and hits deeper targets better.  A lot of the local hunters have given up on many parks around me because they are trashy and all they dig up is trash and clad. Only a small handful, I surmise, have reached a level of competency where they are finding the oldies on a regular basis. 
 

The only nuisance trash targets that prevent me from hearing deepies in an old park are surface clad and crown caps and crushed screw caps.  I pick up all crown caps off the surface when I see them.  Foil and pieces of can slaw ranging from ID’s between 1-15 on the Nox are not a problem for me.  The iron (when it’s not in blankets, which is the case in my parks most times) is not generally a problem for me either. 

5 hours ago, dogodog said:

That floral ring looks familiar to me, hard to tell from the photo. I found one a couple of months ago.

Yes, it’s the same ring style.  I’ve been finding that floral sterling style of ring regularly over the past 14 years. Thanks for the reply.  Your absolutely correct about how owning a top of the line machine does not correlate to instant deepies success.  If it was that easy, we’d all be buying Tiger Wood’s golf clubs and making millions! 😅

1 hour ago, kac said:

Hunting gold in parks is tough with all the aluminum. One thing I noticed is if you come across can slaw which is the worst it tends to be in patches. Rings aren't too bad to weed out from tabs but chains are the toughest. Real nice work with the Nox. Have you considered a 5x10 from Coiltek for that work?

When I bought my Minelab Explorer back in 2007, over a period of 2 years, I purchased  3 different smaller sized coils for my machine (Sunray 10”, a 6x8, and an 8”).  Did I find oldies with those coils? Yes, I did. However, as the years progressed, as my skills/capabilities increased with my machine, in addition to the purchase of a new Minelab Pro coil a few years after my detector purchase, I ended up using those smaller coils much less.  I actually used a 13” coil for nearly 2 years with my Explorer in heavy park trash with much success.  With that coil, I found an 1800’s $5 gold coin (at 9”) in addition to a large handful of barber coins, some seated, and lots of Indian pennies/wheats from a park that had been pounded by the local detecting club for many years (including myself and all my buddies).

I prefer the stock coil for park turf.  The Nox has amazing target separation with the stock coil if you use the coil wiggle technique for co-located targets, and the depth (which I require) over a smaller coil for park deepies.

Many wheat pennies were circulating in the early 70’s, but silver was being hoarded by then.  I prefer pre ‘65 sites when I go hunting.  I’ve been to a few early 60’s schools with a decent sprinkling of silver coinage and wheats.  Even a few years of pre ‘65 silver coin drops is enough for me to investigate a spot.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t find a silver coin at the site you wrote about above, but I hope you do find some!

Good luck! 👍🏼

4 hours ago, phrunt said:

Very well done, I dislike hunting in trashy areas but you've found a way to make it work for you and it's paying dividends.   That one big ring looks huge, maybe it fell off Mr T.

Thanks for the reply! That large brass/copper ring has Fleur De Lis symbols on it, but who knows what was glued on the face of that ring.  I think it’s a Biker ring from the 60’s era.

I’m in my zone/element for trashy park hunting...It’s my forte!  Been doing it for decades. I enjoy the challenge of finding masked oldies/deepies others have missed (including myself).

2 hours ago, strick said:

Nice shooting there...and I understand your reasoning..... but your passing up the GOLD! 😄

Thanks for the reply!  I find over 98% of my gold at the beaches, but one of my largest gold rings came from park turf...it was a quarter signal at 5”.  It was an old class ring from the 50’s era....over 20 grams....I was able to locate the owner and return the ring back to him.

Hello Friends,

My Oldie finds have been building up for the past month or two, so I decided to make another post.  All of these finds were with my Nox 800 from around 10 different parks in my locale.  These parks have been detected by numerous hunters around me many dozens of times over the years.  I’ve been detecting them for close to 15 years now.  All the parks are very trashy, and most times my hunting protocol is to pick thru the the trash and dig the deeper, higher conductive targets, in addition to digging all quarter signals regardless of depth.  I’ve hunted these parks so many times, I know the depths of the oldie targets, which range from 6-9+”.  I’ll also dig the occasional nickel signal.  I have some hunt buddies that prefer digging all clad signals regardless of depth, but that hasn’t been my style of hunting for decades now.

It has been a very hot and dry summer in my area (dryer this year than previous years), and I have limited my hunts to just a few hours at a time.  It works for me because I can’t stay away from home too long anyways since I take care of my Dad (preparing his meals and medications daily). 
 

Thanks for looking! Good luck on your next hunt!

Raphis

Dan

I enjoyed the write ups of your trips.
Congrats on your finds and for meeting up with forum members to share/gain knowledge in the hobby, and to hunt spots you never would have hunted otherwise.  Your hunt reminded me of a virgin site I was invited to detect by a forumite years ago.  The site was a large, private community for Veterans that was built back in the late 40’s era. The site was loaded with oldies...I managed 98 wheat pennies and close to 15 silvers on a 3/4 day hunt there.  It was the only time I hunted the site.

The toning on your merc is quite common on the southwest coast.  I have found a few thousand silver with that exact toning.  I also found quite a few silver that came out of the ground looking as white as a ghost (oxidation), and within seconds of being exposed to oxygen, the coin turns dark purple, then black.  

Love the look of your star sapphire ring, Mitchel!  Congrats!  👍🏼
 

I haven’t used my Nox at the beach yet...I probably never will, as long as my TDI Pro with 17x13” coil is still functioning. I don’t mind digging to China on the faint targets...I just quit when I’m wiped out from the digging (3-4 hrs tops)😅