Raphis

Great coin find! 👍🏼

I’ve always had good results putting my crusty/caked dirty copper items in bubbling hot hydrogen peroxide.  I certainly can’t take credit for this technique.  (I’ve seen this “copper enhancement“ technique used on old coppers by countless treasure hunters on various detecting forums for over a decade.....

The technique is to place a small pyrex cup filled with a 1/2” of hydrogen peroxide in the microwave until you see it start to bubble/boil.  Remove the cup from the microwave and immediately place the coin in the peroxide (and watch it bubble/fizz). A lot of tough, caked on dirt/crud will start to come off into the peroxide.  It will sizzle for quite some time (minutes). I’ll repeat the same above steps after 3-4 minutes (or until the fizzing is barely noticeable) for the other side of the coin with fresh peroxide.  This process does not mess with the color/patina of the coin...

You’re correct about oil darkening the surface of copper....and once you put oil on the coin, there’s no reversing the effect......and I definitely agree with you about avoid placing water on the coin.....water does remove quite a bit of “detail”, and depending on the mineral content in the water, it can really cause the surface of the copper to become more prone to rapid oxidation.

A silver quarter trifecta is a rare day indeed! 👏  Your sterling flower ring is very familiar to me...I have found over a dozen of that design here on the west coast over a 10 year period.

Major Congrats! 👍🏼

It’s crazy what can be buried under the ground...last year my Dad found 52 quarters (all clad) in one hole.  Some of the coins were stuck together with pieces of decayed bank wrapper on them.

Great videos/tests!  Here in the US, I’d pass up all shallow 21/22 ID’s in our local parks...There’s an abundance of those id’s, which are mostly pennies and other larger aluminum trash...They’d  have to be whispery for me to dig them (for a possible early wheat or Indian penny), unless I’m dealing with disturbed/turned over ground, trenching, or gopher action.  All our dollar coins ID in the 30’s on the Vanq/Eqx.  
 

When I used my Explorer SE, it would be a mortal sin to run it in auto sensitivity (especially for a deep coin hunter), simply because you never knew what the true sensitivity of your machine would be after the machine automatically reduced the sens for quiet operation.  It’s been many years since I used a CTX, but do you know the “real” sensitivity the machine goes to when in auto sens (or auto +1 or +2)?

Cool, old coin that’s got plenty of character even though you can’t see much detail....looks like it was punched with a square nail....nice wheels too!! 👍🏼

8 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Those were pretty bad on me, but that last one, the trickle and tease of the GPZ-7000 almost did me in and this go around, I’m not sure 50/50 I was told?  Wife thinks I should double my life insurance, but I told her “it’s an existing condition”.

51/50 I believe you meant to say...🤣😂

Cool contest!! 👍🏼

2 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

It’s funny when you stay in the sun digging all day, strange things happen to you on the trip home. Like scratching your back and your hand cramps closed. So, you use you other hand to open it and then that hand cramps shut Dehydration, even with 64 ounces of hydration drinks, just doesn’t cut it. I’m fine now but getting old sucks!

Haha...it does suck getting old.  I can relate to your hand wanting to close itself shut.  😌. Your push for 200 reminded me of my push for 800 silver coins back in 2015...I came up a little short, but I ended up with way more than I thought I would get, and that year turned out to be my most productive ever. 
 

Congrats on a great beach season! 👍🏼

On 3/12/2021 at 11:08 AM, Tom_in_CA said:

Mike, I know that the "Nox faithful" would dispute what you are saying, but :  I agree.  The old school explorers were better for cherry-picking in junky-parks types of scenarios.   A better "grasp" at telling a potential coin apart from trash. 

 

HOWEVER, that's only a select niche of hunt style preferences.   A lot of hardcore guys simply do not troll junky inner-city turf for silver.   They are strictly relicky guys.  Who are just after anything conductive, and don't need nuanced tones that a cherry-picker needs.   In the case of iron-riddled zones, I've noticed that my equinox friends are indeed spanking my Exp. II.  However, in turf, I tend to spank them.    I know some Nox guys will dispute these results, and try to say that the Nox guy "just needs more experience", blah blah.   But ... so far ... I just haven't seen it.

Boy, Tom, I wish someone could enlighten you for once!! 😆🤣. Years ago, I clearly recall not a single hunter could pry that whites DFX of yours from your clenched fists, until you got spanked at a certain Nor Cal park by an Explorer hunter....only then did you change your mindset in a matter of a day! 😂
 

I’d imagine though, you can’t compare apples to oranges (DFX vs Explorer) back then for deep turf silver....but the Nox is no slouch to an Explorer.  That’s a fact!  You’re still hanging on to your Explorer because you can’t live without your Sunray inline probe!  🤓

If ML had made the CTX as light to swing as the Equinox, I’d probably pay $1200 for a new CTX.  I guess you could say I’m a deep silver slayer!! 😂🤓I’ve been hunting old, trashy parks in my locale for more than a decade with an Explorer SE, and the past year with a NOX 800.  After digging over 5000 silver coins with my Explorer, I’m here to say I wish I had an Equinox 10 years ago! ☺️ The Nox is a silver slayer!!  It finds deeper coinage and co-located deep targets in moderate mineralized soils more efficiently than my Explorer ever could.

Last year a buddy of mine and I went to a park we’ve been to about 20 prior times over the past 8 years (he hunts with an E-Trac, and I had hunted this park with my Explorer those years).  This was my first time hunting this park with my Nox 800.  That day’s hunt was so telling!! I ended up with 13 deep (7-10+”) silver coins, and nearly 30 wheats.  My friend ended up with 3 silver...We both were in shock!  The park is not very big, so this was not new ground we’ve never hunted before.  
 

I’ve since been hunting many of the heavily pillaged parks with my Nox that I used to hunt with my Explorer and finding numerous deep and/or partially masked old coinage.  
 

I did get a chance to hunt with a CTX for a week at a few old parks many years ago, and I did very well with it upon my first hunt! I read the whole manual thru and thru back then before using the machine... It’s a great machine for deep silver, as many others have mentioned, but it’s too heavy (compared to a Nox), even though it has better balance than an Explorer (but I don’t use arm cuff straps for swinging my machine and prefer a slightly more toe heavy machine) especially if one hunts for 6-10 hrs (my typical hunt day for many years).  
 

I read that article Simon linked above (comparing the Nox 800 with a CTX), and cut/pasted an excerpt of the article below...He doesn’t elaborate why he feels the IB feature/filter on the Nox causes a loss of depth, but I’m sure this could be (or already has been ??) debated by the heavy hitters on this forum.

“The Equinox 800 has incredible capability in handling heavy mineralization and identifying iron. In fact, Minelab came out with an Iron Bias discrimination feature on the Equinox which allows you to better reveal whether an iffy target is iron or not. However, using the iron bias features comes at a cost -- loss of depth. 

I do not want to declare the iron bias features obsolete, however, I have found no situation in which I need them. “

22 hours ago, mn90403 said:

I'll go back to that area one day at the beginning of my hunt rather than at the end.

Mitchel

That’s a great beach hunt, Mitchel.  Those coins definitely haven’t seen much moisture all these years.  I’m assuming the sand you’re hunting to find those oldies has a hard pack layer (the deeper you dig, as opposed to soft, fluffy sand).  Those silver coins you found remind me so much of my dry sand hunts at a specific stretch of beach, where I dug over 600 silver in 2 years there.  I surmised there should undoubtedly be similar conditions at other beaches as the beach I was hunting.  I would dig every solid, smooth signal with my PI machine (my Explorer couldn’t attain the depths I was finding some of the coinage and other artifacts, so I always used my PI).  I wore out a couple of solid stainless scoops over a two year period, but it was so worth the effort.
 

Some food for thought....there were times I thought I had meticulously gridded sections/stretches of dry sand after finding a decent amount of silver/wheats/artifacts, and I’d swear there couldn’t possibly be anything else to find in this particular spot if I hunted it another day.....but I’d go back, and to my surprise, I would find more oldies....I was using a large coil on my PI too (17x13”).  It doesn’t take much to miss a deep coin.....if the surface of the sand is heavily uneven, with pits, and divots, those conditions will mask deeper coinage.  If the surface gets more leveled/even, your chances for finding the deepies increases.

42 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

However, I might be willing to dispense with that feature to mod it for stronger pull.

Hey GB, could you elaborate a little on the kind of site will you be requiring a magnetic rake for a stronger pull out West here?  Are you going to be raking blankets of iron?  You did mention hiking/backpacking, but a device like you bought is new to me...I’ve seen plenty of beach hunters and prospectors/meteorite hunters attach magnets on a beach scoop or a pick, but never heard of a magnetic rake. 

12 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Just to elaborate on the loss of depth question. There is no loss of depth while using any timing, while in that timing, since the machine still responds to high and low conductors. You just ignore the high conductors when you want to focus on low conductors. But you still hear them. But that does not mean it responds to each the same. It may prefer low conductors based on how that timing works. So I pick a timing that responds to low conductors better than another timing that might favor high conductors. How you choose from all available timings can result in a loss of depth. That just means that timing is not the right one for the type of target you are hunting for and the type of soil you are in. So using something like the "fine gold" timing may not be a good choice for looking for deep coins and may not hear them as well or at all. The depth loss is dependent more on your choices in timings as well as the other controls.

Sounds like you have your 5000 dialed in for hunting your beaches. 👍🏼 There has been some talk in the prospecting forum about hunting the beaches with the new GPX 6000.  The 6000 seems much more simplistic, and doesn’t have iron reject or timings (can’t delineate between high/low conductors on a 6000 like you can on the earlier GPX machines ??).  I saw you express some interest in possibly seeing how a 6000 would perform as a beach machine...it seems like you will lose your conductor delineation ability.  I’m thinking the 6000 would perform like a super-charged TDI Pro (with the Ground Balance set off), allowing you to “angle” for specific deep targets based only on target response (i.e. shape of the sound (smooth, double blip, single blip, etc).  Do you have any additional/contrasting thoughts on this subject you’d like to share?? 

EDIT:  after rereading Steve H’s review/experience with his 6000, he did talk about the following tone delineations:  “The tone tricks still work, with most small gold going high tone, and most big gold (meaning cans) going low tone. If you have nothing but sub-gram gold, it is unlikely a low tone signal is gold.”  

 I wonder if the cutoff point between high/low conductors (as you described earlier) on your 5000 (zinc penny range ??) would be similar on the 6000....(just food for thought...I’m just trying to hypothesize a beach scenario utilizing  a 6000).

24 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

After a while I got better at figuring out ground noise from an ultra deep coin sound. Not always right but another angle at getting the deep stuff.

Ahhhh, that’s a critical “Angle” to attain in one’s back pocket of tricks for both Prospectors and beach hunters using PI’s......It separates the boys from the men! 😂

21 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

You must have the older (and deeper?) TDI. I think on the TDI SL, you can toggle between low/all/high.

I have a TDI Pro...it has the low, all, high switch settings, but those are only applicable when the ground balance is enabled...I easily lose 4” to 6” of depth if I turn on ground balance on the TDI Pro.  Yes, I have to swing very slowly in wet or mineralized sand to keep the threshold more stable, but that extra depth is key for having a chance at the older finds when there’s no erosion present. 

I’ve never used a Minelab PI before , but if you don’t have any loss of depth and are still able to hear high/low, low/high conductivities, that’s the cat’s meow!! 👍🏼👍🏼  I believe a Garrett ATX can give similar conductive delineation of target response with no loss of depth also. 

17 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

I started out trying for silver but decided to concentrate on low conductors, hoping for some gold. Total of 40 nickels that hunt, counting the war nickel. I ended the afternoon digging for high conductors as well, and was rewarded with yet another half dollar.

Great hunt, HardNOX! 👍🏼 It reminds me of my beach hunts with my Whites TDI.  My digging technique is much different than yours, but I’d imagine my sand strata is quite a bit different than yours.

Could you elaborate a little on how you describe above of your ability to decide to concentrate on digging lower conductors with your 5000 for a while, then switch to digging higher conductors?  Does the GPX have this ability without loss of depth??  I do have this ability to differentiate between higher and lower conductors to some extent  (if I ground balance my TDI), but I would be greatly limiting my depth capability with my PI by enabling ground balance on the TDI, so I don’t hunt in GB mode.  

Good link to your older thread, Mitchel. Similar to the way conditions change at a beach, conditions at the same turf site will change also. Ground moisture and grass height (gopher activity also) will affect target responses (especially the deeper targets)...So even if a th’er is practicing thorough/persistent/smart ground coverage, there will be numerous deep targets that will be passed over on certain days/weeks/months at your hunt site...In other words, Mother Nature (even the frequency/timing of the lawn being mowed ☺️) play a huge part in your ability to recover the deeper/older turf targets on any given day.....all the more reason to never give up on a site, simply because it didn’t produce very much for you after a few hunts.

Hey Dances, I wonder how many persons are willing to pay 3c per copper penny right now? 

Since a US penny is legal tender, I doubt any metal scrapping business would accept US pennies....I’ve got about 30,000 common wheat pennies (all detected coins). One of my buddies was selling his wheat pennies on another detecting forum (1000 pennies + a semi key date wheat included)...he was getting 3 cents a coin a year or two ago selling them this way.

Since I’ve been hunting trashy turf sites for a few decades, I’ll elaborate my thoughts on this subject.  The most important aspect for covering ground at a trashy site is the “speed” which you cover the ground. You’ve got to swing your coil at a sloth pace...doing this, you’ll most likely end up overlapping your swings, and not unintentionally lifting up your coil off the ground on the ends of your swing path, which is critical!  Even if one does hunt at a sloth pace, when you think you’ve covered a site 100%, you need to go back again another 50-75 times 😁.  Sites with years of ferrous/non-ferrous strata take many years to strip mine the older targets (most of these types of sites never get completely hunted out).  Many th’ers give up at a site way too soon (their patience wears thin or their keeper finds are too few/far between to justify hunting the site further).  The typical site I hunt has been hunted by countless th’ers over decades (a common condition that exists for populous, old inner city turf across the country), so there’s really nothing earth shattering about the conditions, except that a tremendous amount of patience/persistence/perseverance is required to consistently produce finds from these sites, while many others who don’t possess those traits will move on to greener pastures.

4 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

This particular forum is comprised of people who use metal detectors to find gold nuggets. There are some heavy hitters here from around the world. It’s like a prospectors convention.

I’m not a prospector, but I read this section of DP often....maybe I will expand my horizons (after over 35 years of coin/jewelry/beach/turf th’ing)....I do own a PI machine (Whites TDI Pro for beach detecting).   I really like what Steve has done with this sub forum, providing a “fireside chat” feel where top experts in prospecting from around the world can express their opinions on the latest/greatest of prospecting machines.  Don’t need to change a thing here! It’s up to Steve anyway to share/lay out his vision of DP, and it’s one of the best....it’s the only forum on the Net that I’m regularly contributing to theses days.(after being a  member of 5 different forums in the past 14 years).

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Asking someone else for their settings has the advantage of a good starting point.  Andy Sabisch's book has several example settings which he got from experienced (at the time) ML Equinox users from multiple continents.  Those are helpful starting points.  Yes, some people take such things too literally and fail to realize they are suggestions of things to try, not to lock onto.

Hi GB......Yes, a successful hunter’s settings could be a good starting point for other th’ers who have the same machine and are willing to try any suggestions that are offered to them....likewise, there’s always a multitude of forumites willing to help another th’er out with detector issues....That’s what a moderately high % of detecting forums’ content is about...trying to minimize the learning curve of a machine.....Yet, no matter how much online help is given to some th’ers, for various reasons, the help given doesn’t “sink in” with the th’er.....it’s like the old adage, “A picture is worth 1000 words”.....it’s the time out in the field; comparing signals with other hunters who have the same machine as you; it’s the trial and error of settings at sites in your own hunt area....it’s breaking old/bad habits from previous machine experience....these are the most important prerequisites a th’er will need to acquire to be more confident/successful.  These traits take time to acquire...there’s no quick fix....some (“naturally gifted” ??) are able to acquire these traits much quicker (days/weeks) while others take much longer, (weeks/months)....Then there are some that need more time to acquire the necessary skills (beyond detector settings), but unfortunately give up too soon (too difficult), while others persist on (never say die attitude). A th’ers emotion/passion for the hobby, along with a willingness to never give up will lead them to a more productive/confident experience with whatever machine(s) has brought them “repeated” success during a multitude of hunts.

13 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

They key to knowing your detector is knowing how to appropriately balance the trade off between max detector performance settings and the environmental conditions at the site including ground conditions, EMI, and dealing with trash targets.

You really need to simply listen to what these experienced detectorists are telling you and apply the principles rather than constantly questioning their validity and motives.

Best of luck to you...

I remember the OP of this thread (he used the same username years ago on our local California forum (Kinzlis CA forum).  He was just learning his new CTX for beach hunting back then, and made similar quirky posts on that forum, trying to gain knowledge...I’m not mentioning this as a negative to the OP, but I believe this is his way of trying to learn a new machine....don’t think it’s the best way though, but he has been  consistent/persistent all these years (in his own way).
 

Along these same lines of “proper detector settings” for a particular site, I can’t even estimate how many times over the years I would receive a private msg from various forumites after I made an old coin post about what my settings on my machine were.....Someone else’s Detector settings may not be the correct settings for your ground/hunting environment.  Many just want an “easier way“ or a path of least resistance in becoming successful in their endeavor to be a highly confident/successful treasure hunter ...it’s a typical human trait....we can’t knock anyone for wanting an easier way to success, but in reality, not many endeavors in life come that easy......In order to find elusive targets (or sometimes any diggable/keeper target), especially in trash (Ferrous/non-ferrous), heavily mineralized ground conditions, or areas with moderate, varying EMI, will take more than “proper” machine settings....in other words, machine settings are only one part of the equation for success.  So many times, I would share my machine’s  settings  with various members across the country, but that typically wouldn’t lead to an increase in their keeper finds.  Coil control/speed, a very good ear for actual targets in noisy environments (noise tolerance), along with spending many hrs out in the field trialing/erring various settings along with other acquired detecting skills for most challenging sites is the only way to become a better hunter who’s brimming with the confidence of finding keeper targets, even before arriving at their hunting site.   I’ve seen many hunters never able to become comfortable with a new machine for various reasons they cannot fathom, and go back to their trusty machine they’ve grown used to for many years.  Sometimes a new machine will just click with a new user, other times it won’t.

Interesting perspectives on gold/silver value ratios.  It was never about how much dollar value I could find while detecting....for me, it was truly about the challenge of finding older/deeper targets from previously heavily detected parks/beaches that no one else has been able to find (including the targets that have eluded me in previous hunts).  This goal (mission statement) drove me to finding over 6000 silver coins and over 30,000 wheat pennies since 2007 (beach/turf combined).  Most likely, this mission statement evolved because of my location to countless older, silver coin era sites, coupled with the fact that I always wanted to better/challenge  myself at whatever I thoroughly enjoyed doing!

My gold jewelry finds, for the most part, were all incidentals in the turf (at the beach I dig mostly smooth sounding targets), but my gold finds (a little over 1.5 lbs of mixed karat values) far surpassed the value of my silver finds (including my sterling jewelry finds).  I had more satisfaction, though, in finding the elusive silver coinage, but I’d also admit that all of my gold ring finds that I found in ultra deep wet/dry sand (at the fringe of detection with a PI machine) were just as satisfying (and more physically demanding).

It was always more priceless to me to meet up with my local hunt buddies (I enjoy solo hunting also) and share in the camaraderie of the day in search of those elusive, deep, partially masked old coins/artifacts from heavily hunted sites...however, I never turned down a shallow gift from the gophers 🤣.

Looks like a 1/2 Real, Carolus IIII.  Here’s an informative site on these colonial era coins

https://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins.pl?coin=2334

Great find!! 👍🏼 

Fantastic finds, Chase!!  👍🏼  Beautiful silver you found...The bust coin is still on my bucket list, but I really haven’t hunted sites in my neck of the woods that give me a chance at finding one. Congrats on the relics also!

Hello Mitchel. Congrats on your dry sand silver half. 👍🏼 I vaguely remember your username from years ago (maybe on a different forum ??....it’s been a while). I hunt mostly turf,  and detected my local beaches for many a year south of you.

HH,
Dan