mn90403

I've told myself for months it was time to go out with the 5000 and the Coiltek Platypus mono coil and try for some deep targets. Last night was the night. I think I learned more about my beach then I did about the detecting setup. This is the coil: https://www.seriousdetecting.com/product/coiltek-12-x-8-platypus-mono-300x220mm-for-minelab-sd-gp-gpx-series-detectors/ I don't have any pictures of finds because it was all junk except for 2 pennies. I went out to a low tide wet area where I never find much with the Equinox 800 and I didn't find much with this either. I was going after deep targets and I got a few aluminum can bottoms at 15 inches plus. I had my giant scoop for the task so I didn't have to give up on the targets like I would with an arm scoop. What I learned is that with these conditions there just wasn't a patch of targets in the 'staging area' waiting to be washed up on the shore. Maybe they are farther out. I mostly used the 5000 in Salt/Gold and I was really able to go as high as I wanted with the gain. (For about 20 minutes I used fine gold but it had a hum when I swung.) I stayed around 16 for the 2 hours I hunted. I used my harness that I got with the detector in 2010 and a hipstick but it is a heavy load for me right now. It started to hurt my back between the heavy scoop and the detector. I cancelled my long walk style that I do with the 800. I was trying to go places where I would go with an AQ. I may have learned enough to not want one of those now. I was impressed that the battery worked fine and has not been charged much since I got a Z for the desert. I'll use this setup again on a better conditioned beach that has more targets but it is just not that much better at depth for it to be my regular detector. Mitchel

There are lots of 'nuggets of wisdom' buried in Steve's forums. Do we just stumble across it or is there a way to 'grid it' and get better stuff?

What Simon? I read the thread ... 80% and it reminded me of the current AQ threads. A lot of stuff here.

Gold strikes again. I just saw an old post of yours as OBN on TN from about 6 years ago. I should read more of your posts there. Mitchel

Let's bring up an old thread and see what happens!

I tumble coins in a Harbor Freight tumbler and always do the Amazon thing. This last year has seen a much lower account total. One year I had someone 'hack' my gift certificate online and they bought a camera with it and had it delivered to an Amazon locker in NYC. Amazon was informed before the drop but they let it go anyway. They made me 'whole' because they were at fault but those 'purchases' stayed on my account for about a year before they removed them from my profile. I had kept my gift certificate online rather than lose the paper. If you lose the Coinstar paper you are sol. If you have a lot of pennies that won't go through Coinstar or any other machine you can still cash them in. If you end up with pounds of them you can get the Federal Reserve Bank to accept them. I've looked it up and I think they will just weigh what you bring to them or send through the banking system and give you an estimate. An alternative to this is what a friend of mine does. He has always taken his unspendable change to his bank and they give him the face value and then they get recovery from the Fed. All those coins I've thrown away add up to several hundred dollars (maybe the value of a new detector). Mitchel

My recent calls to Minelab in Chicago generally end up in me leaving a message but I do get a call back. Don't try to keep calling to get someone live or you will waste time.

Randy's comments here may be of interest because he wears hearing aids.

Norm, I'd get in touch with your dealer first. Back when I first got my 800 some people were talking about a better bluetooth and I bought one set of headphones that I use as a backup now. This is the website: https://avantree.com/all-products Here is a search where people talk about them and alternatives here: https://www.detectorprospector.com/search/?&q=avantree&search_and_or=and&sortby=relevancy

Well done and as Joe said good to see you here. Mitchel

Closer to 4 hours (12 AM -4 AM) than to 3 hours actually. There is 'something' on most every beach if you have enough time to find the patches or walk the line. Last night was a challenge because there really wasn't a black sand line. The wind waves had blown in a lot of little stuff and seaweed. I think that is why I found the lite little gold ring. It appears to be a recent loss. Down at the other part of the beach the little waves were concentrated and washed up the crusted ring shell. That was right in the last bit of wave before dry sand. I don't wade or snorkel like Joe either.

We don't have a very good wave pattern and we don't have super low tides yet but I did manage to get a 3 ring night. To my surprise I got some gold in the scoop. It is 2.7 g and it hit on 9 with the Nox 800. This ring and other light trash came from a 3+ hour hunt along some of my same beaches. You have to check the producers before someone else does. When I saw the gold and saw the sparkle I wanted it to be a big diamond. I didn't have my glasses so I had to wait and confirm the 14k. After I got out my diamond tester and bummer ... it doesn't heat up. I'm not giving up on it entirely but I think the tester is accurate. I tested my cluster ring from last week and it says those are diamonds. I tested another solitaire ring and it lit the light. I was actually hunting the 'staging area' in the wet water and wet sand most of the night. I walk around in calf boots to protect my feet. Last night I walked long distances but I also had to be careful to listen for the 'little' sounds which is what the gold ring was. The mass of the ring is just not a boomer at any depth but this was 4" and I knicked it with the scoop. I did that on this one because I always dig for where the rod goes into the ground. The truth of the matter is that the target is above that closer to the Minelab logo or the top edge of the coil. I didn't get above it quite high enough. I can get it smoothed out if I want to keep the cz on it that way. Mitchel

I went out for a late beach swing because I had an hour or two. If I found something I'd stay but as it turns out I didn't charge the Nox. This was my 4th trip on it. So the trip was cut short but not until after I found a little ring. It came it at 17 on beach 1. It was 6-7" down. There were so few other targets I knew I needed to dig it. Soon after I found it the volume dropped significantly and I looked at the battery indicator and it was flashing. I had about 20 minutes after that before it died. So this little ring has a great bit of trauma that I didn't cause. It would be interesting to know why that happened. It weighs just 1.7g and the marking on the inside is RSC. I looked for that marking online and some say it is a gold mark and some say it is a maker's mark. What say you?

https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=231125 https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=231258

Good hunt and them bummer! Better days ahead. Mitchel

A good video and well earned nugget. There is still a lot of gold in Victoria but I didn't find much when I was there. The Aussie Gold Hunters found a patch of very nice nuggets. Mitchel

The entire nugget was 'green' when I found it. The 5 hours in the tumbler gave it some character. I also have bought a bit copper nugget from Michigan at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show but it didn't look quite like this. I also don't remember it being quite so heavy but the GREEN tips it off. I still don't know where I found it but now I'm thinking desert. Thanks Rob.

Every two weeks the BLM makes available the latest updates to its system that can be 'dumped' into 3rd party 're-publishers' who can update their systems. That is what happens every two weeks on My Land Matters. If you want to use the LR2000 on the BLM website it could be just a few days more current than My Land Matters. As stated now recordings and updates are behind because of the virus.

It was in the same tumble but it is not silver.

You may be right. My wife now thinks I probably found it on the beach as she doesn't remember me showing her after a desert hunt. It didn't have any of the gold color parts on it when I found it. Those are the tumble marks.

The last few months I haven't been out nugget hunting. I've been on the beach and a couple of parks. My posts have been in the jewelry forum. It was time to tumble those coins and clean them up for use and maybe see if there was a missed silver. I have 'limited' shelf space to keep things and I sometimes just pour things together waiting for a time to tumble. Last night before I went to sleep I did my 3rd tumble and just dumped a cup of stuff into it and got up this morning to take a look and dry the coins. Well I had stuck in a few crusty pieces of jewelry and a couple of odd finds that were not iron. I don't remember where I got them or when. After I saw the result of the tumbling I was amazed at one of the pieces. The weight is 12.8 g and I went and air tested it on my Nox and it says 11. Neither of these things jogs my memory as to where I got it. I do know I had saved this piece and a couple of other 'hot rocks' that were odd to me and they weren't magnetic. There is a 'chance' even that I got this nugget on a beach and that was the reason it has the green color. I just don't recall and I don't think I took a picture of it with my 'finds of the day' which I often times do. I would rush out to my coin dealer with an XRF gun and get the analysis but I think they are closed because of the pandemic. When I picked it out of the coins (after 5 hours) this morning and saw the polished parts and then still the other parts holding the green I was reminded of both gold and copper. I think it may be mostly copper and didn't polish more because it is hard but I also think the density is greater than just copper. What are your thoughts on the mystery nugget? I've included different angles. Don't restrict your thinking to just beach finds. This could also and I think more probable that it is a desert find that I saved but the corrosion ...

That will do it. A German Shepard is the only dog that ever bit me. I was a kid and it was a relatives dog but he got me on the arm and he was on a chain. I know they can be great but I pay them great respect. (I mostly avoid them but don't fear them.)

Well, I just couldn't let it go. I had another ring 'disappear' from my car one day. I knew it had been on the seat. The seat had been cleaned up and it wasn't me. I asked enough questions and searched enough spots to know it had been thrown away in the dumpster the night before! We went out and searched it and there it was in the bottom. We have people go through our dumpsters all the time for bottles and cans and many mornings they are dumped so that was really lucky.

Yes, I only threw two pieces of glass in the trash so I guess it 'lodged' in one when I took them out of the pouch. It dropped in the sand before the glass made it to the can. This is what I thought happened when I couldn't find the ring. There were two places it could be. Has anyone else done this?

Yesterday I went out on a hunt. It was at my 'bit beach' which produced the gold cluster ring on Sunday. I skipped this beach on Tuesday because I went down to a beach about one hour south but that is another story. Yesterday the finds were 'thin' as the wave action had taken some of the targets back down the slope and I had also found many of them. As I was detecting I started to think about these waves and the slope and the thought came to me that I was getting good targets on this slope because the targets had been moved by wave energy. The targets had been moved by gravity and tides to the 'staging area' and when the waves came at the right angle and tide they were cast up to be found. I had looked at the energy charts for surfing and there was a lot of energy even tho the intervals were long. So these waves broke loose the sand and over came the gravity holding the targets in place and sent them 'flying' high up the slope. Now I'm just going to call them 'anti-gravity' waves for short. I'll look for storm or swell events that will create these anti-gravity waves to kinda use a science fiction term for beach hunting. During all of this idle thought getting targets I got another two rings. I got these in spite of two other detectorists coming on to my little beach but they hunted the blanket line and not the slope. The second ring looked to be silver and I put it in my Minelab pouch along with the other finds and trash. When I got home I told my wife I got another couple of rings and some change but I couldn't find the silver ring. I went back out to the car where I had emptied the pouch and it wasn't there. Where could it be? It was time for me to take my son to the park so I told my wife we were off but I went back to the beach first. I had emptied my pouch in the parking lot and I wanted to check there. It was not at my parking place. The only other place I could look would be near the trash can. I had taken some ragged glass bottle tops off the beach and put them in my pouch when I first started. As I was leaving the beach I stopped at a trash can to throw them away. I don't normally do this but ... So my son and I go to the trash can and I hunt around it with the detector without my headphones. I don't hear or see anything but I look in the can and I see that the beach maintenance people have taken a Styrofoam cooler with a lot of old french fries and other food garbage and put it in the can. I was certain this was the can but I couldn't find my broken glass. My son couldn't wait so off we went to play. About 30 minutes later it was time to go and I wanted to give one last chance to find the ring, again. This time I laid the can down and dug through all of the wet stuff and mess. The seagulls started gathering around. My son is looking in the can with me and we see the bottom. I find one of the glass tops but no ring. Luckily there were not many people around or someone would have wondered about an old man and a toddler looking through the beach trash. I wondered about it myself. It was just a ring. I put all the stuff back in the can and set it up with no ring. I wasn't going to have a happy ending. After I set the can back up I turned on the Nox and swung it about 3 feet from the can and I heard the 24-25 I was looking for. Sure enough it was the ring. We went on to the park. After I showed the ring to my wife and said here was that other ring. She knew nothing about the 'story' until I told on myself at dinner. She got a good laugh and so did I. Here is that cheap little silver ring. These are the other finds from the day. The day after I found the 5 rings which included the gold I found 3 more rings. That would be Monday. One is a silver bow-tie ring. The beach hunt I went to on Wednesday didn't produce much there was a stainless steel ring. Finally I have some other 'find' pictures without a story but that makes for 12 rings this week. The End