mn90403

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

That is a great looking bracelet. I wasn't able to hunt as long as you did but I used the 800/11 and it hits pretty deep in the damp sand. I tried some long walks with Beach2 in the low tide areas and it produced very little. It makes me wonder what a PI would do. One night I was out and there were a couple of PI guys and they were getting targets but very far between. That is the staging area so when the sand gets moving they are released and then thrown up the hill with the crusty quarters. I agree on the best week this year. I found a ring every day except today. I'll post the hunts up after I get the pictures. Mitchel

Take a chance on calling the claim owner and tell them you can do a survey for them at no charge if they let you keep what you find. Sign a waiver for them so if you get hurt they are not liable. There are still a few claim owners that will let you hunt if you ask them in the right way.

Simon, You caught a glimpse of modern California. That scene is near the bike path and where some of the homeless travel between Venice and Santa Monica beaches. I am always down near the water and away from that area where this action was taking place. I doubt that she lost the ring. Mitchel

Who makes that coil?

Thanks for the look. That one was the last ring I found. It just happened to be a 20 but it is a cheap copper 'outsider' as I call them. It was a single and no other pennies were around so the waves kinda separated it into its own area. Its weight and number give me the impression that it is probably copper.

As Joe said, it needs a better background but I'm photo challenged right now without a light box that I once had. My phone doesn't take very good pictures and I should trade it in and get another one. I don't understand the maker mark. It is that oval shape with very small icon inside.

When it is a 14k/6g/33 diamond ring! And then there were 4 other cheap rings to go along with it and two cheap chains. These were from the same beach that had next to nothing on it for over a week. In addition to that loot there were lots of other targets. After I found the first ring and the gold ring in my 3 hour plus session I decided to switch from Beach 1 to Park 1. It just bangs harder on the coins and targets on the damp beach sand better than the B1 that I have used for years now. It also seemed easier to pinpoint. If I went down to the black sand line it would get noisy at 23 or 24 so these were all targets up the slope in a very compressed beach. I found nearly nothing on my mile hike in and same hike back out because there was nothing in the wet and the top had been waved over/blown out without a cut. It was a glorious full moon night with no one on the beach and most thankfully no other detectorists. Mitchel

Were we going to see a picture of the earring?

I just happened across this video and thought I'd post it. I still find any of these simple videos to not include 'off the coil' sensing of a target. They show field restricted to just the edges of the coil. We all know the field is larger than the coil. I say I'm drawn to some of my targets like a moth to a flame. Some days I am better at this than others. It's the FRINGE that can make a difference.

Now that makes me feel 'bad' all over again! Can I ever skip a penny and not wonder? haha My wife says she will never skip one.

A couple of night ago I did a beach session hoping to take advantage of a bit of surf and wind waves I had seen in the afternoon. In that afternoon session I couldn't find any surf/wet targets but I did find one silver band in dry sand using Park 1. I thought there would be some low tide waves so I went back out from 1-3 AM. I walked about a mile before I found my first penny and then I got to my spot where the wave energy had been concentrated. I picked up a few coins and junk and headed back to where I started. I stopped to look at my settings and noticed that I had tracking off and I turned it on in Beach 1/23/50/6/0F2. I went about 20 feet and I got a 20 target number. That is a number I skip sometimes when I am 'saving' myself from making too many holes. To my surprise there was a ring in my scoop and in my light it looked pretty good! It looked like a ruby and diamonds but it was a 20! What gives with that? Here are the other items I found on the hunt. This was the same beach I couldn't find much just a couple of days before and when I gridded it I had been skipping some of the 20 signals because those are all pennies, right? Now I had just found this ring and it felt good but I didn't have my glasses. How many rings did I skip by not digging all of my 20s? When I got home I checked the ring. Cheap and not gold. Nice looking and I was disappointed but then I realized that the decision to skip many of the 20s (pennies) was a good choice so I could dig a quarter. One quarter equals 25 penny holes. The cheap ring made me feel 'good' if you get what I'm saying. This afternoon I went to a different beach and it is also normally a producer but not now. Near the end I finally got a 'round sound' at 10. This makes me anticipate. It was a ring but a black, stainless steel ring. Not valuable either. Wave intervals are over 15 so I don't expect much up and I'll have to spend more time wading and get lucky for the old stuff as few swimmers are around for new drops. It is always a learning experience to get out. Mitchel

I just read this story to my wife. She got a chuckle and obviously could see some of 'me' in the story. When I was done I was going to tell her about my night beach hunt. I went to my pouch and emptied all of the finds and couldn't find the ring. Where is the ring? I couldn't tell her the story about the night without the ring. Long story short, I searched where I remember putting it several times and looked in other 'likely' spots. I looked in the tray of finds. Was I going crazy? Finally I decided to look behind the shelf where I 'remembered' putting it and somehow it had moved from the bag to behind that little bookshelf and wedged itself against the wall. My memory was good but my placement was bad. Mitchel

This is the real story!

You gotta love a big rock. What were the numbers on the Nox? Mitchel

She was looking for gold nuggets in the Golden Triangle and found these instead ... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8472753/Amateur-metal-detector-finds-FOURTEEN-extremely-valuable-sovereign-coins.html

Oh, my ... 51 gold in ONE DAY!

I agree about the video. It reminds me of stories I heard while growing up near Jacksonville Beach, Florida about how some guys would go out to the old fishing piers there and dig around the pilings and found coins and chains in the 50s and 60s. I didn't see it done but was told about it. To have an area like the Chesapeake with its couple hundred years of history it has to be a bit exciting to go out hunting that way with a efficient detector. Now think of the Mediterranean! Then the early metal detecting days of the Caribbean and ... Stimulates the brain

I asked Joe how many gold rings he has found and he told me near 800! That is an incredible number in my book. It gave me pause to think about some of my local 'legendary' local beach detectorists. I have not met one. His name is Walker. I have met another one Tim Tidd and he told me about other local legends. Over on the nugget forum we have several 'legends' contribute to the discussions there. One is Reg Wilson among several others. Here is a link to a project Reg is working on to preserve the memories. So, who are the LEGENDS of the Beach? What are some stories you can share about them? I know some are still hard at work at enhancing their legends but I don't go to other forums. Are you a LEGEND and want to share a bit of your lifetime successes with us? There are legends that hide and many who would never visit a website I would imagine but let's try to change that. Mitchel

I don't quite get your terminology but I get your results! Well done. If this is #56 for this year how many is it for your career? Mitchel

Thanks for the responses. I'm hoping for the tells on the modulation as well. It is certainly a helpful feature of a good detector to let you interrogate your target before, during and after you dig it. It makes for a better learning experience going into the next targets. It produces detector memory (mental memory, muscle memory) which gives us the feeling we're on to something good. Modulation just happens to be what I consider to be a weak spot of the Equinox 800 I have. (I never felt that way about the 3030 or Explorer SE Pro) I'm still surprised sometimes by the mass of some targets. I can sometimes anticipate the target by tracing the size but not always. Mitchel