F350Platinum

That's what the owner said. 😀 They're going to knock the house down when they can.

Well as quickly as it ramped up it fell off. 🤔 Still finding clad and modern coins tho. 😀 Dug all these in one hole this morning save for a nickel near the hunt club. Second time this has happened here. 🥳 There is a spot throwing high tones, but I've dug a foot and keep finding brick. Just this one little spot. Going to ask if I can use a bigger shovel there. One side and the back of the house will be available late winter.

Thanks GB. The condition of the half dollar, Mercury Dime, and 1958 D quarter are quite surprising, despite the lack of high value. This was probably the best few days I have had since I started. The British penny looks good thanks to Les Crayons à André, I'm getting pretty good at using them. I only rinsed the silver coins being careful not to scratch them. This is what it looked like out of the ground, at first I couldn't tell what it was:

Just read this whole thread, pretty cool you are coming back albeit penitently. 🙂 Post some photos of your finds... Please! 😀 I wasn't here when you first posted, sad you had so much trouble with the 800. I have had a 600 since last December and have had great success with it. The first thing I was told was "Just unplug and go at first, don't overthink it". I took that advice and then joined this forum. At first and for the first few months I didn't even ground balance, only ran noise cancel now and again because of all the military aircraft overhead. EMI was a problem others had. Didn't run into that until my first beach trip, and first campground permission, I found switching to 10kHz put me right back in the game. The earlier I got out on the beach the less EMI from cell phones, and the campground is full of underground wires. I used Field 2 a lot but then found that Park 1 went deeper. I can go back to a place I previously hunted now and find nothing, or stuff I probably didn't swing the coil over. Heck at the beach I was digging stuff over a foot down. 😵 Happy the Vanquish seems to be a match, I've been tempted to break out the Garrett Ace 400 and go over some of the places I've "cleaned out" to see if I am just whistlin' Dixie. 😀

Great thought! I'll have to ask the owner, he says his grandmother is still around, she's 85 so that doesn't add up. She would have been born in 1936. 🤔 Maybe a couple of generations lived there, but I'm not finding older stuff. Or, his grandfather married a MUCH younger woman... 😳 The story is half of the farmhouse/field part of the hobby IMO. Appreciate the suggestion.

Thanks! He gave me another permission yesterday, a field he owns next to an 1800s farmhouse. He doesn't own the farmhouse tho but it runs very close. 🤬 This house I hunted must have been built in the early 1900s, oldest coin I found there is the 1907 British penny. I did find a very old button next to the cornfield. I dug a pocketknife from a hotel that wasn't around after 1924. The place is so overgrown it's tough to navigate, there isn't much of a backyard and it's surrounded by impenetrable stuff right now. Hoping to get back there and on the side in late winter.

Your snakes are a lot worse than ours, I'll give ya that. Our copperhead is venomous but not particularly deadly. Mostly nasty infections result, your foot will look like a soccer ball. The black snake can grow to about 8 feet, not venomous and will try to escape when seen. If it gets cornered it will bite. Infection. As for rattlesnakes, we have the western and eastern diamondback, Texas to Florida, and the timber rattle snake in the mid Atlantic. The Diamondbacks are deadly. There are other varieties. In my area the black snake is either loved or reviled. On one hand if you have one around your house there won't be any mice trying to get in, on the other they hang from trees, sun themselves on your sidewalk, or rest on your RV stairs. 😀 I surprise them now and again out detecting. Used to see a lot of copperheads out riding trail bikes.

I checked mine, it may make some noise when bumped, but it doesn't have the problem when tweaking the "ears". It does seem to be a lot more sensitive to EMI. Using the 11" in an area that the 5x10 had to be switched to 10kHz, I found I was able to run the 11" in Multi. 🤔

I'm assuming it wouldn't be a good idea to hunt the old home place then? 😳 Here people worry about copperheads, I know a couple of people that have been bit, and I've seen them but quite a few years ago. We have a lot of black snakes, I killed one a couple years ago that was all over my RV, but was sad afterward because she was hunting the mice that had gotten in. She was 5' long. A lot of people here mistake the northern water snake for a copperhead, like black snakes they are more afraid of you. 😀

Looked at it closely with a loupe, and tested it with a diamond tester. The stone had lots of deep scratches, and it's not a crystal. Most likely paste or glass. It is very cool though, the setting is very old but not cast, it's stamped and plated, very fragile. I'm thinking mid 1800s to 1900s. Glad you got me to think of doing that! 👍

Makes me want to break out the Ace 400! 😀 Interesting challenge... 🤔

Great work, love the... Oak? 🤔 That's a fascinating slide-in rig you did there. I can get some custom cases at the metal detector shop I go to now and again. This one is cedar. The maker uses wood pins.

Well she is getting a bit antsy about all the Riker cases I'm filling up. Just had to get 3 more. 😀

Thanks. I think it's a fish scale, the hill is overlooking the river. Probably one that looks like this:

EMI is apparently a problem with my Coiltek coil, I've had scenarios (especially near power lines) where I've had to switch to 10kHz with the 10x5 where I had no problem in Multi with the 11", and sensitivity turned down to 21. 10kHz is the only frequency it goes silent on, but the ID's are similar and always there if a target is there. I run the little monster at 24 sensitivity almost all the time, but turning it down in Multi does help. I also have some of the issues that @DoKKK had with the coil. Haven't done a full test of that yet but might when I put it back on. Did you watch that video? I'm using Park 1 for the most part now because I'm hunting in yards. I like the Go/No go way it responds to targets, with enough digital ID's to identify. I especially use it at campgrounds, in just a few days on two visits I found over 300 coins at one place, about 1 every 4 minutes. It was shooting fish in a barrel. As for masking and separation, it is better. I've found coins under nails in places I've already searched with the 11". I can't wait to go over the farm in the fall. There are spots out there that are loaded with iron and lead, but the 10x5 does seem to add the good ID in with the bad ones. If you get a bunch of tones and IDs you should dig. It's great for getting closer to stuff, searching in stubble (but apparently not wheat 😉), and searching between trees and under bushes. If you can get one it would probably be an asset. Mine is an early one I was lucky enough to buy from a forum member, they may improve newer coils. For sure it's a lot lighter and easier to maneuver than the big guy, and you only sacrifice about an inch of coverage.

I coulda done some depth tests by burying stuff and trying the detector with each coil on it, but for me that's too much work. 😀 My hypothesis was that if the 11" stock coil could find more stuff deeper than the 10x5 did I'd... eat my hat I guess. The other issue is my shovel, it's a Predator Barracuda that only digs down about 8". In practical use only about 6". There aren't any deeper targets where I ran both coils, despite that house being there for over 100 years. At the beach I was hitting stuff over a foot down, they put a foot of new beach over the old one. It didn't take too many deep holes with my scoop and trowel to figure that out. Got all the coins and jewelry and cool relics that yard had to offer for sure.

Beautiful ring. 👍 You can get one of these to test stones, it won't tell the difference between a lab diamond or Moisannite, but it works good and is cheap. Sadly I dug a diamond earring that turned out to be a CZ. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08MTG5NHJ This or any of the clones in this genre should work well. Luckily my wife has a few real diamonds and Moisannites to test. 😀 Follow the instructions to the letter and fakes will be shown as fakes.

Brood X cicada photographed last week, it had just come out. 😁 I was at the farmhouse and spotted it from about 25' away, thought it was a snake at first. It's about 4" long. Welcome back GB!

Ok, today I braved the heat and humidity, but it's almost 90 now (headed to 95) and humidity is headed into the 70s. 😵 I'm done. Put the 11" stock coil back on and ran over a front yard that I thought I cleaned out with my 10x5. Honestly I gave the 11" every possible chance to beat the 10x5, sensitivity cranked to 24, Park 1, iron balance F2=3 (max on the 600), both multi and 10kHz which is what I had to run the 10x5 in because EMI. I even used recovery speed of 2, which is 1/3 less fast than the max 3. If anything was deeper it would have found it. First thing I noticed was that I could run the 11" in multi, the 10x5 is way too sensitive, as another poster noted in his excellent video: The next thing was that I only found one more relic (jackknife) and it was not very deep, about 5-6" down. Because of its size I'm pretty sure I missed it because either it gave too much of an iron tone with the hotter coil, or I just plain missed it. Dooners Hotel existed from 1883 to 1924 and then was replaced by a Federal Reserve building. It catered only to men apparently, no idea why. 😀 Point is that while the 10x5 is a very hot and sometimes noisy coil, it goes silent at 10kHz with heavy EMI and cuts stuff out of the ground like a knife. It really is a killer coil. I went back and searched the place I found those silver coins and there was nothing, too. Feel free to analyze my methods critically, but I'd say I may not use the 11" coil much.

Luckily I was able to skip buying a lot of detectors to find the best one for the (my) job. A lot of people including me will search for "best metal detector 2021". I've since learned not to do that. I think it's safe to say that advertisers "own" the internet, and looking for the best of anything gets scripted results pushing one in the direction of those who pay the most to get their products sold. No, the real best way to find a great detector is to join a forum like this one, and second to visit a shop that sells only metal detectors. The shop I went to sells all the major brands, Garrett, Fisher, Nokta Makro, Minelab, XP, and probably others I don't know. I went there with the Simplex+ in mind, I was looking for a detector that at least would ground balance, because I thought the fact that the Ace 400 didn't have it was the problem with all the chatter. The owner is a major civil war relic hunter. His shop is full of finds, and people are in all the time picking up or delivering relics that are to be or have been restored. It's your first clue it's a great place to buy a detector. He also has used detectors for sale. His son and I looked at the Equinox 800 , the Deus, and the Simplex, and really liked the Simplex for its price , ground balancing, and water resistance. The 800 was about 3 times the price, and the Deus (which he uses) was about 4 times more expensive. A guy came in and bought an Equinox 600. After he left I got a chance to talk to the owner, he asked where and what I hunt for, and told me that if I could scratch up the extra $$ the Equinox 600 would be all I need. He knows where I live and what is here. It was about 2.5x the price of the Simplex, which he told me straight up would not do it for me. I bought the Equinox, and haven't regretted it. Yes it is an unplug and go detector, but once I got the hang of tweaking - and it took a while, probably a mind change more than anything - it performs much better, and that is all thanks to the people on this forum. I have since tried a Simplex and it really doesn't compare, but I don't think it was meant to in all fairness to Nokta. A Simplex+ would be a great starting detector, don't know about the F75. It does much of what the higher end machines do (GB, waterproof) at a very low price. If you never used a higher end machine you wouldn't know what you are missing, and would probably be fine. I wish it was my first, but it definitely won't be the last 😀

The internet in general is no help either, I bought a Garrett Ace 400 as a result of a lot of searching for the best detector in my price range. It wasn't until I walked into a real metal detector shop that someone took pity on me and highly recommended the Equinox. He is a very honest and experienced detectorist who also sells detectors. The Ace found a lot of stuff, but was quite frustrating. I can tune the Equinox down to quiet and pretty much know exactly what I am going to dig.

Welcome! I'm a year into detecting, enjoying the hobby more than I thought I might. I imagine I have much more to learn myself. This forum is the best out there if you have technical questions or want to upload photos of your finds. What detector(s) are you using? What sort of places do you hunt?

That's a lot of ground to cover. Nice turtles though. Can't tell the scale. Jewelry?

😀 He will probably get Steve's apologetic email and realize the forum is back up. He is my favorite numismatist.

You're welcome 🙂 The Minelab headphones (at least the ones for the Equinox) have a reputation for being kinda cheesy. Chase Goldman recently posted a great wrap up of headphones to date that are superior or somewhat better than the ML headphones: Check it out!