F350Platinum

Great stuff, and interesting theory. I wear the first Tungsten ring I found to aid with keeping my trigger finger straight. 😀 Hope you made some people happy with your finds, my wife is wearing the gold ring!

Thanks GB! It was fairly easy to find since it is marked Tootsietoy inside. I did not know that such things came in Cracker Jack in the 30s. I'm curious now as to when the toys got cheaper or non existent. Don't remember much that was great when I was a kid. I've looked inside the thimble as much as I can in it's mangled state. I don't see anything indicating sterling, so yeah I'm thinking some other alchemy. 😀 Gonna mow some mo' and hunt some mo'.

I used repellent today and it worked fine. The deerflies don't care about repellent but I managed to keep them away too. My county straight up doesn't have parks. I am considering emailing the county administrator to ask him if I can detect on some of the properties they own, and I used to work for the school so I could probably ask my stepson who runs the school maintenance. One of the school properties used to be where the school board was, and it was also a fairground for a while. There are lots of other people I know, real estate agents and the like. With a little effort I could have a lot more places to go. Kinda like being right around my house though. 😀

If it wasn't for you, Kac, and others on the forum I'd be skunked a lot more. Thanks for all your advice. Hopefully my progress is return enough. Got a couple of beach adventures coming up, so the future is bright. They're about to clear some land on that hill I find the Mason jar lids on too once the pipeline is flowing again and we can get fuel. Got a couple of coins out of there so far, and a Model T key. It's an old landfill that again has a 50 foot drop to the river. Can't dig to much because it's for sale. For the most part you don't get fooled too often. When I got the hang of ground balance I improved the quality of my finds, I didn't think it would work in water but it does. What the ID is, it probably is. Shotgun shells and now Mason jar lids are the things that always get me. In the fields it was lead shot, bullets and tacks. Just about every house in my neighborhood has a rifle or pistol range, and hunting is king here. I don't dig a lot of nails or iron because they ID well. Believe me when I say that the Equinox is very noisy everywhere but I don't tune it out. I'm sure there are targets I miss because of the iron so I've been digging more "iffys" lately. Should I use auto GB tracking in the water?

Thanks VL! I try to give a sense of what I'm going through without giving too much away. I assume some people on this forum live vicariously through others' posts when they can't get out or get skunked. I know I do, and lately I've been getting skunked. 🤪

I think the good stuff got tired of me digging it 😀 Seriously, right now I'm kicked out of the 400 acres of farm waiting on the corn. I've got some other places to go here but haven't got any new permissions. Most of the places other than the river are tough to get to and full of ticks and snakes. I've plucked 3 ticks already. The toy is probably worth about $20, it's not exceptionally rare. My wife asked me to put it on the kitchen window shelf, so I think it's hers now 😀 The river bottom is all a layer of fine beach sand, then a black oily and smelly layer, then a very sticky and heavy grey silt clay. Some places are risky to stand, if I wasn't wearing waders I'd lose my shoes. Very few rocks and no gravel. Where human habitation was there are oyster shell middens indicating it, either native or colonial. About 5-10 years ago we had a massive flood that took a lot of trees, so you run into natural barriers that force you to walk out into the deeper water. To get to the good stuff I wait until we get a negative tide, happens about once a month. I'm a little leery about going out too far. There are some remote places I haven't gone to yet but they are tough to get to, the ravines are 30-60 foot drops and the bottoms are marsh. I tried to find a Baptism place but it's so overgrown it's almost impossible to get to except by the river. Think I'll have to get another boat 🤔

Usually the thimbles I find are brass or some variation and a lot older. This one gave the same ID as one of those reales I dug, and it came out as you see it. I later used a little Wright's silver polish on it and it brightened up a bit, some tarnish came off. It's cracked in one spot and I don't see any copper or brass. Could be nickel silver. I looked them up and some are sterling, but this one has no purity marks. Victorian era women used to have a belt bag with thimbles, thread, scissors and other stuff in it according to my research. Kinda a quick repair kit for all the buttons that kept popping off, I think by then women were allowed to have them too 🤔

Thanks Chase. I thought I'd already put too many photos up, but this is what I pulled out of the ground today, I was in a "dig it all" mood:

Back from a few days away at a campground, almost got them to let me detect the lake beach and an old farm, but someone made a snap judgement and said "we don't want you digging". 😵 Oh well. Got a few hours in on the river, the tides weren't low at all so I stayed closer to shore. Couldn't get to the area where I found the Brown Bess buttplate, and really didn't find much of interest. I tried a lot of the suggestions I got such as digging negative numbers, one-way positives, and faint signals but pretty much got what I expected from this place: Iron, copper nails and screws, and junk. Went the other way up river and got fishing gear, and old boat copper plate. 😀 It's a beautiful place, I park my cart and walk 10 feet to the water. At high tide there's no beach, most low tides have about 3 feet. Once it was about 6 -10'. During the week I don't have to worry about boaters even in the summer, most of the boaters have weekend cottages. Today I saw a kayaker and one boat, but I wasn't in the river, I was on the landing. Dug a ton of junk but came away with two interesting relics before the deerflies got too troublesome. Nice 1800s silver thimble, a 17/18. It is inscribed "Forget Me Not", a common gift for a woman in the Victorian era. Too bad it's a bit mangled. Got a 15/16, thought oh great, another pull tab, and dug this, it made my day: 1930s Cracker Jack Tootsietoy "Zephyr". 90 years and it still has its paint. You just never know what's out there.

The Equinox goes from 5-40 Khz when in MultiIQ, both the 600 and the 800 do. Single selectable frequencies are limited on the 600, 15 Khz is as high as it goes. With update 3 they added 4 Khz.

Hey VL, Reverse image search (Google Lens) will work great with a coin or token if you take a picture of both sides with the text upright. One side or the other will get a hit. It's much harder to identify stuff that is crooked or upside down. It's hard to determine which way is up sometimes! 🤪 Chinese "Cash" coins are particularly tricky.

Haha you're going to love this. 😁 It's a marijuana grinder top. Can't get you the link, but I found one exactly the same. Device looks like a 6 gun cylinder, you take the top off, fill it and grind your weed. It's called the following in Spanish: CONTENEDOR MOLEDOR HOJAS MARIA MARIHUANA FORMA BARRIL REVOLVER PICADOR RALLADOR BALA BALAS Which Translates to: SHEET GRINDER CONTAINER MARIA MARIJUANA BARREL SHAPE REVOLVER CHOPPER GRATER BULLET BULLETS Yep.

Welcome to the forum! I've only been here a while - a little less than the time I've been metal detecting, but I can tell you that if you have the money the Equinox is a great choice. I first bought a Garrett ACE 400 because I went from online reviews, which are slanted at the very least. It's a great machine, I found lots of stuff with it, but "outgrew" it quickly in favor of a waterproof machine. I have many different places I can detect. My choice then became the difference between the Nokta Simplex+ and the Equinox, as both are waterproof. The dealer told me I'd never regret buying the Equinox 600. He was right. I have since used a Simplex and while it is very good the Equinox is much easier to set up and operate, and is definitely worth the extra $$. I mostly prefer relic hunting but my first trip(s) to a beach netted me 51 coins, a gold ring, a stainless ring and a Tungsten band that I now wear as Trigger Finger relief. 😀 So I'll pass that advice on to you.

Outstanding. What do you use to dig this stuff? Your retrieval rate is fast. I dug 51 coins and 3 rings in Savannah over 4 days - probably about 20 hours, but I'm new, and the beach was crowded. I'm sure most of it is experience and one heckuva great detector, but a 14" hole is a bit of work.

Interesting find! Bravo. 🙂

In the brackish water I hunt, and the beach I went to a few weeks ago (first one), my Carrot is/was useless in the water. Is there one that isn't? The Equinox pinpointer works great, but in shallow water filled holes it would be nice so I don't have to keep scooping or digging. "Duh" update: just saw a vid on how to tune it. 🤦

Wow! Nice haul. Don't recognize any of the coins but duh. Any silver? The only gold ring I've found so far was a 5. So was a lot of other junk. 😵 Good to see some finds!

I've read a lot of reviews and musings on this forum, the top two seem to be the Garrett Propointer AT, and the Fisher F-pulse. I have two Propointers. I'm interested in the F-pulse.

Certainly what I wrote isn't gospel 😀 but it is a fact that non-Minelab devices (I have 4 or 5) can take up to two minutes or more to pair. I've never seen it be immediate, and I have timed it. Can't mention any Minelab devices because I don't have any. On a rare occasion or two I have initialzed both the Equinox and the headphones before attempting to pair them. I turn the Equinox on first because I want it to pass its WiFi search before pairing a non-Minelab device. I agree that the happy bootup sounds it makes can be a bit of a shock.

Just an aside, every device I have ever paired to my Equinox 600 took at least two to a few minutes. Patience is a virtue, and I always turn on the device before the detector afterward. You should also make sure Bluetooth is off on your phone.

I've never detected without one, except when the battery died 😀 keeps the holes smaller.

What are the coins? Is the Jefferson old? Not a fan of those copper washers, always a great signal. 😵 The drawer pull is cool, I can almost hear the ring tapping on an old mahogany desk.

I swear, they must have sprinkled grommets everywhere in the past. 😀 Wonder what the significance is. Dug a whole line of IHP's near a shallow well, much truth to RR's post. Think I got 6 or 7.

All great suggestions. Nokta does seem to be a rising star. I'd want waterproof which is why I'm reluctant with the Apex. The Equinox is doing just fine, and lots of people are giving me great tips. The Coiltek 10x5 has been preordered, got on Gerry's list.

That would be interesting! The Nokta worked great here, haven't tried it on the water, but I dug some buttons and wheats. Isn't the Tarsacci sound kind of "bitty" like the Simplex? When the tide is low there's a lot of "beach", you're welcome anytime that I'm not camping 😀 Some of it is kinda hard to get to but the water is getting warm. Almost walked across the river to that curved spit, but that's when I found the flintlock buttplate. Been thinking of a backup, maybe the Apex?