F350Platinum

I wasn't planning on doing any detecting this weekend, but for the last couple of days the field behind my house was cleared for construction, so after everyone left (I have permission), I grabbed my Manticore with the M15 and went back there to see if there was anything in the cleared area. It's pretty small but it took 3 hours to hunt it. I've found some extremely old stuff back here, it's right behind my house. Got a minimum of trash, just some lead and a tack: And I scored a few finds: A Type 2 collar badge circa 1919-1937, an IHP and a wheat with no dates, what looks like a watch key, and a "Paris" buckle. Probably post WW1, it was buried about a foot down. The collar badge is really nice and was a surprise. US Army 1st Regiment, the Big Red One. I was part of that when I was in the Army. I'll go back, there is probably more there, but I imagine the topmost items were pushed into the ravine. 🍀

Way to go getting the old Fugio! 👍 Nice bunch of buttons, looks like you got a cufflink there too. Congrats.

Nice stuff and great research. 👍

The M9 gets my vote. Good general purpose, the M8 is almost too small. 🙂 This forum "raised" me. 😅 My favorite is the M15.

Welcome to the forum! It will probably come down to what you are going to do on the beach, go in the water, hunt the dry sand and wet sand at low tide. If both, in the long run the Deus would be a safer bet, but not necessarily the easier one to use. It has a 5 year warranty. This is my buddy Gary in the water with his Deus 2 at Cocoa Beach. He has both but prefers the D2. I have both, and while I like the Manticore for its ability to find small objects and low conductors, I still prefer the Deus 2 because of its pretty much bulletproof reputation for not having water intrusion issues, and the fact that overall it weighs less than the Manticore. It also has more robust audio for making retrieval decisions. On the other hand, for wet sand hunting the Manticore is like a spear with the M9 coil, you can't just submerge the Deus 2 in even shallow water without the antenna. If you plan to use a detector for prospecting at some point, the Manticore would be the better choice from what I see here. The two are pretty much equal for relic detecting, but in Virginia especially, the Deus 2 is the most popular. Again I like them both for different reasons, if you have both all your bases are covered. Thus far I have not found either superior for depth. Digging deep holes is not my favorite thing 😅 Your future plans seem to lean you toward the Manticore to me.

Thanks Lodge, it was a lot nicer in the morning. I'm pretty used to warm weather, but in the summer I usually don't stay out more than 6 hours, I kinda pushed it today. The ticks are slow to come out with the cold mornings, but tomorrow they will be everywhere. I'll hunt beaches in the 90s but protected windless woods are out. Soon I'll be working on my RV, preparing for another beach trip in 2 weeks. In June I have to undergo a pacemaker replacement, and now I'm 65, I'm getting the Watchman to prevent clots from AFib so I don't have to take blood thinners. 😅 Getting a tetanus shot Monday from my favorite doc. I'm getting in what I can, farmers are everywhere now. 🥲 This year was cut a bit short by weather, hopefully next year will be better but most of the fields will be corn. 🙄 That tiny buckle was whole when I dug it, but it quickly crumbled and that was all I could save. 3d row 3d from the left might be a broken brass ring.

Relic season is almost over, but I noticed a field at the end of my road was still not cultivated, so I jumped at it. It's part of a 1,000 acre permission I have, I went over it in 2022 with the Equinox and 10x5" Coiltek: Got some good stuff there including 2 Virginia buttons. Today I went back with the Manticore and M15 coil. The M15 is probably not the best choice for this field, but its separation capability is great with the right recovery speed, and its coverage and depth are as good as the Deus 2 with the 13". Today I was shopping for low conductors, and small stuff. There is a patch where a house stood that is a carpet of iron, and I wanted to see if the M15 would pull stuff out despite the nails. There is a ravine off to the side of where the house was, and I believe I mentioned it in 2002, people were dumping trash in it. I found some of the bottles I left there: And a lot more. The bottle on the far right is molded with the word "drene" on it, apparently it's a shampoo created by Proctor and Gamble in the 1930s: it lasted until 1968. This one appears to be from the 1940s. The only bottle I ended up bringing home was this one: Kind of a cool vase looking bottle, I bring my wife flowers a lot. ❤️ I hunted the place for 7 hours, it was exhausting because I dressed for the 46 degree weather in the morning, but by afternoon it was almost 80. 😵 Lots of trash, but pretty much the good kind: And here are the finds: 7 more buttons including the largest Tombac dandy button I've found: It's spun and looks to have some lettering etched at the top. The second one is patterned, the third an odd concave, the fourth was my second to last find, it says "W. Wallis Extra Rich". The William Wallis company was a button maker in England from the 1790s to 1828. Got some thin chain, a brass circle with a leaf welded to it, some corset lace bits, one of the most fragile and tiny buckles I've ever found, a drawer pull that was a foot deep that I found using One Tone, and some other bits. Of course It wouldn't be an interesting hunt without silver: Got a piece of a silver flatware that says "Holland" on it, another English company established in the late 1800s. I think I found another piece in 2002. 🍀

You can pay less for a Dune Titanium at Serious Detecting 🤔 SteveG makes shafts for them, too. I haven't been able to break mine, even dug in a gravel parking lot with it yesterday 😅 Your digging arm will thank you in the long run 🤔

If you have the bucks, Xtreme is the best. Get titanium. 🙂

Thanks Lodge! Last hunt there, they will probably cultivate it soon. 🥲 Got another at the end of my road that needs revisiting, apparently the Manticore finds more small stuff. 🤔 Ironically better with the 15" elliptical. This is one of the oldest settled parts of the United States, established mostly in the 1640s. Stuff is everywhere, the farms are not being developed, the counties have grants to prevent that. 🙂 Ours won't allow solar farms.

I'll give ya she looks good, but I wonder if any of it is real. 🤔 And the drama! 😵 Music died in the 90s, you have to be in certain circles in the city now to hear anything good that is new, promoters aren't encouraged to locate real talent. Hunger Games? 😬 Pretty much why the only instrument I play now is a metal detector. Guess I've composed a few good ditties... 🤔

That's a great bit of hunting right there NJ! Hopefully there are other hot spots there. Congrats on the rare error coin. 🏆

Thanks NJ, That's pretty much what I do too. On the Manticore the upper ferrous limit is at 4, there is no lower limit. Iron is pretty much iron. 🙂 Now and again a forged piece will insist it's not ferrous, but with the right amount of interrogation (and a little digging) it will give up the secret. A loud target, after digging down a bit, is definitely big iron.

Thanks RVP, It was kinda disappointing, but lots of other people did worse than me 😅 I'll be going back there in August, so we will see 🙂

This is a colonial site, one that is unknown to the landowner, despite his ownership. There are lots of old forged nails and chunks, and I dig brick from time to time. I'm trying to figure out if it may have something to do with an old road on the other side of the highway that hasn't been used since the early 1800s. That's another adventure, about 3,000 British troops came up that road from an old wharf in 1814. It's overgrown and difficult to navigate. I'll do some testing with the stuff that gave false readings. 🤔

Thanks Colonel, 🫡 That jewelry shop is a really good one, they will fix stuff on the spot for me and even use their XRF gun for free. I'm not surprised the ring came out good! And this time they made some money. I sometimes buy my wife something there as well. 🤔 I really thought this little field was wiped out long ago, but greater experience and apparently a "target rich environment" doesn't hurt. 😅 I'm impressed with the Manticore's ability to find small objects for sure. 🙂

Not particularly that weather, but the wind did sand it out a bit when the storm went away. Not as much as I would have liked, and the tides ended up not in my favor. I'm not sure, but I don't think so. 🤔 I don't recall seeing any details in the river near me, so probably not. I was hoping every day for fresh drops, however not too many people got in the water, and those that did went pretty far out. There were few times I could get out there. Thanks, and good luck in your travels! 🍀

Yes I did, for some reason the iron I was interrogating just wouldn't stop sounding as non-ferrous, I didn't get the double iron tone from any angle. 🤔 I tried beach modes, and then my All Terrain General program with its ferrous limits, until I went back to 5 region all tones I kept getting a non ferrous tone. Then it would sound as iron at least at one angle, sometimes more. I'll try it again, I was kinda pressed for time so I went with what worked before.

I wasn't planning to go detecting today, the landowner had invited me to come see the Masonic ring that I found for him. It was his Great Uncle's ring, he was the Superintendent of the local school system that my wife and I retired from, and he was a Mason. He passed away in the 1940s. I went up that way and the landowner wasn't home, so I decided to hunt the field that I found all the buttons and bits of Spanish silver in recently, it had been killed but not cultivated, so I went home and grabbed my stuff. The landowner stopped by later with the ring, he met me in the field, he had it repaired and restored by a local jeweler: They did a really nice job and only charged him about $350. I told him that was a pittance because the Masons will make this ring for $6,000. He was very proud of it, and thrilled to have something so valuable and sentimental turn up after so many years. He gave me a printout of the man's history, I wish I could post it. I did pretty good today in the field, I brought the Manticore and the M15 coil with a backup battery in case I ran it down. @midalake suggested I try one tone hunting in the relic field, but I ended up going back to regular Freestyle due to the one thing one tone doesn't do well, dealing with forged iron. In my fields you don't want to dig it all, I stopped digging iron after reverting to 5 region all tones. I ended up with 19 buttons today, one less than last time. I found two rather modern buttons, the rest were very old. An apartment of tombacs and brass, most unusual are the domed buttons with the shanks that I've only found in this field, I have 4 or 5 in varying sizes. Got some Tombac shards, a pewter spoon piece, some sort of brass circular object, and I wish I found all of the spectacular buckle or sash ring, but I'll take what I can get. Even got a D buckle today. Of course I have the best for last, I found the smallest piece of Spanish silver I've ever found: I put it next to the pistareen I found last time, it's really tiny. It was a loud 20 and it took forever to find it. I also found a burnt possible cut half real: It's all bubbled up and not much bigger than the tiny piece. At one point during the day I went back over a spot that seemed to be a hotspot of buttons, and got a very surprising 77, and dug this nice gilt decorated button: It's a thick, heavy one-piece button, here's the back: Wow. I'm sure glad I backtracked a bit! 🍀

Nice rings! That's happened to me before, love it when it does. 👍 🍀

Thanks Rip, Sadly I may not be able to go back to this farm this year, it looked like the farmer cultivated it while I was detecting the beach last week. 🥲 This year they will probably plant corn, so it might be next year. One good thing is the finds aren't going anywhere. 🙂

Now that's a chunk of silver! Congrats on all the beautiful finds. 🏆

Thanks Joe, This is indeed the life, my wife wants to travel to cool beach locations, and I like detecting, so I'm not gonna ask twice 😅 next stop Outer Banks. I'm perfecting the art, I took these in Cocoa Beach back in February: Same gray sand, just stickier. 🙄 My granddaughter is a great painter, I hope I can get her to paint one for me.

Thanks Brad, Until I started using Enhanced Audio instead of Normal, I only had two nickels, everything 26-30 was a pull tab, or a very nice pull tab 😅 I used it on the last day and got 6 of them! 🤯

Thanks! That is interesting. 🤔 Enhanced audio on the Manticore seems to be the trick for that, the same thing happens. A lot of people asked me to recommend a good entry level detector, I might recommend the Xterra Elite. 🙂