F350Platinum

Hey, I resemble this remark! 🤣 For sure at first the D2 did not rule at finding small stuff, but now I'm shocked at what it finds now under V2, even with the 13". 🤔 I only have the lowly Equinox 600, and it sure did find a lot of tiny stuff, but most of my hunting with it was the 10x5. I think it's arguable from a relic hunting standpoint that being able to swing a much lighter detector for more hours at a time has produced some banner finds for me this year, from tiny gold rings to bits of Spanish silver, to small buttons 10+ inches deep like I dug yesterday. While I'm sure I would have found most of all of it with the 600, it sure was more comfortable using the D2. It's getting close to beach season for me, I'm excited to get out there with V2 and see what I get. It was in its infancy last year when beach season ended, but I got 2 gold rings in two days in a place I didn't think there were any 🤯 I agree with you man, but it probably has as much to do with your proficiency as a detectorist which you undoubtedly have, your persistence and knowledge of your hunting spots. 👍 🍀

Thanks JCR, Since we didn't find any coins we think it might have been a gathering spot for barter. I've found spots like this in other farms here, lots of buttons and animal tack but no money. There was an old house back in the woods, there was a road going to it that I walked using Caltopo, but there was nothing but iron. The house site is very difficult to get to, and right on a ravine that drops off precipitously, I'm never comfortable around those. 😬 There is nothing in the field near the house site. Much later another house was built, and an old machine shop and post office is there in ruins, somewhat famous in its own right. The later house is gone and replaced by a current one, and sadly lots of the topsoil has been scraped to the edges of the ravines to slow erosion. I guess we'll have to look around the edges a bit.

Thanks VL, relic season is almost over, maybe a couple more weeks but I have to start yard work and getting my RV ready for beach season. I'll miss the quiet of hunting the fields. We have no parks in this area that can be legally hunted so I won't be getting out as much. This has been my best relic season ever. The problem with people at the beach is people at the beach. 😏

This one is for the button fan, I dug a 1926 wheat in another field but that was it for the coins. Invited Chase up for one of the last hunts here, a new 100 acre permission that I didn't find much in before, we set out to scout the other half of it that I didn't get to. It's a huge field that had beans on it last year, usually I prefer to hunt in bean stalks but this one is tough, the stalks are too tall. We ran into a farmer friend who told us this is because when they are rushing to get the beans before a rain, they lift the combine collector and don't cut them short. The stalks become really stiff by spring and are very hard to walk on, they chip at your shoes and can go through your hand or foot if you're not careful. 😬 We set out heading to the other side of the field, Chase went ahead and hunted around the old barn, I think he got a couple of wheats there. I walked up the center of the field not expecting anything, I had crisscrossed this field before and found literally nothing. Got a 47 and dug this rolled copper "tinkler" that was traded with the Indians: https://www.nativetech.org/metal/tinkle/tinkle.html It would be a "point" or arrowhead if it had a point, these were hung on their clothing and they jingle. I immediately went into circle mode, making a spiral around the place I found the first object, and hit 3 buttons. By this time Chase was way across the field, so I noted where I found this stuff and joined him to scout the rest of the place. We found next to nothing, I got just a few buckle bits. We decided to go back to this "hotspot" and the buttons just kept coming, I think between us we found well over 20. Small cuff buttons, medium buttons, a couple large, both brass and Tombac. They were everywhere in about an acre or so. What I thought might be a pretty bad day turned out to be a great one, I got all this: 16 buttons and a bunch of other brass stuff. Chase did as well. When things wound down we quit for the day, but there are certainly more there. Here's the trash, only a handful but I got fooled by a few bits of big iron today: I was using Relic exclusively, with the 13" coil on the Deus 2, with reactivity at 1 and Audio response 7. Some of the buttons were over 10" deep! We found other artifacts that deep too. Sadly we found no coins in that spot. We think it was an area where people got together and traded stuff in the 1600s and 1700s, and possibly with the Indians as well. This is a great example of how you really have to search a farm to find the hotspots, it takes a lot of determination and some really good guesses. You just can't give up! There may be another hotspot here, there is a part of the field we didn't go to, but we'll get there. 🍀

Outstanding, NC. Your coin is a 50 Sen coin, date uncertain, but it's the "Small" one. .720 silver. 👍 Gotta love Tekkna. 🙂 The 9" makes a difference when there's a lot of trash.

Congratulations Steve! An enviable group of finds by any measure. 👍 Bravo! What sort of place were you searching?

Yes. I think that some think they're going to find stuff directly under iron by discriminating the iron. I have seen that work but only in an air test with nails on top of a coin with an old Tesoro detector, the digital machines with DD coils simply don't do it. The Tesoro had a mono coil. I have never been able to repeat that "in the wild" 😅. I agree with your assessment completely. I knew that I would ruffle some feathers, thanks for playing! 🙂 Coil size, whether larger than the target with iron surrounding it, or small enough to get between the iron, coupled with a certain response speed (reactivity, recovery) is what will win the day. If there is enough iron present it will overwhelm the coil, so technique comes into play. The Deus 2 goes to 7 reactivity, imagine using that! 🤯 But the higher response speed, the less depth. 😵 @NCtoad posted a video where it was speculated that a larger coil might be just as good. I'm not a fan of Mr. Lemke but he does make a point, and NC showed us some nice finds. 👍 I tried it, it did seem to hit deeper stuff which I expected it would, but it also did way more down averaging than the 9" did. Air tests and even symmetric in-ground tests don't do much for me, try burying a silver dime and throw a handful of nails over it... 🤔 Which is about as real as you're going to get. 🫤 Seems to me the "witchcraft" of Tekkna comes from the forced conductor tone spread and reactivity. I use 2 reactivity mostly but turn it up as high as 4 when things get crazy, knowing I'm going to get more shallow targets.

Well thanks Tekkna detractors, but move on, please. 🙄 Y'all seen to think I'm promoting this as some sort of magic bullet, it's not - but it is very useful. You are going to dig non ferrous stuff that is junk, and if there is lots of junk, you will dig lots of junk. If you pay attention to the sounds, what you won't dig is iron. I've tried the other programs posted here and they are far more useless than Tekkna. Blanking iron out completely is ridiculous, how do you know where you are? "Unmasking" is a myth that only appears in air tests. Best you can hope for is separation. That's what Tekkna is all about. If you hear a persistent mid or high tone on iron, try to isolate it. Dig it if you hear it in all directions. Simple... Gary Blackwell released a new video, and promises to post a version for the beach soon: Love dogs but I don't think I'd let mine chew my MI-6. 😏 I have had great success with this program, it goes where Relic needs a rest. Personally I think the 9" coil is better suited to it the more dense the trash is, but I always have the 13" with me. YMMV. Only a few more weeks until I have to give up farm hunting for 7 months 😢 but I'm looking forward to the beaches! I will probably take Beach Tekkna for a spin as soon as it comes out. 🍀 GL, HH.

Well yes, but that would also make a better case for Relic. I used it in a mostly iron situation and it did find great stuff. When the targets get thin I switch to relic, because I'm heavy trash relic is too loud. I guess I didn't mind digging all that "trash" if there are precious metals and coins at stake, simply because any non ferrous stuff could be really good, and it's comfortable with iron volume at 8 or less. Rarely is a signal diggable if it doesn't produce clear tones in all directions, that is the thing to force yourself to remember when using it.

Hey Mr Metal, A metal detector company will issue updates to fix problems that customers have. They do not ever release an update that will make their product worse, that does happen with cell phones and computers but not metal detectors. Ask yourself this: What would they have to gain with program obsolescence? A bad reputation hurts sales. If you've been detecting a long time, I understand why you might be reluctant to update a trusted machine, but that particular update has not been changed for 3+ years now. They made other improvements than just adding 4kHz. Think of what you might be missing... Or have missed. 🙂 🍀

Yep, they were called "Hollywood Pin Ups", made in the 1940s. I didn't dig the Walker, that was a reference photo. I didn't dig the dime either. 😁

Haha yes, I sure do. It's an aluminum clothes pin, ca. 1940s. This site has bits of a lot of them. 🤬

Man, back in stride! You sure needed this after the last hunt. I like the Philippines coin, not necessarily rare but not one you see often, I didn't know it existed 😅 Guess you should hit this beach until you can't 🏆

Ok, figured out the spoon guy, as best as possible. Used some 0000 steel wool. Meet Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia prior to World War 1. The stem says "Deutschland", and the Germanic eagle is at the top. The back would depict two soldiers and the German Flag at the time, but no matter how much I steel wool this spoon it won't come out. This spoon was made by the "Oneida Community" pre-Oneida Limited of New York. The "Community" was disbanded in 1881, an odd story in itself. There were two commemorative spoons made possibly to celebrate the second marriage of the Kaiser to his wife pictured above, or as an earlier tribute. This puts this spoon at the latest to be 1906, but it was probably made before 1881. Fun stuff!

Yikes! Starting? If this area wasn't so full of broken bits of everything, but had so many interesting bits as well, I wouldn't dig all non ferrous. 😅

The signal corps badge is WW1 era, the screw back gives that away. 👍 Really like the Fleur de Lis pin, may have signified some alliance with France. Wild guess on the double ring thing, may be part of a horse bit, or an alligator teething ring 😏 Great finds!

I updated my Equinox 600 to version 3 about 3 years ago. The 3.0 version adds 4kHz single frequency, I think it was intended for Asian customers, but it's a good option everywhere. You don't lose any custom settings, and supposedly the machine is more stable. I don't see any good reason not to update unless you believe in voodoo 🙂

Dollar coins are unusual finds in the USA, so great job. 🏆 That half must have been a real ear popper! Well done.

Isn't that how you check to see if it's real? 🤔 After 2 hours of walking around the field and crossing it diagonally, I had to have a bite. I heard nothing but the occasional big iron blast. 😅 Spent another hour in another part and found even less. Going to go back there and check the other half on a better day, that was too much walking for nothing. 😵 At least I had the smaller field next to it that had plenty of stuff. 🙂

A small update on what I thought was a lapel watch: It's a Ketcham and McDougall retractable eyeglass or pencil chain, ca. 1903-1920. Here is a nice one, this person didn't have it engraved: This one had the older logo but the newer clasp: I really like researching stuff I find, I'm pretty sure the chain is all rusted up inside.

Thanks JCR, I've found two or three of them myself lately, newer detectors seem to hit them better 🤔 Oddly mine showed up as a 63, not the 85 the others were.

Got a new permission yesterday, a nice older gentleman approached me while I was digging in a small field I call the Jewelry Box. After talking to him for an hour (really more listening), I asked if I could detect his farm and he said that would be fine. It's a big place, 100 acres but only about half that is field. The coolest thing is that there is an old blacksmith shop sort of on the property, but the landowner doesn't own it. There were also two older houses far back on the farm, now gone. There is a much newer one there now where the owner lives. I went there today to scout it and see if there are any hotspots. I managed to find about 3 things, but man that place is clean. It was probably detected in the past. I walked for 3 hours and other than a buckle, a clad dime and a small pin on watch, all I find there was buck shot and shotgun shell ends. 😢 I only searched half of it today, it was warm but the wind was blowing about 20mph with gusts to 35. It was absolutely brutal, walking on bean stalks and getting blown all over the place. I finally gave up and went back to the small field next door hoping to save the day. I had both the 9" and 13" coils with me, and ran Relic most of the day but switched to the new Tekkna program when the trash got dense. This also prompted me to switch to the 9" coil. While the 13" has pretty good separation, the 9" really sees so much less ground it can pick targets a bit better. Ended up with some pretty good stuff, the last 3 hours I searched my small field and scratched a few more good finds. Here's what I dug: Some sort of famous person spoon, a large brass buckle used to hold a strap on the pin, a General Service button. Got a 1937 wheat and the small gold plated watch near the shop, the brass buckle in the back of the field. The 1943 war nickel, the incredibly detailed buckle among other things came from the small field, it was a tough but decent day. Trash in the small field was horrendous: Got a little toy cap gun, sadly broken in half near the barn.

Welcome to the forum from Eastern Virginia.

Nice hunt GB, Looks like you're doing well with the M-Core, great to see a post from you. Nice silver score!! 👍 Pretty good place if you got that in 3 hours. 🤔

Thanks RVP, Yesterday I got another big permission, the landowner came out to talk to me, a fella in his late 80s. Even offered to drive him back home but he said he needed the exercise. 🙂 I believe this is the final piece of this huge old plantation that was subdivided many years ago. If you're sporting a smartphone, do yourself a big favor and get an app called CalTopo, it's free! You might need a cheap backup battery if you're going to track yourself. I did a small tutorial on how to use it here: This app is great, you can overlay old roads from historic maps and even see Lidar imagery. Soon you'll be seeing farmers and landowners out, strike while the iron is hot. Here is a reliable backup battery for tracking: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0B2R8YVWV 🍀