F350Platinum

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. 🙂

The beach has been replenished many times, in quite a few areas the shell substrate that would stop gold is more than a foot down. I had magnetic reject off on the Deus and had to turn it on, it went loco. You can hear the black sand in the background with Enhanced Audio, but it's faint. The new sand is a heavy gray muck much like it was in Cocoa Beach back in February, just not as sticky. That stuff wouldn't even come out of the scoop after a few seconds. 🙄 I think they use it because it turns white when it dries out. I think this is the problem along the East Coast finding gold, it sinks fast and gets lost in the minerals. "One tone" on the Manticore, for those who don't know, is basically Dankowski or "NASA Tom's" settings with one tone and high recovery speed, either 5 or 6. An upper ferrous limit of 4 and no lower ferrous limit. It's actually two tones, one for ferrous and one for not ferrous. You do not lose depth with it, my sore arms are proof from digging deep. 😅 Sensitivity 23 for those who like quiet, 28 or more for those who like it spicy. Normal audio, but you can use Enhanced. The beauty of it as Dave explained to me is that it gives a double low tone on iron, and you can pretty much rest assured that object is iron, one of each and it's iffy, you have to learn to swing around it to see if it ever gives the double low tone hit. Double or single high tone on every pass is a definite dig. Very cool concept, you still have IDs and target trace, in many cases the IDs are tighter and more accurate. I was kinda afraid to let it out of the bag. 😬 Hope you don't mind!

Thanks HJ, the original landowner was happy to get something family from the field. It was plated or filled but it held up well. I'm most impressed with the Mcore's attraction to Tombacs.

You don't remember Don Ho? I'm too old to know anything about Taylor Swift. 😎🌺

Thanks, I kinda feel sorry for the other detectorists that came through there, but left knowing I did the best I could. 🙂 I'll be back there in August to clean up! 😅

Thanks Colonel! 🫡 I probably hit most of that beach for 2-3 miles, went in the water, hunted the exits. Using the big coils gave me more coverage, I didn't notice much difference with the M15 vs. The M9, both separated out targets really well and went deep. The 11x13 did its usual great job. Here's another tale of the trip: One morning a nice young girl about 8 years old came up and asked me some very intelligent questions about detecting, I told her mother she had a really bright kid. 🙂 The next day I found this sea turtle ring: Just one of those re-sizable ones you can get cheap, but it was in pretty good shape. I was going down the beach the next day, and I heard "Hi, I'm the bright girl you met yesterday". She wanted to know what is been finding. It was the little girl again. I saw her mom up in the dry, and asked if I could give her one of my finds, and I gave the kid that ring. I think it's important to now and again remind total strangers that there are good people around. 🙂

Thanks for your help. 🙂 It might be that the sand is so shot full of minerals that I'm just not seeing the gold signals, but I didn't get any silver either, and that wouldn't have been so shy. 🤔 Just lots of coins, and some really deep which does indicate that going to one tone could be an advantage, you still get the ID's and target trace, and when I used Enhanced Audio, it brought out the difference between a nickel and a pull tab. 👍 Target trace is useless on pull tabs: All it indicates is a nice non ferrous target. 🫤 Enhanced Audio (thanks Chase) added a bit of a dirty tone to a nickel, I dug 5 of them all in one line at the edge of high tide! The pull tabs were pure tones, and didn't go away upon lifting the coil. I dug a lot of them to be sure. EA also lets you crank up sensitivity, I got to 28 before the background chatter got annoying. Sinkers are a low tone mixed with a high tone with 5 region all tones, because of the lead and brass attachment loop. At extreme low I found one spot where I got a bunch of them in a particular area, I searched there until nothing else even made a sound. That was before I talked to you. 🥴 3 weeks from now I'll be off to another beach location, hopefully the tides will be in my favor longer. I'll try it where I can relic hunting, but that season is almost over. 🥲