F350Platinum

Thanks Joe D, if it's warm here I can imagine what it's like there 😀 Thanks VL, We just got over a near zero weekend, Christmas was rough. It was great to get outside like it was spring, but we know better. 😀 Thanks, not much this time but I managed to get another 100 acre farm permission out of it talking to the owner. 🥳 You really have to grid this field, random hunting usually brings up nothing. It's about 20 acres, 33 with woods.

Killer stuff NC! Looks like you got some pretty great places to hunt, but I know what you mean about finding more. 🙄 I picked up another 100 acre farm today, but who knows what might be there. Or not. Top shelf detecting. 👍 I was glad to up my gold this past year from 1 or 2 to some, silver has been about average - not much 🤣

Nice write up! 👍 I was thinking of grabbing one for myself, and was kind of sad that Chase had a problem with his, I was looking forward to seeing it. 😓 Certainly if I feel a need for a new machine I'll be looking at this one, you make some very convincing points.

Living in Virginia can be interesting in the winter, one day it's below 30, and the next you're in a t-shirt. 😀 I feel for the original settlers, they must have had a rough time. It hit 65 today. Odd for January 2, but I'll take it. 😀 Today I met Chase at this field, he was pretty sure we would find something here despite being disappointed before, but it wasn't disappointing today. We both had Deus 2s, me with my 13" and him with the 11". He made a pretty impressive find or two, but I'll just post mine and as usual invite him to jump in if he feels like it. It was kinda a celebration of his retirement this past week. 🏆 Time for the gratuitous detector pic, that's Chase way out there, this field is pretty big and has high potential for colonial relics due to its location. I did pretty well, even got some silver. (Sort of): 1943 P war nickel. I was quite surprised to find it here, the Deus reported a 74 I think. The rest of the story is the usual suspects, got 3 coins and a few buttons: Top left is an oval stud of some sort, top right another collar stud. I didn't know these weren't rivets until recently 😀 A couple wheats, old button with some gold still on it, two ball buttons, and a broken two piece that says Holmes Pritchard Co. on the back. Can't make out the top pattern. 😵 At first I thought the bottom coin looking thing was a half reale, it had a waxy feel and looked like it was originally round. 🤔 I have found one in this condition: Ended up only weighing .3g, and it's the size of a seated half dime which weighs 1g. I think it's a hammered Roman pull tab. 🤣 Great fun with a great guest. Trash was about average, don't want people thinking we don't dig a lot of crap! 😀 I don't dig much iron, the D2 rarely falses on it. 👍

Nice score! 👍 guess some carry them as a good luck charm. Another chapter of "you never know"... https://silvergoldbull.com/1-oz-silvertowne-silver-bar I also see that Roman numeral ring in the background, looking forward to the rest of your post. 😀 Found one of those this year myself. 🙂

I ended up buying the 600 instead of the 800 at first on the recommendation of a shop owner who is also a hardcore relic hunter. He knew my area and told me I wouldn't need a more expensive machine for what I was looking for. I have since bought a much more expensive machine, the Deus 2, and he was right, but it has given me much more versatility, stability and information when relic and beach hunting. In Virginia the Deus is the relic king, some may disagree. The 600 still often comes along and I end up with great results either way. 👍 Best bet is to not only get the best detector you can afford, but also the one that makes the most sense where you look. The 700 will be great, but if you go everywhere (beach, relic hunting, gold prospecting) it may not be enough.

You answered you own question. 👍 I have a friend who also has an 800 (I have a 600) who says "if you're not digging foil you're not finding gold". He has been doing this for many more years than me. This applies to small gold, thin gold, chains and the like. It isn't just pull tabs.🙄 With experience (repetition, perseverance) you may be able to distinguish certain items from the good stuff over time, but even the best get fooled. I'm pretty sure the hardcore people dig it all most of the time. There are detectors that give you some more visual distinction, but they're a lot more expensive. I'm relatively new to detecting, a little over 2 years. I only go to the beaches a few times a year, and I didn't find any gold rings for the first year. I have also found as much gold in fields and farms as I found on the beach! Keep at it, enjoy your time out, lower your expectations and learn to laugh when you get fooled, or skunked! 🤣 🍀

Welcome to the forum. 🙂 Pull tabs and bottle caps are a certainty on the beach. So are tent stakes and foil. It depends upon what part of the beach you are searching, what program you are using, many things! Unfortunately if the beach has been hit hard by more (and many) experienced detectorists, you will find a higher concentration of the above as they may have "cherry picked" the stuff you are looking for. Another problem may be the season and the massive cold snap we just had, that lessens the amount of "depositors" on the beach 😀 I think we will need a bit more information about what program and coil you are using before any specific help can be offered. 🙂 There is no magic that will get you instantly what you want, time, repetition and persistence are the best teachers.

What they don't know won't hurt them. 😀

By then the way these youngsters are marketing and developing, it'll be a D3 😁 All New and Completely Incompatible!

Entertaining story! 😀 Oh the trials and tribulations... 🙄 Looking forward to your future exploits once your new stuff is sorted out. 😀 Good luck! 🍀 Maybe a shooting stick would be lighter, and you could use that as a crutch instead of the detector! 👍I really hope that isn't an issue with the much anticipated machine.

Honestly about the same for these hunts, but maybe the 13" a bit more. It was great to have the WS6 Master along, when I got an idea of where I wanted to look with the 13" I grab the 9" to retrieve stuff faster. It also came in handy when I got tired, I covered a lot of ground. Despite its small size the 9" has a pretty wide field on its own when turned up over this mild soil. What I want to do is start using both, find something with the 13" and see if the 9" can see it as well. With both on the same settings that would really be interesting to me. I'll have to wait for one of those short but pure lines on the XY screen, the WS6 doesn't do that. 😀 It doesn't happen often, most stuff here is well within the reach of both. I pretty much bought the 13" for my future beach exploits, but it does make a great scouting coil on fairly stalk -free farmland. Remember that I've found that the 13" on SteveG's CF shaft weighs less than the 10x5 on a SteveG Equinox CF shaft. Not much, but still less. After using it for a while the WS6 Master setup feels like a walking stick. 😁 I've already cracked two of the 3 11" coil centering devices I have for the 13". It doesn't fit perfectly so I'm not saying they aren't up to the task. I don't think I would like it at all without one but I'm sure someone will make one specifically for it soon. 🙂

Got out a couple more times since I posted this, the ground is defrosting and drying up. 🙂 The 13" is great for scouting a place out, but I tend to find more and more quickly with the 9". I do however think the 13" can identify a deeper target more accurately. Finding a target sometimes is a bit different, the coil is large so without X'ing it the target may be off center. The 9" is almost always spot on. I'm searching a place where there isn't much, the area I dug the above in had the top layer scraped to create berms to control erosion. Very cool old general store token, and a nice flat button. The wheat is 1930s I think. I may test the night light to see if it still works! 😀 More from that same area, ox knob, faucet handle, bag button, bullet is a .45-70. Guess at some point it was legal to hunt with that sort of rifle. The button is a very old Scovill one piece cast button with a pretty obliterated pattern on it.

Nice ending! 👍 Love that 10x5. Great looking Signal Corps pin, I did Tac Sat for a while back in the 80s. 🇺🇲 Sometimes they're gold plated, easier to keep clean.

Welcome to the forum! 👍 One more, although it might be related to "digging endurance"... Persistence. Some of the farms I hunt are huge, one in particular is about 200 acres. It pretty much looks all the same except... If you spend a lot of time cris-crossing and walking around, you will eventually (or not 😀) find a "hotspot" where a lot of activity occurred. Total bonanza that no amount of research would find. That and pure random searching, which has netted me some great stuff.

Looks like people are digging into their coin collections. 🤔 Or someone else is. Nice sight finds!

Here are a couple more:

Thanks for jumping in Carolina. 👍I think if one was only concerned with gold rings one might be disappointed 🤔 it's not like the 13" coil is magic or a ring magnet, but I think we've both proven that if there is anything there it will find it. 🙂

Yikes, sorry you have COVID, and I hope you didn't find me snarky. 😵 Seems that's going around... 😀 Tried the 11" for a while because I couldn't get a 13", but I put myself on a notification list a long time ago, and snagged one of the trickle they sent. 👍 it's only about 5 ounces heavier, hardly noticeable. I really like it. So much in fact I'm considering selling the 11". Now I have the great coverage of the 13", which isn't too bad in the fields at present, and the accuracy and light weight of the 9". If the corn stalks were higher (they knocked em down to spread field cover this year) I'd say the 13" might be a bit trifling, but even if you have to lift it you're going to find stuff.

It's a little too cold for me to go to a local beach, but the 11" found this: It was a solid 73. 😎 I can't imagine that the 13" would do worse. 😁 Honestly you'd have an easier time on a beach!

I've got the 11", probably going to sell it because the 13" isn't really any heavier. 😀 The whole Deus 2 rig with the RC and 13" on Steve's shaft weighs less than my Equinox 600 with Steve's shaft and the 10x5 Coiltek. 🤣 I like ellipticals. I could use the extra $$ to get the 10x5 FMF if they ever make one 😁

It warmed up enough here to get out for 4 hours this afternoon, so I took the D2 with the 13" coil and the WS6 Master with the 9" out in the field in front of my house to see what the two were capable of out there. This field had a farm on it until about the 70s, here it is in 1967: The stake in the distance is about where the leftmost top tree was in the aerial. It's all gone now but the trash and some relics and coins. I just walk out the front door and up a slight hill and I'm there 😀 I don't know when the house was built but the earliest topographic map shows it there in 1917. The spot the farm occupied is pretty trashy, iron objects, steel, and lots of aluminum. I've found a few coins here, mostly pennies and nickels. There are some relics, mostly farm stuff but every now and again you get buttons and other interesting objects. I haven't been able to hunt this spot for almost two years due to crop rotation. I spent 2 hours using each detector and the same settings, I found with the big coil that I wasn't hearing much with reactivity at 2, so I turned both to 0. The place came alive. The 13" does pretty well with separation, I was able to pick one tiny button out of the junk, the smallest one I found. The rest was all junk that ID'd from 81 to 93. With full tones you can pick out any high tone you hear and zero in on it, regardless of low reactivity, with audio response at 3 you're getting max depth with pretty quick separation. Everything is a trade off of sorts, this first time I was testing what works well in cleaner areas. Next I took the WS6 Master with the 9" over the same area, and really didn't find much more. In one spot I got a small button, a piece of jewelry, and Buffalo Nickel. Funny everything that was good today had an id in the 50s to 60s, the nickel was a 61. It's a 193x nickel I think, some of the date is visible. Here's what I managed to get out of this spot: The tiny button was a 54, the larger one a 62. The pin started as a faint 85 but went into the 60s out of the ground. It was the deepest object. Each one of these items were fairly deep, anywhere from 4-8", and surrounded by other objects, all trash. The pin on the left was probably gold plated, some of it is still visible. For sure the 9" is able to pick out targets faster and more accurately, but the 13" is no slouch either. I really like how light the WS6 Master rig is. This is my first outing with the WS6, so I didn't expect anything earth-shattering, and worse this place is a tough hunt. I'll be trying a lot more here. Hopefully I'll get some more coins. What I want to do is test increasing reactivity to see if I can pull good targets out without sacrificing too much depth. There's no EMI here and the ground is mostly unfrozen.

Beautiful barber quarter. Man if you're not gonna find much that is the stuff you want to find! Nice to see someone out there. 👍 Doesn't look like the Buffalo nickel gave up a date. 🤔

Second the MI-6 issue, got one that doesn't connect more often than the other but they both do it. Could be an MI-6 thing. 🤔 Finally noticed the clock problem too.

... And you just read that from someone who has a Manticore. 😀 I went from a very successful stint with the Equinox 600 to the Deus 2. The safest bet you can make is going with the 900 at this point, the D2 is fabulous if you like a lightweight option. It's more than likely quite an improvement on the 800/600, arguably the most venerable of the "older" 😀 detectors. All have their quirks and growing pains. Good luck with your choice and congrats on retiring! 👍