fogrider

Oops, my bad. I searched for previous posts on the topic before I posted, but I typed "5x10" instead of "10x5" in the search window. Thanks nonetheless for the responses. I think I'll go with the Coiltek 10x5 due to its ability to penetrate bush. We have a lot of alfalfa up here in the fields. Caragana was planted around many old homesteads in the past to act as a wind break. It really makes detecting challenging. I know in my heart that I'm missing targets with the stock 11 inch coil.

I'm looking for opinions on the Minelab 6 inch vs the Coiltek 10x5 for my Nox 600. I search a lot of trashy and brushy sites. Anybody have any experience with both coils? Any opinions? Thanks.

It's always a thrill to find a coin from the 1800's. Congratulations. Good advice from the others here. Old bottle caps and other personal trash are a good sign to me. It means folks rested or ate in the area. The hillside you detected may have been an area where people took a break between trains. Another technique that works for me when working around an old building is to think, "where would people have parked their buggies/cars?" Once I start hitting the old trashy stuff, I know I'm in a potentially good area.

Up here, it was common to keep children busy at social events by having them "hunt for treasure". Coins (usually pennies or nickels) were mixed in a pile of dirt, and the kids spent many happy hours digging with their hands for the coins. A couple of weeks ago I discovered about 100 pennies from the mid-1990's in a 10 foot circle in the far corner of a park in the centre of town. So many coins, that I simply stopped digging them. The coins were all at least 3 inches down. I suspect this was a "treasure pile" from some past get-together. I've included a picture of some of the coins. If only I could find a "treasure pile" from earlier times!

Always pays to do your research. Nicely done. You created a lasting memory for that young lady.

Hello. My name is Craig. I live in a rural area in Northern Alberta, Canada. I'm 63 years old. Back in the early 1980's I enjoyed many hours detecting in Edmonton Alberta with my trusty Whites Coinmaster 5000D. I would hunt the parks, playgrounds and boulevards of the river valley area, as well as some of the surrounding towns. I was an avid coin collector in my youth. I still remember finding an 1896 large cent as well as a 1910 quarter, along with lots of other old coins. Flash forward to today. I decided to reboot my old hobby, so I scooped a Minelab Equinox 600 for a great price from Cabela's Canada, as well as a Garrett pinpointer. The area I live isn't that old; mostly post-1900 communties. That being said, I've had some good finds in my first month detecting this year. Please see my post in the "coins and relics" forum for more details. I still get a thrill when I see the edge of a silver coin pop out of the dirt, and I hope to enjoy many more years of detecting and collecting. I look forward to hearing of your experiences, and sharing stories of those great finds. Cheers!

Yup. A 1984 Master Hunter 7 Olympic Limited Edition. It came with the owner's manual, 4 inch coil, and 12 inch coil. It actual works very well, but tends to respond to a bottle caps a lot. Still, it detected a 1918 10 cent piece at 6 inches using the large coil. It's ponderously heavy and it uses several 9 volt batteries, but I like to drag it out now and then for some old-school moments. 🙂 Check out the price in 1984!!

Nice to be here. Thanks for the warm welcomes. It's good to hear positive reviews of the Coiltek coils. I've been eyeballing one for awhile. I was lucky to get my hands on a 600 this summer for a very good price. I stumbled upon the Cabela's Canada website where they were blowing them out at a price of $600.00 CDN (about $450.00 US), with free shipping. There were 2 left in Edmonton, so I grabbed one right away. I also bought a Garrett Propointer AT from Canadian Treasure Seekers in Ontario for a very good price (with free shipping). I find the pinpointer to be a very valuable tool. Coins give a distinctly "tight" signal as opposed to the broader signals of the bullet casings and older bottle caps that sometimes appear. I like the way the 600 signals a coin, with its steady readings as I do a 90 degree sweep over a target. Between the 600 and the pinpointer, I rarely dig up any junk. I've locate some historic sites on public land in a small village nearby. I can't wait to explore them this weekend. Cheers!

I like the 600. It does everything quite well. Now that I've learned it's "voice", I can often exactly tell what I'm detecting. It works well for coins-on-edge (it hit a dime on-edge at 6 inches deep). Yes, imagine if I had this machine back in the 80's! How many coins did I miss?! The settings that seem to work best up here are Park1. Accepting 20-40, 12, -8 (The 12 is for gold and the -8 is for Canadian 5 cent pieces on-edge). 5 Tones, Sensitivity 25, 15 kHz, Recovery 2. I found an old Garrett for 20 bucks at a garage sale a month ago. It's pleasantly nostalgic, but quite the "beast".

Greetings from northern Alberta, Canada. This is my first post on this site. I used to detect back in the early 1980s with a Whites Coinmaster 5000. I decided, at the age of 64, to get back into the hobby, so I purchased an Equinox 600. I practiced using the detector on my old farm, and found a few coins from the 50's and 60's. The local area was only settled in the 1920s. In the last few weeks I've ventured out onto some local old properties (with the owners' permissions) and had some success. The most interesting coin I found so far is an 1899 English penny in an old school yard that was active from the 1930s to the late 50's. It's an odd coin to find in a small northern Canadian community, but it goes to show you never know what you're going to find! Interesting coins include: 1899 British penny, 1918 10 cent, 1915 US cent, 1922 5 cent, 1938 10 cent, 1946 25 cent, 1951 25 cent, 1943 tombac wartime 5 cent (x2), 1938 1 cent.