GB_Amateur

More like several books' worth. I've always gotten a chuckle when people here have said "Steve, you ought to write a book." It's all here, for free! Thank you for sharing your knowledge so generously.

Two months later and we're finding out a bit more. (I have read that the finder *was* the land owner. Not sure if a metal detector was used.) Oh, and AFAIK the fascist feds some claim will swoop down and confiscate/incarcerate have yet to appear. As usual there seems to be at least a small bit of hyperbole in the news reports. For example (paraphased) "1863 mint state 20 dollar gold pieces (aka "Double Eagles") have sold for six figures in the past." Not true as far as my reserach is concerned. If this hoard actually does include "finest known" (part of the hype at this point but time will tell) then six figures is almost guaranteed. But we're not there yet. Someone (probably picked up by other news agencies as well) has made a big deal out of Kentucky being particularly ripe for lost hordes. I kinda doubt it is all that unusual. I suspect a large percentage of population in history have hidden cash (count me among them ) and no particular location has the exclusive rights to those. They are everywhere but not easily found (to state the obvious). 800 gold coins is pretty amazing given that most of us will never find a single one in our lifetimes. But, hey, as I write this both of the big USA lotteries are over $500 million, and finding a gold coin is many orders of magnitude more likely than winning one of those. "So you're telling me there's a chance..."

Is it one of these (and which one)? You can read about those in Steve's database here and here. The landscape has changed considerably since those were released 13 years ago (in the $800 pricerange then). Just to stay in the First Texas family, here's a thread from a few weeks ago: showing you can get a brand new Teknetics Patriot for $229. The Patriot is a re-release of the Fisher F70 which was developed about the same time period as the Gold Bug family. It's widely considered a step up from the Gold Bugs (including by First Texas, its engineers, etc.). To get an idea of value, consider that the particular Gold Bug unit you are looking at is used, missing a knob (IMO not a good sign that this particular unit has been taken care of...), and doesn't currently have a coil that is optimal for general (park, school, etc.) detecting. (The 5 inch coil will do fine in that environment other than the coverage per swing being paltry.) A used 7"x11" coil will (I'm guessing as I haven't looked) cost close to $100 on Ebay. And I've yet to mention competing brands' more recently released, in the under $300 price range detectors (e.g. Nokta Simplex, Minelab X-Terra Pro, Minelab Vanquish,...) which have more features, new units coming with warranties, etc. If you've taken a liking to that Gold Bug (I still have one and it does have a nice 'feel' performance-wise), I'd say realistically it's worth no more than $100, and that may be a generous valuation given the missing knob.... We are currently living in a time when the so-called entry level detectors are both powerful and inexpensive (thanks to intense competition). These 10+ year old models have mostly been relegated to nostalgic enthusiasts. They're still capable but their value is vastly diminished compared to even just a couple years ago.

Welcome, Frank! The treasures from that coast aren't jumping out of the ground, but here's a find from 3 years ago that ought to get you salivating:

A couple notes to add: 1) since both the bolt and nut have a recessed inner surface, an undersized washer won't do anything. As such cutting a washer with an (slightly) oversized outside diameter wouldn't hurt. 2) 'Teflon' is a generic term which describes many different products. I see you specified 'PTFE/teflon' (PolyTetraFluroEthylene) for your initial washer material which is the original teflon developed by DuPont back in the early 1950's. It's usually white or off-white/translucent so I'm assuming those washer inner structure (you mention fiberglass) has the tan color. Are the sandwich bags made of PTFE or some other polymer? May not matter as 'teflon' typically refers to a non-stick (low friction) surface. An alternate (or additional) trick is to put a thin plastic washer (shim) inside of the ears. When done properly this prevents the ears from being bent/torqued to the breaking point. For my Equinox (which uses a modified X-Terra 705 shaft and gaskets), the stock (X-Terra 705) gaskets wear away with time which necessitates the shims. I assume similar occurs with the stock Equinox gaskets but not sure about that.

Sure had an infectious smile. Fred seems to be a good example of someone who had a career in one area and found a second one in retirement. He was a ball of energy right up until he got the dreaded C. I hope I have half as much in my late 70's. A bit rough dealing with people at times, but who among us is perfect?

Your plot appears to show us the depth range of 1.17 m to 2.3 m. Does your detection device show anything from surface down to 1.17 m? Also, does this measurement now answer your question as to how the copper got there?

Good to know. Thanks!

Have you tried this procedure with recovered 95% copper cents?

That sounds significant. To have a constricted 1/16" hole likely means the hole diameter is important. I think that argues for some kind of gas passage, possibly a flammable gas. Your lamp idea is gaining legitimacy.

Given both its (small) size and the amount of detail, my expectation is that it goes to something that would be reasonably close to a person's eyes at least a fair amount of the time, to justify/reward its artistic value. It appears there are two paths for transport -- lower ornate one and upper plain (circularly cylindrical) one. If so (i.e. both are hollow), this is probably an indication of its utility. Either that or its expected to see a lot of torque and that upper strut is simply for strength (although that seems unlikely). I'm probably not helping much in ID'ing it....

I would replace 'funniest' with "most ridiculous'. I wonder when you include all expenses (salaries, fuel cost, vehicle depriciation, overhead paperwork, etc.) how much it costs to transport a USA cent in this case. And, yes, they can be picked up easily on sidewalks, etc. all over the country, yet the health cost (likelihood of injury or even disease transmission) lowers that opportunity value, too. There are certainly far bigger issues that require the attention of legislators than perpetuating the minting and distribution of USA 1-cent pieces, but it does seem to be just one more example of humans failing to use the brains they were born with.

Finally got around to loading the update (painlessly, thanks in part to Mark Dayton's -- aka 'Brass Medic' -- YouTube video). My sole goal was to compare in my soil how the update performance compared to the original software. First some background which should help in understanding the result: 1) My soil here at home in my test garden pretty well matches the conditions in nearby parks and schools I've been detecting for the past 5 years with the Equinox. The Fe3O4 mineralization meters on the Fisher F75 and Gold Bug Pro (not quite the same scale) both show 2-3 bars depending upon exact location. I interpret that as 'moderate' ferrous mineralization. Regarding my in-field results at my 100+ year old sites (at least five of them I've hunted hard), I've only found two coins at 9" depth (Jefferson nickel and Wheat cent) and none deeper. I've found a few 95% copper cents and silver dimes at 8" -- by "a few" I mean on the order of 10 or so. Silver quarters have been few and the low statistics dominate -- 7" about the deepest. Ages go back to Barbers (dimes and quarters) and 95% copper Indian Head cents. I bring all this up as evidence that my 2-3 bar dirt likely *does* cause loss of depth compared to pristine, dry white beach sand, although I can't say with 100% certainty that other factors (coins just aren't any deeper or detectorist skill level) aren't the contributing or even the primary cause. 2) My testing in this case had one goal -- to see if the update affected the depth in my test garden. I have three buried USA coins to check -- 5 inch deep 95% copper Memorial 1 cent, 6 inch deep 25% nickel, 75% copper Jefferson 5 cent, and 8.5 inch deep clad (outer layers same composition as above Jefferson nickel; inner layer pure copper) 25 cent coin. I used the Equinox 800 with 11" coil as the control. Neither it nor the Manticore has any trouble signalling strong and stable with those three targets with 'reasonable' settings (see more below). As such I do a hybrid (ground + air) enhancement to get to the detection edge. I stack wood blocks / shims of size 1/2", 1", and (multiple) 1.5" thickness to measure coil height above the ground in 1/2 inch increments and add them until I reach what I consider the largest distance which gives a diggable signal. 3) Back in mid-May I did some tests with the Equinox 800 and 11" coil (for baseline/control) and the Manticore with 11" coil, the latter in different searchmodes. So far I'm withholding reporting absolute results as I need more experience with different settings before I'm confident they are representative. However, today I repeated a subset of those tests with the Mcore's update installed. Here are my corresponding, relevant settings both in May and today: Equinox 800: Park 1, five custom tones (customized in volume, pitch, and breaks), sensitivity = 21, recovery speed = 4, Iron Bias F2=0, no notching (aka Minelab "all metal" so all VDI hits correspond to actual tones transmitted), ground balanced and noise canceled. Manticore: All-Terrain High Conductors, five customized fixed tones, sensitivity = 21, recovery speed = 4, iron mask upper 8, lower 3, no notching (aka "all metal"), ground balanced and noise canceled. Headphones were used in both cases (Sunray Pro Golds with WM08 for the Eqx and ML 105's for the Manticore). For the updated Manticore I turned off the new (iron) stability features (NOTE: there are two new settings options as seen in the new manual on page 51 -- 'Stabilizer' which is a number 0-12 where '0' indicates OFF, and 'stabilizer filter' which is a supplementary feature which only applies if the Stabilizer value is non-zero.) My screen showed Stabilizer value of 0 and the stabilizer filter OFF. Bottom line is that even with possible changed ground conditions (due to soil moisture changes between mid-May and early July), both detectors showed similar performance, (hybrid) depthwise, today as they did back in May for all three buried test targets. I didn't try doing measurements with the Stabilizer turned on. In the future I will do more tests where I actually vary a coin's depth (my setup can go down to 14" which is way deeper than either detector will be able to sense a USA 25 cent piece in my ground). I plan on varying the Manticore's sensitivity and search mode in particular as well as experimenting with the Stabilizer settings. But for now, based upon my limited testing so far, I feel the update hasn't degraded the Manticore's core (i.e. Stability OFF) depth performance. One last note about my update procedure: I did not do any factory resets, either before or after installing the new update. It's nice not to have to hand record and then redo all the many customization settings I've made. (It seems all those are preserved during the update, something that has been mentioned here in this thread as well as in Mark Dayton's videos.) I know some feel factory resets are safer in terms of getting the desired result of a smooth, properly operating detector but for now I'm going this easier route until I see/hear reliable reports that it's necessary in the case of the Manticore.

I had that problem, too. Also, for the past week I don't see the link icon to be able to link an internet address to an article. That happened once before so likely a glitch occurred during a recent software update. I think I saw a post from Steve that he's away from home. Presumably he'll take care of problems when he gets back. @Chase Goldman might know more so maybe he'll comfort us with an expert explantion....

Welcome, Golden_Republic! The easiest way to feel comfortable that you're not stepping on toes (of a claim owner) is to join a local or national club. The Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA) is a national organization with a lot of claims in California. Not being from your area I don't know the local and regional clubs but someone here does, and you can always do an internet query to find them. Panning and metal detecting are rather different adventures which do compiement each other. You mentioned avoiding pay-for-play sites (and other panning sites for beginners) but your attitude may be overly cautious in regards to learning to pan. Like most things, having someone show you the ropes is usually better/faster than trying to figure things out on your own, and that includes YouTube video watching. After getting some confidence you're doing things right you'll be way better off when you venture out on your own or try to add some expertise from videos. You are fortunate to live in a gold-rich area. Enjoy the (carnival) ride!

That's quite possibly difficult ground due to ferrous mineralization. But you're cutting your teeth so it's not going to hurt you with your apparent positive attitude. I predict you'll be even more pleased if you can get into less severe ground. You have an excellent detector for the task so keep up the good work!

I'm one who is slow to draw conclusions. As such I've been radio silent (and will continue to be for a while, with exceptions like below). Filtering out opinions from people who have never touched one, only seen one that a friend is using, etc. silences a lot of the noise. The signal that remains seems to be mostly positive, but with reservations. That appears to be true both before the update and even with the update. Interestingly, my responses so far put me in the minority of 1 for the first two questions! For another thing, the question about the update (question #3) doesn't even include my intended response (and the survey forced me to answer question 3 or else not include me at all). I still have not found the time to download or install the update, but now that it's known to be reversible I will get to that and do some testing. (This weekend? Maybe, but don't hold your breath.) My overall impression is that the Manticore holds promise even for those of us in moderate and higher mineralization, but for the most part it's going to take time (for me in particular) to extract the performance improvements over the Equinox 800. Those who want instant gratification, with possible exception of water hunters and the related extremely low mineralziation (e.g. Florida peninsula) detectorists, are probably not going to be patient enough to get this detector to shine for them. But how is that different from other top-end IB/VLF's such as the XP Deus 2?? A lot of detectors can get you 80-90% of the way to top performance. If you want that last 10-20% you're going to have to work at it. Is that different than for any other worthwhile endeavor?

IMO, you nailed it. Not as deep (in my moderately mineralized soils) as the 11 inch stock coil. (I wrote up my experience here a while back where I flagged targets with 11" and 5"x10" and compared prior to digging. The 11" won.) Very good separation but not surprisingly, in extemely trashy locations the 6" does a bit better. The hits (in audio) do seem sharp for small targets. (Weight and coverage comparisons as expected -- no surprises there.) Bottom line: IMO it's a tweener or a Goldilocks, no more and no less.

Gotta say that's the most subdued report of a gold coin cache find I've ever read!

I empathize as I've been in your shoes more than a couple times. Invariably I end up finding whatever I hid, not by exhaustivey looking but just by stumbling across it (eventually) and then saying, "Oh, yeh, now I remember putting it there!" True Story (and metal detector related!): A friend and I were going to Las Vegas to bet (on American football) and got a pile of $100 bills. I had heard the conspiracy theory that the USA government had put metal in $100 bills to be able to track people's money transport quantities as they went through the metal detectors at airports. I was pretty sure this was BS but I decided to do an experiment to check the story's veracity. So.... I went to my then near empty workshop (it had just been built) and set a couple saw-horses up with a plank across them to hold the money. I used my Garrett Groundhog to see if I could pick up a signal. One bill, then 10 bills, then 100 bills,... Yes, I did get a peep but that was it -- just a barely perceptible signal. Given that airport metal detectors are (necessarily) desensitized compared to what we use I confirmed that the conspiracy theory was bogus. But.... After the test I counted the money and was $1000 short. My first thought was that my friend (who had gotten the money at the bank and then handed it to me) had somehow either misplaced that much or (worse) that the bank had inadvertently shorted him. He did a search and even went to the bank for them to do a balance check. Both proved fruitless. So we put in another grand and made our trip (losing it all, BTW, but that's another story. ) Some time after I returned home I happened to go into the shop to get the saw-horses and... there on the floor under them was a package of bills totalling $1k. Needless to say I had a hard time cleaning the egg from my face, and my friend still razzes me about it on occasion.

Reverse matters! Jaeger (seems link feature isn't working...) has 13 photos on p. 72 with the Indian Head although not all match yours. Please post a photo of the reverse.

I looked up his nicknames and see one was "the Thumper". Maybe that's what happens if you drop this on your toe.... Pretty interesting that putting the name of a person who has (AFAIK) zero to do with the product was expected to sell it, but then I'm the first to admit typical marketing makes little sense to me. The condition of that detector appears that it was hardly ever used, if at all. Maybe that turned out to be the case with those who 'fell' for the name on the box. With the White's name (something that does make sense) this may well have been state-of-the-art in 1979.

OK, retraction #1 by me if this can be confirmed. (Update: Appears Simon has confirmed.) Once I'm confident I can get back to where I started, I'll upload and do some testing. My baseline is the Equinox 800 which I know rather well in my soils. I can at least say if the Manticore's performance with the update, relative to the 800, has changed (and of course if so, in which direction) in my moderately mineralized test bed. I await hearing more about the update itself and if Andrew's experience is due (simply) to some kind of (rare) anomaly as opposed to a blanket effect of the update. People sometimes get chastised for not updating to the latest software but it's these kind of inexcusable oversights (again, if that's what we are actually seeing) that makes some of us wary. Squeeky wheel tends to get the grease and we've seen a fair amount of squeeking regarding iron handling and VDI stability when running the original software. I had the Manticore out yesterday for a short 2 hour search in a well-hunted (by me) park. Maybe partly influenced by the horror story I read here, but I was rather pleased how it was performing with the origninal software. It's the typical incremental comfort that I experienced with the Equinox 800 five years ago. The more hands-on hours I gain, the more subtlties (and I do mean 'subltle') that I seem to pick up. Long way to go yet, just like with the 800. However, with the 800 the updates did help me and I hope that will be the case with the Manticore. Never take away; just add, PLEASE!

Do you mean 'Andrew' = 'Andy' = abenson? "Good?" Understatement of the day..., no, make that 'month' at least.

Yep. Here's a screen shot of what it said: I may be able to access it with my provider username+password. If not, I'll find a way.