GB_Amateur

Great finds -- I'd be happy with any one of them! Sounds like you're giving the Tarsacci a good workout in situations it might excel. Most of the time a mintmarked coin (particularly -S) is going to be scarcer than the same year's plain (no mintmark = Philadelphia). The 1862 half dollar is an exception. You didn't mention a mintmark on that one. Hope it doesn't have one.... Are these coins coming out of really rocky ground? The dings on the halves, particularly on the 1861, having me thinking that is the case. (Lest you think I'm blaming you, I'm not. Lots of things can happen to a coin which is in the ground for over a century, especially when it's up against hard objects.) Also, do you know what is above Lady Liberty's shoulder (looks like a couple of flags tied to a line) on the 1862 half? I suppose it could be something that happened at the mint (e.g. die clash).

OK, I'm probably going off on a tanget (again), but when I looked at the above picture, trying to identify the different detectors, I noticed the Equinox had a white coil attached! And here many of us have been complaining that there are only three coils for the Equinox. Have you been withholding information from us??!!!

You guys are killing me! Since the stay-at-home situation began I've been walking (allowed for exercise) and realized that a baseball field that is normally locked has its bullpen (for those not familiar with baseball, it's the area where substitute pitchers=throwers warm up) outside the locked fence. It's also pretty remote compared to the walking paths, so even now with lots of extra walkers & runners it's unlikely that I'll interfere with anyone's exercise or even be noticed. Ditto outside the outfield fence. I've been avoiding going in solidarity, but I don't know how much longer I can resist. AMW, if you go dectecting, anything you find counts in my book. I (and I'm sure everyone) has found 'sunbakers' where just my eyes were involved, regardless digging/not. Sounds like your Eqx + 15" inch coil called your attention to it. Nice chain and cross! P.S. I assume you gave your Carrot a bath. The only time mine looks like that is after a good cleaning, and it doesn't stay that way for long.

Here I go again, cherry- and nit-picking your words. 🧐 Definitely not 'rambling' IMO. But I sometimes skim longer posts, as can be seen by my above post which missed your more detailed explanation. Please don't let this deter you from future detailed explanations. If I cause that then I've done this website and metal detecting in general a huge disservice. There are at least two underlying things going on when I take exception to something you've written: what you say and what you mean. From your many excellent posts as well as several private messages, I usually have a good idea of what you really understand, and never for a second did I think your experience/evidence/thought-process included the simple statement (underlying meaning?) that the Eqx's multi-IQ setting covered all single frequency searches. My reply post was more for others, but that is probably a flaw of mine -- trying to clarify what someone else wrote. I'll work on that (but no promises it won't happen again). I also used it as a segway to an idea that just crystallized with me in the last few weeks -- that the Eqx, although in many ways groundbreaking, is still a long way from what many of us really desire/crave/beg for: perfect unmasking. I doubt we'll ever get that, but there is still a lot of improvement that can be made by better signal processing and more clever electronics design. At least I sure hope there is.

Well, not quite. AFAIK the smallest coin minted in the USA as an official USA legal tender coin is the silver 3-cent piece (nicknamed 'trime') which tips the scales at 0.80 grams. They were minted from 1851 to 1873, although only the first 12 years realistically saw circulation. Not surprisingly their tiny size and to some extent, oddball denomination led to their unpopularity. Second on the list is the silver half dime (i.e. 5-cent piece which was evenually replaced by our still minted 'nickel') at a whopping 😁 1.35 grams. Those had a 90 year reign from 1794 to 1873. Your point about trash is meaningful. We've had in the neighborhood of 200-300 years of people dropping metal trash while Europe & Great Britain (and other parts of Eurasia and some of Africa) have to deal with a window 10 times that long.

Fantastic post, Hugh! Hope Steve links to it in his "everything you ever wanted to know about the Equinox" page. Hope I'm not taking this out of context, but I disagree with the blanket statement. Multi-frequency does give more reliable coverage than typical single frequencies but we're learning from recent posts that even the Equinox on single frequencies can squeeze out targets that its multi-IQ didn't indicate were 'good'. I see the Equinox (already 2 years into production) as an incremental step towards better detecting. There's still a lot of room for improvement and I look forward to that progress from all detector manufacturers willing to take those steps.

There are a couple of potential problems with your logic: 1) it's a TV show based in reality, but modified for the audience, and 2) illegal stuff goes on all the time in the USA (and many other countries, for that matter). Oh, and recent Gold Rush episodes are mostly filmed in the Canadian Yukon. (I'm assuming you are referring to the Gold Rush TV show with Tony Beets, Parker Schabel, etc.) Although only peripherally related, I recall back in the late 70's --> early 80's precious metals' price boom that some people would pay for transactions with historic coins claiming the sale was made at their face value. For example, I buy a vehicle from you and pay with pre-1933 $10 gold pieces, say I give you 10 of those and claim the sale price was $100 when it was actually in the few thousands (value-wise). Then taxes (sales, income, capital gains) were presumably to be paid on $100 basis. It actually worked for a while until the legislators decided they were the only ones entitled to step through such a loophole.... That assumes you report your transactions to the government, though. (See #2 above....) Sales taxes have been collected for over half a century in my state, however if you bought an item out-of-state you were allowed to not pay sales tax in the state where you bought it but with the provision that you would subsequently report it and pay tax on it when you filed your (state) tax return for that year. I'm sure you can imagine how well that worked. Within the past few years the state governments have figured out a way to get interstate transactions (such as on Ebay and Amazon) to have the sales taxes collected by the seller. Another leak in the dike gets plugged....

As you note they are IB ("VLF") detectors, not PI's. So, no, they won't. Sounds like you've got the IB space covered. "I just want to say one word to you, just one word. Are you listening?" QED

Why are you limiting your choices to either a modern IB detector or a ~20 year old PI? Is it simply a budget ceiling at ~$1k?

I think Garrett felt embarrassed when Duracell used the Ace to make fun of rickety old farts beach hunting -- thus the built-in rechargeable. And to add to their image of high class, they come out with a really sophisticated commercial. Must have hired an out-of-work movie producer and crew from Hollywood. The dialogue in particular is first rate! Well, at least it impressed Jeff M. 😏

The gold to silver (price) ratio recently hit an all time high.

Sounds like a bit of an exaggeration. 😏 Every test means something, but interpreting/deciphering the meaning can be difficult to impossible. I also prefer real-world tests, but even those are vulnerable to conditions and thus susceptible to misinterpretation. IMO, everyone should have some kind of test setup as known conditions can help figure out what the detector is trying to say in the wild. There's a reason gold detectorists take test pieces into the field and tune to those. I think some relic hunters do the same.

I agree. He's had an article appearing almost every month lately. (Just to be clear, 'journal' is ICMJ Prospecting and Mining Journal.)

The charge-on-the-fly option from a portable recharger actually solves another issue -- balance. The charger can be mounted on the underside of the arm-cuff/stand. So those wanting longer run life at the expense of weight, but with improved balance, already have a solution. You mention the battery in the handle on the current model, which I suppose ML thought was a good idea. But for those of us who prefer a handle with smaller girth, it's an unneccessary discomfort. My 2nd most uncomfortable handle is the one on the ML X-Terra. Do Australians have extra large hands (e.g. to easily hold a stein of beer)? 😏

And I recall a couple years ago at one of their online 'garage sales' they were practically giving those away. Glad you're making the most of yours.

And there you go again!

I'm wondering if this is to 'protect' dealers who already have GBPros in stock and have paid the higher (wholesale) price for them. Would FTP rebate them for items stocked at the higher price? Or do I completely misunderstand the pricing relationship?

I have all three Fisher coils made for the Gold Bug family and all have performed well coin and relic hunting. I found a lot of coins with simply the small (5" round) coil. I did not do well in the limited time I was gold hunting out West (on short trips -- I live in the Midwest where metal detectable gold isn't easily accessed) but that was neither the fault of the detector nor the coil. Even for coin and relic hunting, IMO if you are to get only one coil then the 5"x10" is going to be the most versatile. But as Steve has said on multiple occasions, the 5"x10" and 7"x11" are close enough in size and performance that getting both is a lot of overlap -- better to get one of those in the initial purchase and an aftermarket 3rd-party coil such as Simon's favorite Detech Ultimate 12" x 13" or Steve's choice -- NEL Snake / Cors Shrew 3.5" x 6.5" (or both) to maximize diversity.

Serious_Detecting is selling the F19 new, with the 5"x10" coil right now for $449 in the USA. That beats buying the TRP with the 7"x11" and then adding the 5"x10" (>$150), assuming you aren't interested in using the stock coil. If you're going to be using the detector primarily with an aftermarket manufacturer (such as NEL/Cors) coil then you're better off buying the TRP at $399.

Definitely not doing that. This is an intermittent issue, and until the other day it was a very rare occurrence. I was out for an hour today in the backyard playing around with 40 kHz hunting. No sign of it. (Note: I don't attribute that to the frequency I was running. Just another piece of info. Consistent with the intermittency.) I haven't ruled out a factory reset.

Still has some historic meaning, though. California wasn't even a state in 1844 so I assume you couldn't vote there. (Might be wrong on that.) Was it lost by a soldier during the Mexican-American War? It could have been dropped years later, I suppose, but who carries around out-of-date campaign buttons, particularly from the losers?

I'm more from the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp. OTOH, maybe it is broke (i.e. of need a a reset). In Park 1, very few of the settings I use are factory/stock. Although I can easily reproduce my 5-tone tone breaks from memory, the tone audio frequencies are a different story. Assuming you don't think not doing a reset will damage it, I'm going to wait and see if this happens again and try to figure out what's causing it. Regardless, then I'll do a reset.

Presidential campaign button from 1844 -- took me a while to figure that out -- pretty cool and I wonder how valuable it is (bet you do, too ). Interesting relics but apparently no coins this trip.

I was getting ready to do that (writing down my settings first) when I decided to give it another chance. About 15 minutes with my test-stand and it didn't act up. There was one detail I left out previously -- I didn't have the coil attached to the shaft but rather sitting off to the side to make it easier to see the screen while air testing. The reason I left that info out is because previously when this happened in the field the coil was attached normally. I suppose it could be an issue, but I don't see why. I'm still holding off doing a factory reset at least until it happens again. Ditto on sending it in for warranty service. (I still have almost a year on the warranty.)

I've found those too and didn't know what they were. Do you mean drywall (made of gypsum)? Nice ring, AMW! So it rang up 7/8 on the Eqx (well below USA nickel coin TID of 12/13). I wonder how many I've missed with mental discrimination, trying to avoid digging so much aluminum foil.... 🤔