GB_Amateur

That's an excellent macro photo. What is the camera brand and model number?

Stop! Looks fantastic.

Ok, next time you find a 1 ounce bit I'll offer you 10 times that much. ? I agree that it's the thrill of the chase that excites me, as long as I get rewarded once in a while. Gold can be found with a $450 detector, a $900 one, a $2500 one, a $7000 one. Everyone has his/her threshold when it comes to how much to spend for that fun. And some people find enough to supplement their income or even (rarely) to make it their primary source. Does the price determine the likelihood of finding gold, or more to the point the amount of gold? Likely, but sometimes there are better things to do with that money. On this I think we all agree although sometimes it seems like responders to questions of "which detector should I buy" don't take this into account. Not a problem on this thread, though. Now go out and have that fun! I'm planning on some this weekend.

Jin's 4500 seems to be doing OK on the small stuff. Yes, I realize some detectors can find even smaller gold than his 0.06 grammer, as JW (among others) has shown many times. A couple things to remember (just in case you don't already know): a) 0.06 g is aproximately equivalent to 1 grain. (Closer is 0.065 g = 1 grain.) b) 0.06 g of pure gold right now is worth about $2.33 (based upon $1204/toz spot).

Many (probably most) of the silver coins we find have value because of their silver content, not because of their collector value. There is a fairly easy rule of thumb to get that value, because of the uniformity of both content (90% silver as you mention) and coin weight. Fortunately for us (and 'them' too), a silver half dollar (50 cents face value) has the same weight as two silver quarters (50c face) and five silver dimes (also 50c face). The silver content of a dollar's worth of 90% silver US coins is very close (actually slightly less) than 0.7 troy ounces. I just looked up the silver spot price -- it's $14.82/toz. I'm going to call that $15 so I can do the arithmetic more easily. 0.7*15 is $10.50. So a silver dime containing one tenth that much silver has a value today of approximately $1.05. Since I rounded up for both factors let's just call it $1.00 even. (Oh, and your just found quarter is worth $2.50!) There are some obvious problems here. The biggest one is wear. Most coins we find aren't fresh from the mint so some silver has been lost through wear. Simply weighing the coin accurately will correct for this. (Your quarter doesn't look to badly worn so probably just a couple percent loss is my guess.) The second problem is that there are exceptions to the weight rule I outlined above. A silver dollar (also 90% silver) weighs more than two silver halves. (And most silver dollars, unless in crappy condition, have some minor collector value above bullion just because of their stature/desirability.) Another issue are the silver War Nickels. If I recall they contain about 2/3 as much silver as a silver dime, but I could be off several percent there. There are other exceptions, particularly for coins struck prior to the Civil War. The collector value ('numismatic value') of coins we find does sometimes exceed the bullion value, and we've seen quite a few examples of that here on this forum. But in general that's not the case and the reason is that the thing that makes these special cases valuable is their scarcity/rarity, and they were scarce when they were dropped all those many years ago meaning it's more likley that the common date+MM (bullion value only) are the ones we find.

True up until recently when they put a mint in West Point, NY (home of the US Military Academy) and coins minted there also have no mint mark. However, now many coins minted in Philly have the 'P' mintmark. It used to be an easy indicator but not anymore. As far as "incidentally happens alot", if you mean you're more likely to find an un-mintmarked US coin than one with a mintmark, that depends a lot on where the coin is found and its date. For a long time (on the order of a century) the Philadelphia mint produced the majority of coins, but by the 1940's Denver was cranking out its share much of the time. "Where" has to do with distribution and diffusion. For example, the western US has/had mints in San Francisco (-S) and Carson City (-CC) so its more likely to find coins with those mintmarks in the West. P.S. Excellent find! I've logged 400 hours in the last 3 years and have found just one silver quarter in that time window. That's going to change soon (fingers crossed). ?

I think it just depends upon your ground minerals. Low mineralization -- you don't need it.

If buying now, how do you know you're getting the 2nd version? Is it simply trusting the dealer to know when you ask? (Guess that argues for finding a knowledgeable dealer, and then sticking with him/her.)

OK, you've stumped me. What is a 'VGG'? Concerning your mystery item, does the back side look the same as the front? Phrunt's guess would make sense to me if the backside were basically flat or at least much less decorated. That still would leave me scratching my head why the central egg rotates. Regardless, a nice find.

A Geiger counter does nothing more more than indicate that ionizing radiation is present. The best it can discriminate is to differentiate the three common forms of natural terrestrial originated forms: alpha, beta, and gamma. But there are enough sources of these (although dominated by Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium) that just knowing you have an emitter doesn't tell you what you have. Further investigation/testing is required. Think of U & Th (and their daughters) as the iron and aluminum trash that annoys detectorists (particularly those using non-discriminating PI detectors), except its abundance ratio compared to other radioactive elements (desirable or otherwise) is many-fold worse. IMO, finding precious metals with a metal detector is orders of magnitude more likely to be successful than the lucky off-chance that some valuable (precious metal) mineral associated with a radioactive mineral can be picked up with Geiger counter. And because of the secondary testing that would be required with a Geiger counter, MDing is less expensive in addition.

You mean the Hunt brothers attempting to corner the market and control the price? That was 1979. I know, it seems like yesterday to me, too. Time flies when you're having fun. Wish I had kept up my detecting over the last 39 years, but "no time like the present." There are still plenty of precious metals out there. Let's get our share!

This article is interesting but in terms of value/pricing it is misleading. The reason is that precious metals are commodities and their prices fluctuate. For example, right now (will change tomorrow ?) gold has about 1.5 times the price of platinum. Even palladium is currently higher priced that platinum. A google search of "precious metals spot prices" will give the up-to-date values of the more well-known rare metals.

Good mnemonic I only learned recently: US quarter is 1 inch diamter; US half dollar is 1 1/4 inch in diameter. US dollar (the old format, so traditional silver dollars and Eisenhower dollars but not the Susan B. Anthonys nor the new bronze dollars) is 1 1/2 inch diameter.

This sounds good, but I think there might be a better clip than an alligator, for a) more intimate electrical contact, and b) better mechanical stability. I certainly like the direction you are going here. Please take some pics of the setup when you get it ready. A lot of people would like to take this route.

One thing you don't mention but is a constraint/consideration/requirement is mechanically securing the rogue battery pack inside the case. I've modified the standard pack (blue one which takes standard AA's) with leads to an external AA holder so I can up the voltage. (This wouldn't work for the new water-tight version but is just peachy for the standard TDI/SL.) I also have one of the RNB lithium packs which runs at 12V but has longer operating life between recharges. There's always a tradeoff when doing mods which void the warranty. Obviously it's up to each owner to make that decision.

As a Christmas present, a friend of mine asked around amongst many friends/acquaintances and received five positive replies for permission for me to search their properties. Last weekend I went to my 3rd (actually 3b since this is a property now owned by one of the original five, but a second property). I find it interesting to compare/contrast two of these properties which I'll call 3a and 3b. 3a) small (<1000 sq ft) home built about 1940 on a corner lot. Total property size ~0.1 acre. There is a detached garage, part of the yard is fenced off for farm animals, and although I had permission to search in with them (goats and chickens) I didn't do as thorough of a job searching their space as the rest, for obvious reasons. I was expecting good results but a 4 hour hunt only produced one old coin -- a late 1930's Wheat Cent. It's possible this site had been searched previously but I think it's less likely than a second theory -- whoever has lived there just didn't hang out much in the yard and/or didn't carry coins in places where they could be dropped. Regardless, I was disappointed to the sparsity of finds, but that just makes me hungrier for other sites and more excited when those produce. To my surprise and appreciation, that home owner told me she was in the process of buying a rental and said I was welcome to search it. Proceed to... 3b) similar size home and lot, but this time no farm animals, built ~1955. Assuming the 'old' coins I seek stopped being circulated by the early 1970's, this property only offers about 15 or so years to have accumulated these targets as opposed to twice as long with 3a. After my previous experience I wasn't expecting a windfall but still was hopeful. Last Sunday I was able to put in 3 hours of searching and covered a little more than half of the searchable ground. During the hunt I was finding a moderate number of coins, mostly copper Memorial cents, a few clad dimes and quarters and a couple Jefferson nickels. I was discriminating hard against Zincolns which might have been a mistake. Two of the copper cents I found (I think both were Wheats but not sure) hit 20-21 ID on my Equinox 800 (Park 1, 5 custom tones, ground balanced, recovery speed = 6, iron bias = 2, gain = 18). When I don't expect Indian Heads I tend to discriminate at 21/22 ID break. I don't like trying to clean coins in the field so although I knew I had some Wheaties I wasn't sure how many. Turns out 7 of the 21 pennies I recovered were Wheats. My standard procedure is to soak in just water for several hours and then use just my fingers (including fingernails) and a soft toothbrush to figure out date+mintmark. Soaking removes the loose grit (think 'abrasive' which is why I don't mess with coins in the field) and a fingernail is soft enough not to scratch the metal. As most of you experience, copper coins that have been in the ground a long time tend to build up a scale which doesn't come off easily. 95% of the time I have to scrape the date area with a fingernail. It's kind of a fun process because rather than seeing a date immediately there is a gradual revelation. For example: "looks like a 194x, no maybe 191x (scrape some more), OK 1942? or is that a 3 or 8? I'm seeing a mintmark but can't tell if 'D' or 'S'. Hope it's an 'S'...." Part of this process is driven by poor eyesight, even using magnifiers. That's exactly what happened with the coin shown below. It looked like a 1924 but there was too much scale to see a mintmark. As usual I hope for the best "please be a -D" but my dreams almost never reach fruition. However, this time, bonus!! Just as I had begged for, a -D (Denver mint) showed through. Of the >200 business strike Lincoln cents, the order of rarity (based upon mintage) is 1909-S VDB, 1931-S, 1914-D, 1909-S, 1924-D. I found the fifth scarecest Lincoln (not counting the rare and sometimes valuable 'error' coins such as the Double Dies and off-metal planchet errors nor 'proof' coins issued for collectors only). In the 1960's I searched bank rolls and pocket change religiously for my collection. I estimate over the years I looked at 25,000 or more Lincoln cents and not only did I never find a 1924-D, but no cents as valuable either. (Actually the value even today is quite modest. Given its wear, even if I can successfully clean off the scale it would only be worth about $15 on Ebay.) Since restarting metal detecting 3 years ago I've found just over 100 Wheaties. 1/100 beats 0/25,000 every day of the week.

I lean towards the latter -- fill covering older coins&relics. I'll go further and speculate that the fill occurred in the late 1950's based upon the date+MM you show. (Thanks for displaying the dates on the Wheaties.) Another great day for you Dan! Well done. Congrats to your buddy for getting the permission.

The fact (or perception, sometimes) that targets we find are biased by previous searching is a factor, and possibly the most significant one. But others are both the history of the ground itself (natural and human induced) as well as the *source* of the lost treasures. I've been searching a couple schools extesnsively this summer and can't help but speculate while I'm out there (hours of time where my brain is less than 100% occupied can do that ?) who/when/what led to the things I'm finding. 'Who' is mostly the children attending the school. 'When' is the time period of the school's attendance. 'What' is actually the items they were carrying and subsequently lost. Why are children carrying coins in the first place? One obvious answer is 'lunch money'. What did lunch cost when these coins were dropped? In general a lot less as we go back in time, possibly excepting subsidized lunches. Why is it harder to find silver halves and quarters? I think one reason is that lunch only cost a dime. Why would parents send their children to school with more money than needed to buy lunch? I don't even know if schools still use cash as a medium of exchange at lunchtime. Maybe students carry credit cards; maybe parents are billed or prepay. Pennies are the weird ones thanks to the brain dead decision that has been made by the US government. (Well, I guess on the scale of bad decisions this one has to be on the low end....) When many of us were growing up a penny meant something. Now people would rather toss them on the ground than have them weighing down their pockets and purses. I remember when 1 cent would buy a piece of bubblegum. What is the smallest price you can buy *anything* for today? I don't know but I'm guessing 10 cents. Takes ten of those annoying Stinkin' Zincolns to purchase the lowest price item in a store. The reason coins are located where we find them is a complicated evolution that is site specific. Lots of fun (for some of us) to speculate on but difficult to tie down with much certainty.

How true. I was planning on writing a review but after the first time through it I realized I wouldn't be able to do that fairly without a couple more readings. Your excellent writeup (and now many more hours using the Eqx) inspire me reread it now.

Great haul! You just never know what you'll find. If we hit a HR every time out it wouldn't be nearly as fun when we come across a site like this. Another beautiful Walker..., can hardly wait to find mine. Thanks for showing the dates on the Wheaties. A little fuzzy -- what is the far left one on row 2 and the far right on row 3? (I'm hoping 1933-D and 1931-S respectively. Think positive!)

Excellent finds! (Still haven't found a dated Buffalo.?) My IH's are green like yours, but only one has cleaned up that nicely. Did you do anything besides soak these? Can't wait to get my 6" coil. About how deep were those coins?

I'd take a silver half over a bag of modern quarters any day.

(Sinclair already mentioned to possibility of steel reinforcing.) If there is a concrete subfloor there could be magnetite or other magnetic / highly mineralized / iron oxide component to that. You didn't say if your detector was quiet when held still -- the tipoff to whether you're picking up EMI or not. I'm assuming the answer is "quiet when not in motion."

Welcome, Sasquatch! I assume (with a nick like that) you don't like to get your picture taken. ? You're on the right track. You might try digging some of the inconsistent signals to see what they are, even if that just emphasizes what you don't want to dig in the future. In my experience not all inconsistent signals are bad targets. Presumably you are running in "all metal" (horseshoe button toggle) since default discrimination eliminates ferrous signals. Why not pick a couple of those magnetic rocks off the driveway and see where they ID (if you haven't done that already)?

You guys are killing me, finding Walkers! I got a good 33 TID reading yesterday and optimistically said to myself "here's mine." Turned out to be a chunk of copper (not sure what it was used for). Keep up the successful hunting and report back more details (settings, depth) when you get a chance. But I too would be out there hunting instead of sitting here writing if the situation was reversed.