GB_Amateur

I'm not an expert on cleaning finds. But here are some points I try to abide by. I encourage others to chime in on their principles and techniques. (These are mainly for copper and copper-nickel alloys such as US nickel 5 cent pieces. All my (few ) silver finds look like the day it was dropped and your Merc appears to have been similar, but you still may need to get some mud off of them. -1) The best way to avoid damaging a coin is to leave it alone. But eventually someone (probably you) is going to have to figure out the date and mintmark. Just err on the side of caution until you have those identified. 0) First goal is to find the date and mintmark without damaging the coin. 1) Abrasives are the enemy. (Unnatural discoloration also, but pennies and nickels are already going to be discolored from being in the ground.) Besides abrasives in the cleaning matereials, just the soil that coats/cakes the find is trouble. So never rub the find in the field. 2) Water is a good solvent. I like to add a bit of very mild detergent (caution: this may be bad advice). I use a splash of car wash liquid which is less harsh than dishwashing liquid. 3) Time is generally your friend (more on that later). Exception is when using acids, alkalis, and some solvents which I'm not going to even touch on here. Maybe this should have been higher on the list.... 4) Be careful of soaking unlike metals. I don't know which work bad together but I avoid including iron and aluminum with coins (hey, sometimes objects made of these can be valuable) and try not to include Zincolns, which you can get very good at ID'ing right out of the ground because their fast loss of material while in the ground and their horrendous growths. A Zincoln that's been in the ground makes a good wood file by itself (and that's about all it's worth). Another way to separate zinc from copper is by mass or weight. Copper pennies start out (new) at about 3.1 g. Zincolns start out about 2.5 g and go down quickly once in the ground. 5) Remember rule 0 -- you don't need to clean the entire coin, just get to the date & mm. When I was young I could read any date that wasn't eve remotely present with my naked eyes. Now I need strong magnification and lots of bright light. Something in the neighborhood of 10x power works well for me, but find your own optimal combination of size and power. My favorite tool is a 50+ year old spark plug inspection light/magnifier I got from my uncle, but I don't even know if these are still made. 6) After the abrasives are soaked/flushed away from the date & mm areas, find those and then look up the values. Here's a good website for that: https://www.pcgs.com/prices/ Keep in mind that a) these are retail prices, and b) the value depends strongly on the grade. Anything in the 60's (mint state) cannot be found in the ground and most finds will be in the low numbers. But 35's and 40's are possible. Figuring out the grade is a step unto itself that I won't go into. But if the chart on this website doesn't show a value then either it's so rare (and valuable) that they don't have an established price (that would be nice!) or 99.99999% it just doesn't have numismatic value, in which case you're talking metal content value and personal pride/satisfaction/aesthetic value. Another good place to look if this page shows value is Ebay prices realized, but that takes more searching. Still, you'll also get a handle on the condition (grade) most of the time. 7) If your research up to this point shows the coin may have collector value, stop cleaning it and get expert help/opinion, e.g. coin dealer, and make sure it's one you trust. ['Trust' meaning a) honest, and b) know what they are talking about.] This is like anything. Just because someone works in (or even owns) a coin shop doesn't necessarily make him/her an expert. The Professional Numismatic Guild (PNG) https://png.memberclicks.net/find-a-png-dealer members are the ultimate in integrity (and at a minimum high up in expertise) but there aren't that many of them. Getting multiple opinions is always a good idea, and beware of the first offer.... 8) If you find the coin has no value you can do as you like, but if you want to make the coin presentable you might still want to keep going here. 9) (Learned this from posters SwampstomperAl and DeftTones). Soak in olive oil for a LOOONNNNNGGGGGGG time (as in months). See step 3 above. 10) Once the abrasives are gone (make sure!) you can use soft things like wood and your fingernail, but take it easy as you go. These items can separate the attached chunks of contamination, but they don't always work. And even soft things can cause microscopic damage which the experts will notice. Don't assume that soft cotton (handkerchief, washcloth) won't damage. Ever get lectured by your optomitrist/optician??) 11) I've read (here and elsewhere) of people using abrasives to clean pennies and nickels to make them look presentable and I'm not going to argue with that. But just make sure the coin has minimal numismatic value before going that route, since it's irreversible. 12) Regarding the color, even for coins with no numismatic value, it's worth noting that a different than original color may actually enhance the appearance if it's naturally occurring. This is particularly possible with copper coins. Coins that have obviously been cleaned lose much of their appeal in the view of many. And, again, unnatural colored surfaces are a huge detriment to a coin's value, assuming it's otherwise a collectible date&mm. That was kinda long (typical for me). Hope it's accurate and, again, I encourage others to chime in with their knowledge and techniques, especially if you see something I said which is wrong.

Nice finds for just 2 hours of hunting. I think you've located a good spot! As has been noted many times here and elsewhere, people tend to take the easy route, and that includes metal detectorists in general (but not all, as you show). The tougher a spot to reach, the more likely it's virgin. Don't mean to be too nosey, but how are you cleaning your finds? The ring looks to have a lot of scratches and the striations from 1 o'clock to 7 o'clock on the Lincoln plus the reflectivity of the high spots make me wonder if you're being a bit too rough.

A couple weeks ago when I got back from a hunt my wife asked me "what did you find" and I had to respond "nothing worth mentioning" (meaning no old coins or decent relics or jewelry). She then said "well, maybe you need to find a new spot." Now, my wife wouldn't know which end of the detector to place on the ground (because she couldn't care less about using one), but her advice rang true. Coincidentally I was reading the October issue of the ICMJ Journal and there was an article there by Chris Ralph (who posts here, in case you weren't aware of that) titled Is it time for a change? New ways to find more gold. How appropriate! I see this quite often in this endeavor. For example, advice which seems like it is specific to one detector applies to many, sometimes all detectors. Even though finding native gold poses different challenges than coins/relics/jewelry, there is a lot in common. Chris's article covered quite a bit of detail. For many reasons I don't want to try and reproduce what he said. But a couple key points are 1) instead of going back to the same spots where you've been harvesting gold for a long time, with diminishing returns, start fresh and find a new (with emphasis on minimally searched) location. 2) Try using different equipment. For the latter, he was giving examples of changing from detector to dry-washer/sluice/etc. or vice-versa. But even a change of detector model or just the coil for a coin hunter could break the trend and provide new insights (and valuables!). Regarding Chris's point of finding a new location, I know in my town there are way more old parks that I haven't searched than the ones I have. I've made the mental excuse "I bet those have been hunted hard" but I don't know that. It's kind of a 'sour grapes' rationalization. They're harder to get to (farther away), they have more human use (most of us like to hunt in solitude/peace), and maybe they require more work (new research). But all that seems minor compared to the potential.

Just a few more questions, I promise! I just (quickly) read the Vaquero manual on the Tesoro website. A couple things I noticed which I'd like clarified/confirmed: 1) Is the all-metal mode really non-motion? If so, is there a difference between actually switching to all-metal (temporarily) when hunting in discriminate mode and just using the pinpoint button? And does the pinpoint button even do anything (extra) when you're in all-metal already? 2) The manual says 10-20 hours battery life (for the single 9V). Is that your experience? If so this sounds like a great application for rechargeable 9 volt batteries. The non-rechargeables ain't cheap.

I don't wear steel-toed boots when detecting, but the boots I wear have metal eyelets. Not only doesn't it ever trick me, but I actually use them to check and make sure the detector is still working! Note: I'm not using one of the super sensitive detectors Steve mentions; I understand the importance of not getting metal anywhere close to those. Also, if you run in a mode with a low volume threshold you know your detector is working, but most detectors run silent in discrimination mode so that's where I need to do a sanity check.

I'm in agreement with the others. This is a site about metal detectors and prospecting. And the level of posting is quite high, thanks in major part to your moderation and setting a good example. You didn't say what the topic was, but if it was just another complaint about the world, well... (no comment needed.) My personal opinion is that you've been pretty lenient with people getting out-of-line. I trust that if you deleted a post it deserved it.

Did he say which gain setting he was using on the 35 when he was showing the distance between target tip and coin/bullet?

Actually, my name's 'Chuck', but no problem. Glad to help out a fellow detectorist. As mentioned privately, I've learned a lot from your YouTube videos so you can think of the loan as payback. I use the TDI exclusively for hunting gold out west in highly mineralized ground. Unfortunately until I retire next year I can't go out there much so it was an easy loan. On top of all that I'm curious myself as to how well the 12 inch Aussie (Oz) mono works on the TDI/SL in tough conditions like yours. Thanks for the report, and congrats on the find.

Has there ever been a detector announcement with this much enthusiasm/expectation? And if we've just begun the Brave New World of announcing a detector before it's ready for market (past year or so with this and other companies and detectors), has there ever been a release of a new model which has gotten this much attention?

In that case I'm bringing my TDI when I come visit.

Autumn & Winter brings out the treasure shows in US (cable) TV. It's fun for me to try and figure out what detectors are being used. Here are a couple recent views. Disclaimer: as always, keep in mind that what you see isn't always the true story. TV producers like to exercise "poetic license" at the expense of veracity, even (especially?) when they label their shows "reality TV". Finding Escobar's Millions -- a brand new show airing right after the well known Gold Rush, Friday nights on Discovery Channel. Basically this is the travails of two ex-CIA agents combing Columbia looking for deceased drug lord Pablo Escobar's hidden spoils. On episode 1 (last week) they had some interesting things to say about a couple detectors they were using. The claim was that the 'hobby detector' (their words) would detect down to 10 inches (25 cm) whereas their professional detector would pick up at 10 ft (3 m). Well, the 'hobby detector' appeared to be a Fisher CZ3d. I would have thought the 'professional detector' would be a two box TR. I didn't recognize the device but it has the standard MD structure (coil on the end of the shaft). What caught my curiosity and skepticism was that the coil assembly was an OO (similar to DD) with each component coil being only about 6 inches in diameter! They had a designation/name for it but I don't remember what it was. It was something like XY-89 where 'XY' were two letter (not literally XY) and '89' was a two digit number (not 89). I think the the number was 61 or 62, but not at all sure about that. Does this description & name ring a bell with anyone? (Or if someone watched the show maybe you can fill in more details.) Ironically they spent most of their time using the hobby detector.... Curse of Oak Island -- season five began last evening on History Channel. Most of you are likely familiar with this one. On the 2 hour premier they had Gary Drayton back using his (sponsored?) CTX 3030 and a Minelab pinpointer (yellow and black -- I'm not tuned in on all their models). More interesting was a dive to the bottom of one of their deep holes where the diver was using what appeared to be a Garrett Carrot at a water depth of over 30 m (~100 ft). It definitely was orange, the right size, and clearly said 'Garrett' in black letters, just like on my Carrot. I think that is 10 times deeper than it's specked! Am I wrong on that? I suppose it could possibly be a special one-off unit made for them by Garrett. It was working at that depth during the dive. That would be crazy deep (very high pressure), even accounting for engineering safety margin, for such a device if it really is only recommended for 10 ft.

Just weighed my Minelab X-Terra 705 with 7.5 kHz 6 in. concentric coil (batteries loaded) at 2.91 lb. The Equinox weight (2.96 lb) includes a larger coil. Throw in the fact that it's waterproof while the X-Terra isn't, and they've made significant strides. (Contrast with the CTX barbell. )

The marketing wars escalate. Isn't it time for Nokta/Makro to come up with something new? ("Time" on their schedule is about once a year, shorter than its competition.) Given how long it's been since First Texas came out with something new at the high end, I hope it's more than a couple tweeks. I have a feeling (just based upon my confidence in FT) that it will be.

You're welcome. And thanks for clarifying the weight, as best can be determined right now. It's certainly possible D.J. said "half a pound" and I missed the 'half' part. I bet our inside guy at White's (ahem, Tom) could clear this up, or we can just wait a few weeks and get the reports from new owners.

Note: I use quotes here but I'm just paraphrasing what I heard, so please keep that in mind. I listened to the show last evening. There wasn't much new info regarding the MX7. One of the questions asked was "when will it be available?" and Dominique said "2 or 3 weeks". When pressed further with "is that a firm timeframe?" she said 'yes'. Now, she's a member of the field team living in the Northeast US, not in Sweet Home. But at the same time, I hope she wouldn't say that without some pretty strong indication from the main office that what she is saying is accurate. Another comment that caught my ear regards the weight. D.J. (also a field team member living in the East) said something about "a pound lighter than the MX-Sport, an maybe a little more than that." At least I think that is what he said. I looked for specs on the WWW and found something more in the range of 3 1/2 lb. Does the MX-Sport weigh 4 1/2 lb?? Dominique stated more than once that it is very well balanced, so that is obviously a key plus. When pressed for its performance the White's team members kept comparing it to the MX-Sport, saying it's basically the same guts (my word) and thus very similar in performance to that already existing detector. The price ($600 retail and $550 MAP) makes it more attractive than the heavier (but waterproof) Sport for dry land detectorists. Oh, and there were questions about depth but Steve H.'s annoyance at those kinds of 'measurements' is rubbing off on me now. Even independent of ground mineralization, the uncertainty around depth measurements has to be pretty significant for a lot of reasons. And there's always the bias that (some) people want to claim deeper target recovery which affects their reports in a non-random way. Even test garden depth demos aren't ideal, IMO. You know exactly where the target is located and what it is, so there's zero chance you miss swinging over it dead center or recognizing it (although not necessarily getting a valid TID). (Starting to ramble and get off topic so I'll end now.)

You and I share the same interest (passion?) when it comes to what kind of coins excite us. (I also use both the Fisher F75 and Gold Bug Pro.) I dig the clad and the annoying Stinkin' Zincolns but they just go in jars waiting to take to the bank. Well, not the Zincolns since they're in such bad shape I doubt the bank will even accept them. Wait for zinc to go up in value??? I certainly can't speak for the 'good old days' since I quit hunting in 1980 and didn't return until 2015. But my observation/speculation is that the silver and copper were pretty easy pickens. If you find wheat pennies you'll find silver. It's just that silver showed up easier to the eye after being dropped, and even more imporartantly there were a lot more pennies in the pocket/purse than dimes. Quarters and especially halves even more so (that is, fewer still), plus their size made them even easier to spot. I find more dimes than nickels (clad vs. newer Jeffersons and also silver vs. old Jeffies and Buffalo/Indian). Again I think size is the reason, although the conductivity vs. detector frequency considerations might enter as well. It's my opinion that there's a lot of unhunted ground out there, you just have to work (= research) harder to find it today than 20-30 years ago. Also, master detectorist Tom Dankowski has said that his research/experimentation indicates far more is still in searched ground, but masked by trash, than what has already been harvested. So even in previously hunted sites there is still hope as the technology improves. Keep pluggin' away and please share with us the pictures of your finds as you get them.

Good info from all three of you. Thanks! If I could squeeze out just a bit more... This thread has been based upon the Vaquero with mention of other models. From what I can find online, the Tejon seems to have a lot going for it as well, but with a $175 higher retail and $150 higher MAP. At Ebay it appears (within large uncertainty, I admit) that it sells used in about the same ballpark as a used Vaquero. (If true that makes me a bit suspicious.) (For those not familiar with this unit:) Apparently on the plus side it has dual discrimination, which allows you to set one in all-metal and the other in some kind of discrimination (for example, cut out iron) and then switch back and forth using the 3 position toggle switch beneath the control box (3rd position being pinpoint mode). If I understand correctly, you get higher sensitivity in all metal so you could search in that mode and easily flip over to discriminate to check the target's conductivity (above/below your set threshold). On the minus side, it's about 3/4 lb heavier (some of this being due to the batteries: 8 AA vs. single 9V). It runs at a higher frequency (17.5 kHz vs. 14.5 kHz) but I wouldn't think that is a big minus. It also doesn't have the +/- 0.2 kHz frequency shift/tweak option of the Vaquero. Is the Tejon's dual mode just not useful in practice or is there something else that users have found that the ads aren't telling us?

I've linked to a thread I started in July. I finally (after over 3 1/2 months, most of which were bone dry) returned to see if I could squeeze a few more old coins out of this site. At the time of my earlier searching the parks department had fenced off a large coniferous tree to prevent the demolition crew from damaging its roots. That had kept me out of that area as well. Now with fence removed I decided to see if my good fortune in the rest of the recently acquired lot could be supplemented. I was not disappointed. Fisher F75, gain of 50, 4H tones ('H' meaning US nickels hit on a high tone, with copper and silver), 5 inch DD coil, either de (default) mode or fa (fast) mode (both filtered discrimiation side) depending upon the amount of iron trash (nails). Supplement that with my now favorites: White's Prostar headphones and White's TRX pinpointer. I was able to get in 8 1/2 hours over the weekend before the stormy weather arrived. I didn't start under the tree but rather along the street curb, some of which I had searched once (without too much success) and some virgin. After 2 1/2 hours with nothing more than a Zincoln to show for the effort I switched over to the unsearched area under the tree. It didn't take long for the production to result. Deepest coin (Wheatie) was 5 inches; compare that with the deepest ring tab of 6 inches. Even though I was running at a gain of 50 compared to July hunts' 70 I was finding targets at similar depth. Most pennies were in the 3-4 inch range. The silver dime (1945 plain -- see photo below) was only 2 inches deep. So much for the theory that coins always sink considerably with time. Over 50 years in the ground and only down 2 inches. I added 14 more Wheats to the 36 I had found there in July, and my 5th silver coin (3rd Merc) from this reclaimed lot. The sterling ring was also under the tree, likely dropped by a child many decades ago. With a severe storm approaching (my several hundred $ lightening indicator told me so ) I worked my way to the car, but dragged the coil along the edge of a couple sidewalks to see if anything jumped out. With minutes to spare before the skies opened I got a strong but inconsistent ID signal. I guessed either a nickel or a pulltab, got a low but clear signal from the TRX, and dug down about 3 inches to find... gold! 16 grams of 14kt. I told my wife that my best find ever won't be staying with me for long. The owner's full name is inscribed on the inner surface so shouldn't be too hard to locate.

If that's the qualification then everyone (worth a $#!^) is an apprentice. Proud to be part of the club.

Don't worry, they'll be living and detecting at the "lunar gold rush".

Thanks for the reply regarding the meaning of 'monolithic', Steve. Now it makes sense but I never would have figured it out without the details and quote from their 26 year old newsletter. I have a couple more questions for you guys (and any other Tesoro users for that matter): 1) how many tones does the Vaquero (and other Tesoros) have? 2) Are the modern Tesoro detectors a throwback to the (good old?) analog days in their response? That's a pretty vague description/question, I realize. What annoys me still (yeh, of course I live with it because of all the nicities digital signal processing brings) is that sometimes over large targets I get a short, clean tone (not actually clipped, though) making it sound like a small target when it isn't small at all. I don't remember analog detectors doing that.

Nice post. Personally I don't mind the length. I like the 'story' and it shows how real detecting goes, not just the cherry-picked highlights. Even better, it can indicate (as here) things in my detecting that I may have missed, too. I once thought of an idea, but never suggested it, because it takes work and I'm not willing to expend the energy right now. I also don't like people who come up with ideas and then, thinking that was the hard part, expect someone else to finish the job. My idea was a website, possibly built on top of Google maps, which showed ground balance settings. Detectorists would enter (or send in) what settings they used in a particular location. The reason I bring this up for your post is that I'm wondering how mineralized your ground is. Sounds like pretty strong. However it makes me questions whether I've had the same issues in my (moderate) ground. Obviously a complication of my idea, maybe even worse than the lack of Target ID scale standardization, is the difference in ground balance settings of detectors. For example, in my ground the Minelab X-Terra 705 balances in the 30-35 range (and unlike the Fishers, lower numbers are worse mineralization) whereas my Fisher Gold Bug Pro balances in the high 60's and the Fisher F75 in the low 60's or high 50's. (All those readings are with the small coils: 5 in. or 6 in. rounds.) Another issue is that it appears to be coil dependent. For the GBP, the larger the coil the smaller the GB value. At least that's what I've found in my back yard. Anyway, thanks for the post and I'd like to know how bad your ground mineralization is.

Just looked up the definition of 'monolithic' on the WWW: "formed of a single large block of stone." I take it that's not what they mean. Would someone please explain what they do mean when they say 'monolithic searchcoil'?

Well, I'd like to hear from them. Maybe I'm doing something sub-optimally = wrong. I do know that my Minelab X-Terra 705 (which I don't think ever had an Invader made for it) has a lock-on button for the pinpoint mode. That would make things a bit easier/better. And thanks for posting the pic! I assume that one (DX-1) is for the White's DFX. As you said, they are detector specific. I also wonder how many of the ones that can be found for sale new online are really there in stock. The models for the Minelabs sell for way more, used on Ebay, than some of the (new) listed prices I was finding even for the exact same model.

Which frequency? I have the 3.0 kHz 15" Coiltek but have yet to use it. I have all three (frequency) 6 inch round coils (Coiltek 3.0 kHz "digger"; other two are Minelab) and like those best. In fact I prefer the 18.75 kHz 6 in. coil, although I need to try the others with lower gain. I'm thinking running at too high of gain (typically 25) has led to much of the wraparound (iron-->silver) problems I was having. Looks like the saltwater does a number on clad quarters. Wonder how long it takes to turn them dark like that....