GB_Amateur

My 800 has done this for years. I posted about it here probably 3 years ago and no one seemed to have experienced it. So now you've joined me! Misery loves company. 🤣 To be clear it doesn't always do this (thankfully). It does seem to be related to EMI, or the Noise Cancel function, though. For example, I'll be running fine and then EMI creeps in. No problem, just do a Noise Cancel. But just pressing that button causes the detector to shut off, try to start again, and get into this loop you mention (repeatedly shutting off and trying to restart in the middle of the restart cycle). Sometimes it happens when I first turn on the detector after having been dormant for a day or more. But more often it occurs during a session after it's been operating just fine. I've never had to end a session due to this problem, though. Going to an EMI quieter place seems to help, but again, I can't say 100% that the EMI is the problem. It's one of those pesky intermittent maladies, like happens with vehicles -- you take it to the repair shop and they say they can't find the problem.... The biggest frustration is that when it's in this crazy mode you can't change anything (e.g. lower the sensitivity) because it never gets far enough to allow you to make a change.

You've probably looked here already: https://firsttexasproducts.com/pages/coil-table That only shows the three concentrics so apparently First Texas never made a DD for the Land Ranger. That doesn't rule out one working.... I hesitate to push you in another direction, but assuming you're going to pay $100 minimum (likely more) for a new coil, have you considered buying a different detector? For example, the Nokta Simplex Lite (15 kHz operating frequency, manual and automatic ground balance) comes with a 6" x 9.5" DD coil. Here are a couple options for buying one in the USA: Serious Detecting (open box, $189 plus shipping) Ebay (new, $199 including shipping) There may be other affordable detectors with adjustable ground balance and small DD coils for ~$200. This is just an example, but probably a decent performer for the price. Others here may have suggestions. It's not crazy that you could find a ~20 kHz gold detector for $200, used.

Hey, aren't you the guy who posted Minelab Marketing's 'perfect' TID conversion chart (my words, but their illustrations tend to do that -- make things look better than they are)? 😁 One thing we all (almost -- there's always an exhibitionist or two) can agree upon is the desire for the option of choosing between the (old) 800's [-9,40] scale and the new 900's [-9,100] scale. That didn't happen and it's very unlikely to happen, at least until another new model (CTX is what many are hoping for) is released. As far as I'm concerned, I don't feel like I dig more with the Manticore -- [1,99] conductivity scale with ferrous reported separately -- than I did with the Equinox. Yes, there's an initial time period where I have to learn where certain targets appear (especially USA coins but also the repeatable TID trash targets such as the many kinds of aluminum pulltabs), but that was true when I got the Equinox, whose TID scale was fresh and new to everyone. And what's to stop someone with a 100 point scale from taking a dig-it-all approach, regardless of whether or not that truly leads to "more success"? Just to give a bit of evidence (again, my personal experience so may not be true for everyone), here are two USA coins with their nemesis trash items that I've hunted with both the Eqx 800 and the M'core: 1) USA 5 cent 'nickel' (25% Ni, 75% Cu) -- the sweet spot on the 800 is 12-13 (usually both showing in an alternate pattern). Sometimes 11 and/or 14 would appear too, but 12 and/or 13 were present and dominant even in those outlier cases. (Orientation, corrosion, depth all seemed to have the effect of pulling the TID away from the sweet spot.) Meanwhile, the 'rolled over' beavertail (beavertail broken off the ring tab and then bent over itself) were the worst immitators. I dug/dig a lot of those. Some detectorists claim they can hear the difference. Maybe, but not I. With the Manticore the TID sweet spot for this coin is 26-27 but 25, 28 and even 24 (maybe some 29) can not only be present but I've even seen 24-25 dominate in some cases). Is that worse or better? IMO, it's the same, given the factor of 2.5 in scale expansion (40 point of conductivity vs. 100 points). Is it difficult to remember the new scale? Not IMO. Meanwhile the pesky rolled-over-beavertails are right there with them, hitting in the 24-27 range. Better? No. Worse? No. Second example is the Indian Head Cent (95% Cu with additions of tin and zinc, last minted in 1909) which due to varying amounts of tin added, can read a rather wide range. On the Equinox it's something like 17 to 21. On the Manticore it's low 50's (I dig 51's) to mid-60's (I dig 65). Yesterday I got one at 58 and another at 63. Here there may be some improvement for the Manticore in separating out the background trash as the ring only pull (what is left when the pests removed the beavertail) hits ~40-42 on the Manticore (well out of copper IHC range) but 17-18 on the Equinox (right in the lower IHC range). However, there are still other targets (the old large 'square' tabs from the early days of beavertail pulltabs, zinc cents over a wide range of deterioration, and other aluminum trash, particularly screwcaps of different sizes) that fall in the same range as the IHC's, for both Eqx and M'core.

Did you try these? http://nel-coils.com/index.php/en/usa

The "1 above 1" appears to be the most common die variety. However, the edge lettering ('T. A. & L.' for the planchet manufacturer) may not be on all of this die variety, adding a small premium compared to those with no lettering. 228 '1 above 1' have been graded & certified by PCGS (in all conditions). This one appears to be moderately worn with both the obverse and edge lettering showing up nicely. The reverse is a mixed bag, possibly due to crowning (becoming convex at the center) during minting, making the center part more vulnerable to wear. Any USA coin dated in the 18th Century from the official USA mint (so 1792-99) is at least a 3 figure retail value in good or better condition. Likely this simply reflects the low survival rate combined with high demand. With the luck your partner is having, maybe there's a 1794 silver dollar awaiting. Tell him it's your turn! 😏

Tell him to leave a couple 18th Century USA coppers for you! Another scarce and valuable find, it appears out-of-round but I suspect that was due to a poorly manufactured planchet (blank) as opposed to some kind of post-minting damage. According to Bowers: (1797 half cents) ...are apt to be casually struck, sometimes on rough planchets, and sometimes lacking detail in certain areas. Bowers (2017 copyright) has the mintage at only 27,525 whereas the 2022 Red Book (of which Bowers is a contributing editor) has it at 127,840. Regardless, none of those early mintages reflected the actual date on the coin but just the number minted during the calendar year, often from dies with earlier dates.

Vertically oriented coins seem to be a problem for all detectors due simply to physics. And the angle of attack is another key which is why swinging from different directions (as you know, and did) can make the difference between picking it up or not. You've proven that with careful investigation and an open mind, even iron masked vertical coins can be detected. Nice work, Jeff! I'm inspired to listen and watch even more carefully now when I encounter such mixed signals with the Manticore.

Who at Minelab told you this, because apparently that person didn't write (maybe not even read) the Manticore Manual? From page 7: Postscript: I notice your title specifically mentions the Vanquish models. Unlike many other models which have internal Lithium batteries, the Vanquish's rechargeable capability is simply the Minelab providing rechargeable (and removable) NiMH batteries as well as an external charger to plug them into. Even with that, I can't find in the Vanquish 440 & 540 manual the instructions you report. It does, however, say:

Excellent idea -- can't hurt to ask. When we can give back to society something meaningful that's been lost and then found, everyone wins. Learning history can be simultaneously enjoyable and enlightening; museums are a great example of that.

Things sure have changed since I was in school, and in this case, for the better. I skimmed chapter 1 -- excellent.

Good question. The 12" (heel to toe) version is $199 on the web from various vendors. I don't see the smaller 8" version. Is it available yet? Both videos were shot with the detector in JE ('Jewelry') process. I wish they had reported on the Fe3O4 ground mineralization readings. It's so easy to do that -- one of the nice features of the F75. On a related subject, Serious Detecting has in stock the CORS (same company as NEL) 8.5"x12.5" DD for sale at $115. I don't know how good that coil is on the F75, but NEL/CORS has a good reputation. Unfortunately (in more ways than one) they are located in Ukraine and from what I've read here their factory has not been producing since the war started....

Another similar question is "who are those people really?" I'm pretty sure it's not the grading services. I have seen that for special customers (those salvaging centuries old shipwrecks) at least one of the two biggies (NGC or PCGS, don't remember which) has a lab that does restoration. I don't think they do that for just anyone, though. It seems that the "get professionally cleaned" recommendation is just a way to pass the buck, getting the onus off the (expert) dealer who is refusing to buy the coin. There is a stigma attached to cleaned coins and that isn't going to change. For rare coins that can be accepted (well it still hurts the value but doesn't render a coin worthless). It may be even worse in the general antique field. Anyone who has watched more than a couple episodes of Antiques Roadshow will have seen examples of someone who refinished a piece of Colonial furniture (no matter how awful its condition was) being told that they just reduced the value to 25% or less of what it would have been if left alone. Sorry I'm getting too far OT, Jeff. So close to a near four figure coin if the ground had just been a bit kinder. But as everyone so far has indicated, still an amazing, extremely difficult find.

That 13" Ultimate is highly regarded by F75 users (myself included )as well as many others. It only weighs 64 grams -- about 2.4 ounces -- more than the 7"x11" stock coil. A great addition, IMO.

Only a handful of hours before I created this thread, Jeff McLendon added his name to Gerry and Rich's:

The Practical Geologist is a good overview of the general topic.

Although this post is inspired by old coin detecting, in many ways it applies to jewelry, native gold, and relics as well so I'm putting it in the general forum. Actually there are (at least) two more qualities that enter this topic, so let's define what I mean by each: 1) Rarity is simply an extreme shortage of supply. In general usage the word covers a wide range but it can be quantified. (That happens in some areas of collecting, including coin collecting.) 2) Value is another general term but in this discussion it's limited to monetary value. That is also quantifiable. 3) Aesthetics is the appreciation of something for its (subjective) appeal, typically for beauty. It's non-quantifiable and reasonably explained by the saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." 4) Sentiment applies to things with personal, particularly emotional attachment. Let's start with a simple example before getting to the more involved part. Suppose a six year old girl brings home a piece of art made in elementary school. In the sense that it is one-of-a-kind (the literal meaning of 'unique'), it is quite rare. It has sentimental worth to a few close family members. It *might* even have aesthetic worth, but in terms of value, I think it's fair to assign a zero. Classical art (e.g. paintings and sculptures) can have all of the above, but value is usually associated by works of famous artists, IMO a kind of circular relationship, rife with subjectivity. Enough of that.... Back up a bit, and now note that all four metal detecting disciplines listed above have examples that fulfill all four categories. Native gold is guaranteed to exhibit rarity in the fact that no two pieces are alike (snowflake effect?), and all pieces are guaranteed to have (bullion) value. Jewelry, in particular, can have aesthetic appeal. A relic can be rare. All categories have the potential for value. From here on I'm going to concentrate on collectible coins, which have a conceptually rich landscape with many examples (and shall we say 'counterexamples'). I'm also sticking with something I understand, USA coins although I'm sure there are many parallels in coins from other countries. Since I've already qualified 'value' with the word 'bullion', let's consider two kinds of value: collectible and bullion. These can trade off for some coins. For example, I recall when a 1937-S was a semi-key date in the Washington Quarter series, with collector value that far exceeded its bullion value. This was in the early 1960's when bullion value was more/less 'face value' (the denomination stamped on the coin, so now we have a 3rd kind of value). Then when clad coinage replaced silver and the precious metal prices were disconnected from the dollar, eventually the bullion value of the 1937-S 25 cent piece exceeded the collector value. Depending upon condition -- more on that below -- this coin has regained its collector premium, at least on the retail market. Consider the 1909-S VDB Lincoln Cent, the key date of the now > 100 year series. 484,000 were minted. That sounds like a lot. Can you imagine having to count that many coins?! How many are in collections today is difficult to quantify. Another measure (clearly a lower limit) of that is to check how many have been certified and graded by PCGS. I added those up and it's a bit over 15,000 (still seemingly a big number?), or just over 3% of those minted. Guesses as to the total surviving (in human hands as opposed to still in the ground...) are considerably higher by factors of three or more. I know of two detectorists here (Gerry in Idaho and Utah Rich) who have found this coin detecting, and I'm sure there are other members here who have also. Clearly it's a great find. In terms of value, let's just stick with retail value, keeping in mind that on Ebay what a non-specialist can get is maybe half that, plus or minus quite a bit. Currently the retail price is around $600 for 'Good' condition (realistically the lowest collectible condition) going up to $2500 to $3000 for an MS-64 (one of the better uncirculated grades but not the absolute highest -- 'uncirculated' literally meaning never having been handled for commerce by the public). Here's the Sheldon Scale which correlates verbal grades with numeric ones. A great resource for self-estimating grades is Photograde. Let's take another example (throwing a dart at the Redbook 🙂, 1881 (plain = no mintmark, from the Philadelphia mint) Seated quarter. Only 12,000 were minted (a factor of 1/40 that of the earlier mentioned key Lincoln). Right around 200 have been graded by PCGS (a factor of 1/75th that of the '09-S VDB). Rare? Maybe not quite, but we're getting there! Let's just call it "very scarce". Yet my 2022 Red Book (which shows retail prices for non-certified graded coins) says $200 in good condition (1/3 of the -S VDB cent) up to $850 in MS-63, again about 1/3 of the key Lincoln's price). So what gives? Basically it's the law of supply and demand. The price/value is determined by both. Rising demand (and/or falling supply) drives up the price. Falling demand (and/or increased supply) does the opposite. There are way more Lincoln Cent collectors than Seated Liberty Quarter collectors. Rarity affects value, but in a controlled way, and the rarity has only a piece of that control. Certainly aesthetics (e.g. the beauty of early 20th Century nickel, silver, and gold coins), and even sentiment ("I found my first ever silver dollar, a bucket lister") are part of metal detectorists' enjoyment of finds. And for most old coin finds, that (plus maybe some minor bullion value) is all that we get. Rare and valuable coins in general aren't easier to find in the ground than they were for collectors searching through bank rolls in days past. It's not quite equivalent, though, since we get to choose where to look for those valuables, whether coins, jewelry, nuggets, or relics. Advantage, us!

It just gets better. My non-expert eye grades the obverse of the lower coin in the XF ballpark. There's always an issue with dug coins, but with extremely careful restoration this could easily value well into the four figures. In Bowers's A Guide Book of Half Cents and Large Cents he begins the 1794 entry with: Among all early American coins there is no numismatic panorama of die varieties more interesting and extensive than the copper cents of 1794. I counted over sixty in 30+ pages. Because of the involved preparation of dies in those early days there are a lot of recognizable (to the trained eye) differences that lead to certain people collecting by die variety. So just have a date and type doesn't do justice to figuring out value, at least when the coin's grade is moderate to high. Interestingly the upper coin's variety is easily determined due to the 'cud' on the left rim. A piece of the die broke off during use and the coin's metal filled the gap. On p. 335 of the Bowers book this variety is referred to as Heavy, Stubby Lower Lock, Short Right Stem (BW-82, S-62, B-54). It also estimates the surviving population as 75 to 120. Although not as impressive as the second one, this coin could grade in the VF zone. (You're friend will know for sure when the pros give their assessment.) People here often ask if a coin is worth getting professionally graded (NGC or PCGS). I contend for these, the answer is an emphatic 'Yes!" "Finds of a lifetime" may not be an exaggeration for these two.

The amazement just keeps coming! Any chance you could post photos of those?

If that silver ring were a Standing Liberty Q you'd have a double (20th C.) triple, or is it a triple double?? I know you don't always investigate dates and mintmarks, but I suppose the Barber Quarter could be a 1913-S.... 🤞🤞

On rare occasions someone experiences a detecting session that is too amazing to be made up. Do you think there was some kind of trading post, etc. there in the first half of the 18th Century, with so many coins' dates being close together? If this is a permission I hope the opportunity doesn't turn into a pumpkin, but even if it does you already have memories for the rest of your life.

A pinpointer can be put to good use in and around masonry, especially if there are cracks or openings you can poke it into. The smallest coils (e.g. 4"x6" 'shooters') for standard metal detectors are a plus, too -- less area to pick up the inevitable nails in wood structures.

I've taken the liberty of enumerating three things from Mark's initial post that started this thread. It seems most of the discussion has centered on Observation 1. Unfortunately (AFAIK) I haven't seen anyone who typically detects in mineralized ground take part in this discussion. (Where's @Chase Goldman who's detected Culpeper, VA with many detectors?) I can tell you this (as always the caveat 2-3 bar out of 6 Fe3O4 meter reading on the Fisher F75): For in ground test targets, the F75 (13 kHz single frequency) goes from non-ferrous to ferrous as depth increases on high conductive coins (and maybe most/all non-ferrous targets). BUT, in air tests, as the distance to the target increases, the signal stays high tone (non-ferrous), just getting weaker until it finally disappears. The smoking gun points at signal/noise, with the signal being the target getting weaker with increased distance while the noise is ground mineralization, basically staying constant. Eventually the ground wins ==> ferrous response. No ground (air test) ==> no low tone. More bothersome to me is Mark's Observation 3 where the Manticore and Equinox didn't even pick up a non-ferrous target in multifrequency when single frequency (which frequency? Mark never said) does respond for both detectors.

There is a significant difference between countries that circulate $1 and $2 (or equivalent) coins -- e.g. Canada and Australia -- than here in the USA where even the half dollar has gone the way of the dodo bird. This isn't meant as demeaning to those who get a kick out of finding small denomination coins. If you enjoy that, more power to you. But for me, I'd rather find one wheat cent than a handful of clad quarters. I don't see the hobby drying up for old coins and relics as quickly as circulating modern coinage disappears. For sure jewelry today being more likely made of non-precious metals is a real issue, as is the loss of metal detectable native gold. Those are what is causing deterioration for many of the more serious detectorists. Research is still going to be rewarded, though, for coin and relic detecting in particular. Metal detecting companies are selling the dream. When you see an ad, what do they show? Often it's Spanish Colonial era gold and silver, or modern gold jewelry, maybe some nuggets. Do some show a handful of modern coins, IDK, but is that really going to excite very many people? Robert Louis Stevenson, who died in 1894, probably did as much for metal detecting as most modern ads....

I second that. (and you continued) "...Just didn't think people would have much interest in a PI as a coin detector." Which 'people' are you referring to? 😁 Just like with native gold detecting, there are conditions where a VLF will struggle and a PI shines. The fact that you are impressed with its target ID means it likely has advantages over other PI's that some have used for coin detecting. Besides, aren't you shifting from detecting season to skiing season soon? Time's a wastin'!

I think that was their intent. Recall the video they made a few months ahead of the AT/Max release? A guy with the detector climbing over large boulders in a mountainous area.... Of course Garrett isn't the only one who puts out these teaser videos. Can you say 'Minelab'? With the success of the Axiom, hopefully Garrett continues by releasing a new IB/VLF model which is high performance (and affordable -- one of Garrett's strong suits).