GB_Amateur

I wonder if this is due to the fact that the soil (err, sand) is extremely low to even void of iron minerals. You did mention there is a bit of black sand. Is that only in certain spots or homogenous (equal concentrations everywhere)? (As a side note, I constantly get confused with the different scale used in Iron Bias and Recovery Speed between the 600 and 800. Well, I'm getting better at it because when I see "Recovery Speed of 2" it shocks me into realization. 😁)

And throw in the fact that you have to be gentle with your recovery methods in those Denver area parks. Jeff, you're the ultimate grinder. Day after day you toil away methodically while some others among us (myself included) make excuses for why we aren't finding anything. Heck, your dog (regular detecting companion) probably finds more coins that I do! I almost missed noticing that sliver Roosie partly eclipsed by the Merc. Speaking of 'clean', is that showing signs of mint lustre or is it mostly the angle and location in the photo causing over-exposure?

Well, I don't know if they are the only one capable -- maybe the only one willing (at the moment). We've gone from ~$1500 dry land PI detectors to more than twice that cost for the cheapest available (not counting pricing for used detectors). People seem pleased that the Axiom is only $4k. I get it -- compared to Minelab (the only other game in town right now) that sounds cheap. (prices and availability here in the USA. I realize other parts of the world don't always get those....) ML deeply undercut their own pricing with the Equinox release at $900. It took N/M four years but now they are 2/3 of that price for a m/l equally performing unit. Outside of N/M I don't know if anyone is aware of how far along they are with a PI (water version or dry land version). Hopefully they have more of a head start than they did vs. the Eqx.

Greenland could be a hot spot for coal, copper, gold, rare-earth elements and zinc, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/world/greenland-melting-mineral-mining-climate/index.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab Easier than mining an asteroid -- maybe good practice for that.... (Article from 8 Aug, so a week ago as I post. I don't think I'm duplicating a previous post/thread.)

With a metal pan, too. This guy is a natural teacher. He not only explains what to do, but why to do it. When I understand the why, it helps me remember the what, and then when I'm performing a task I can self-correct, if necessary. Excellent instructional video! (Still going to take me a lot of practice to get half as good as he is on the finishing. 40 years experience is hard to reproduce.)

Hey, your pal Chase said just two posts above yours that "embellishment is fair game."

Excellent report. You can't get much better site info than from a person who actually grew up in a ghost town, having lived there not long after it was abandoned. And you made his day, too. I don't like Zincolns, but when in a site that might have IH's, it's pretty much a must to dig a Zincoln signal, as you were rewarded for doing. I hope you can get back there because there has to be more good stuff still in the ground.

It's the classic actions of a (pseudo-) monopoly: What price do we charge? Whatever we want. What answers do we give to their questions? Silence is easier and they'll still buy. Have a recall or blanket replacement? Whichever gives us the most profit (obviously neither of these, just replace the few that get sent in under warranty,... with the same device). And they realize it, especially now. They have possibly the best selling IB/VLF of all time with no real competition,... until the last several months, that is. They've cornered the PI market and have held a stranglehold there for a couple decades,... until maybe this has-been company threatens. (Stay tuned.) When the Garrett Apex came out, Minelab seemed to feel a bit of threat and made a trite video attacking it. But that Apex turned out to be no challenge for the Equinox and at most a mild one for their Vanquish. They so far seem to have been silent to the releases of the XP Deus 2 and Nokta/Makro Legend, AFAIK. Now Garrett Axiom is rumbling just under the horizon. But isn't there an annual Codan stockholders' meeting in a few days? I wonder how much sleep the company big wigs have gotten in the past couple weeks.... Freak, the questions of a few shareholders might be more of a ringing in their ears than a bunch of 'letters' from disgruntled owners of their hot-selling(?) GPX6000.

Your photos were supporting that, until the last one. Maybe that was your "half empty" part to go with the many "all fulls"? I wonder if we made steps back by decade (2010, 2000, 1990,...) if this was said then, too. Or maybe they anticipated new detectors would take up the slack. IMO (only having been active detecting for ~7 years now), I agree that it's gotten tougher. But I also agree with Hugh that there is still uncharted ground in the USA coin-and-relic space, where I spend my 4th dimension. Simon, I know you've been at this endeavor for even a shorter time than I. And yet you found that public, unhunted sports field ("cointopia"?) which has produced bushels of silver finds. In, what, 2018? You think that's the last one? Natural gold does seem to be the more difficult one, in the first world anyway. In so many areas of interest, the population of participants has aged. (Physical games, such as card games, are another of many examples.) And for the most part we oldtimers lament that our activities are dying out and we need to somehow recruit young blood to continue them after we're gone. Why? Do the next generations really care what we desire? Don't they have their own new activities to take the place of ours? (That wasn't purely rhetorical as I don't have the answers myself.)

With the exception of the Goldmaster 24k (now completely absorbed as a Garrett product), what was the most recent White's detector that actually made a splash? I wouldn't include the MX/Sport (no pun intended, @tboykin ) but I won't write off that some might. Vision family (V3i, VX3, etc.)? TDI family? It seems they stopped being an innovator around 2010. They certainly made some great detectors and seemed to have had a run as the best manufacturer for one or two decades. But what is the decay time for detectors as far as popularity? With a few exceptions (e.g. Fisher Gold Bug 2, White's MXT) it seems to be about 5 years. Personally I still have my TDI/SPP and still like it, but I don't have many situations where a PI is needed. (And obviously there are better PI's if one wants to spend the bucks.) If people would use the tags when they create posts (how many even think of that?) it would be easy to find posts on out-dated detectors like those White's classics, without having to depend upon a special, manufacturer specific forum for the topic. (The vote for putting White's in the graveyard 😞 forum with Compass and friends seems to be unanimous. Add my name to that list.)

Given the condition of the dime, it might have only been in circulation about that long, too. They can't be found much nicer than this, with the exception of a stronger strike (but this one is pretty strong).

If you read carefully the full thread you might come to a different conclusion. I had very specific constraints which I explained. My thread title was too general -- my bad. I really was asking how far back from the edge to put it. The mounting boss is 9/32" (just over a quarter inch) -- enough to allow room for screw threads. The magnet is also about 1/4". Attaching the magnet directly to the surface would save that 9/32" but (IMO) make it less convertible/replaceable. That led to my choice. Could I have gotten away with about half the boss thickness? With extra care in screw choice, etc., probably. Good to know. I was concerned that going over solid rock would damage the magnet when I was using it for walking support. There are many reasons to create a post. I always hope that regardless of how specific mine are that eventually someone else will gain knowledge from them. I've certainly learned greatly from so many here and strive to reciprocate.

I agree. kac, aren't you going to tell us what detector you were using? And how deep it was? Funny how the out-of-focus date looks like 18/17. 😁 (Both nickel and quarter of that year had this overdate.) AFAIK that overdate has never been reported for the dime. That would make your ~$5 find with about 10,000 times as much, not to mention the fame that would go along with that fortune.

Ah, I see the menu option there now. I tried going there but clicked on Advanced Search, not noticing that mouse-over showed a new submenu. Thanks for your patience & persistence.

Would you accept 2 1/2 months? Well, that just means I can make this post 2 1/2 times as long. Here are some details: 1) I was expecting to need to use the pick as a walking stick, which it is quite capable of doing. Turns out my achiles tendon liked the workout I was giving it and by the end of the first couple days in the desert I wasn't even noticing it. 2) Mounting the magnet on the underside of the blade isn't as helpful as I had hoped. I figured when clearing out dirt in a loosened hole, the magnet would get close enough to scrap iron bits that it would collect them. Occasionally it did but most of the time they were still in the removed pile. 3) The epoxied-in-place mounting boss never broke loose. However, the ground I was in wasn't particularly rocky and what rocks were present were mostly loose. (Steve H. mentioned that he uses the pointed end of his pick for breaking up hard ground and the wide end mostly for clearing the subsequent loose material.) 4) I previously mentioned that I had put a new (flaired end, long axe) handle in place of the original short, straight one. Even though it was air cured (about a year by me and who knows how long before I bought it) and it fit tight when I left home, apparently the extra dry desert atmosphere caused it to shrink and loosen. Hodan picks have a (safety?) rivet to prevent the head from accidentally flying off but even with that the head was still loose. So..., after getting home I set out to solve the two problems encounted. I found another very similar brass plug in my detecting reject bucket and after cutting it down, mounted it (again with the same epoxy as before) to the top of the blade. But first I modifed the handle (head end) by cutting a slot in it and then hammering in both wooden and steel tightening wedges. (That's the standard way of doing things -- so much for lazy shortcuts.) Here are photos of the results: With my original boss still in place, I have the option of putting a second magnet there. Also, nothing says I can't add one to the butt end of the handle as many people already expressed their personal preference for that earlier in this thread. Lastly, I just got around to seeing how well the epoxied lug nut held to that steel scrap (shown earlier in this thread). I used a mason's hammer (sharp end) and a direct blow to the joint did result in separating them. As far as how this translates to the field, though...? Best if I just wait for it to happen and report back then.

Well, now I did. But I find the link you posted to be what I was looking for. Is there a shortcut to that? ('Shortcut' may not be the proper term. What I mean is: some way to go to the top of the page and start clicking until I get there. Obviously I could put it in my browser's bookmarks.)

Ok, but where are they (to click)? I do see a 'forum info' tag under the title of this thread, but I assume there is either another place on this page I can find them ("hiding in plain sight") or a pathway to a page that has them.

Depends a lot upon the shielding material used (aluminum is more transparent than copper) and the energy of the X-rays (higher energy being less absorbed, in general). @strick has done X-ray imaging of other coils. Do their cables show shielding? I think braid is plated/coated copper (or sometimes just raw Cu with no surface treatement), but far from sure.

Does it start at 30:45? Have you done that bungee jump (or is it only for TV stars)? 😜

That's about 4 coins every 3 minutes and I'm not counting the non-coin finds. Were most of these singles? Impressive recovery speed (the human kind 😏) in my book. And nice gold chain!

We're also only a month away from England's Detectival gathering. That has been used in the past by manufacturers to 'tease' the attendees with soon-to-be-released products. I am (as are many others) hoping for some excitement to be revealed then. Is it too much to hope that multiple vendors will participate in that curtain lifting exercise? (I live too far away to affordably attend, but I'm counting on some of you to tell us about it. And of course there will be plenty of other online reports, including YouTube videos. Oops, those are taking a beating here lately.... )

We may be getting "too deep into the weeds" or discussing something that is less important than much that has been written in other posts. At the risk of this... Plowing through limited data too many times leads to a well-known machine learning flaw known as 'overfitting'. The resulting model does well if you give it one of the events from the training sample, but if that training set doesn't cover the space of existing conditions very well it can be way off while give the misleading impression it's accurate.

Doesn't the GPZ7000 do something like this (using its built-in GPS)? Do people really want to be told the reason they found a good target with a brand new detector in a site they had previously detected was due to never having gotten the previous coil(+detector) over it in the first place? 😏

Unfortunately some don't even use natural intelligence. 😎 This paragraph seems to contradict itself. "...Not a huge amount of training data is needed." Then the next sentence: "...over millions of iterations it starts to learn." (emphasis mine) I undetstand in machine learning that if a lot of data has already been 'mined' (no pun intended, but it's a good one here 😁) and properly formatted, letting a computer learn from those data can be relatively quick. But what you are describing doesn't sound like data that can be quickly nor easily collected. One thing that even regulars here sometimes overlook is that the customer base for metal detectors can't be compared with many consumer products (such as cellphones). What might be obvious R&D funding expenditures for products in high demand can be prohibitive in limited product markets.

Excellent points.