GB_Amateur

Coins meant only for collectors shouldn't show up at all as they *should* still be in collections. During 2007-2011 the USA mint made lots of brass $1 coins for circulation (and some for collectors). Those, plus earlier varieties (Sacagawea) are found by detectorists -- I think I've found four myself. Just like the state quarters, the Presidential dollars were dribbled out over time, chronologically by president. But they weren't finished by 2011 when the gov'ment finally admitted the public didn't want to use them, so the later (deceased -- a requirement) presidents such as Harry Truman were only released to fulfill collectors' orders. There was a gap after Reagan's issue until George H.W. Bush died. Thus in 2020 they released one with his image, but still only enough for anticipated collector demand. Bottom line: no surprise that detectorists haven't reported finding the Truman issue.

Had to break out my latest (2022) RedBook. Yep, apparently 2011 (Presidentials) was the last time brass dollar coins were made for circulation here in the USA. This pattern has been going on as early as mid-19th Century -- US government decides something new will catch on and after a few years of lack of public interest the mintages drop; usually takes them a while to stop minting altogether after that realization, though. Ironic that most of the world has done away with the equivalent of our 1-cent and 5-cent coins and low denomination bills, with $1 and $2 coins (and equivalent) being used frequenty. Dinosaur public here refused to use half dollars decades ago and all attempts at dollar coins have failed miserably. Meanwhile worthless zincolns are cranked out by the billions. I guess with the (worldwide) rapidly decreasing use of hard (fiat) money it's becoming irrelvant anyway. It's surprising finding a coin never meant for circulation. I only have done that once (a Proof cent from early 2000's). I always suspect larceny. Yes, the condition of yours drops its value to more/less face, but still a neat find.

Are you sure the spoon isn't aluminum alloy? No question about the Walker, though. 😁 Only two halves I've found are the Cu-Ni clad (not even a 40% silver ). Yours would make my day/week/month and maybe year. Hope you can get back there; more awaiting....

Excellent report, Gerry. Was anyone detecting in the currently dry reservoir bed or is that off-limits? (I assume your class was at the burn-barrel, as usual.)

I didn't see you mention or speculate on the history of detecting at this site. Knowing your area a bit I'm confident that site has been hunted before, maybe quite a bit. Have you yourself detected there? And are you aware of anyone detecting it with a MultiFrequency detector? It appears in mineralized ground that the Legend is going to wake up some dormant sites. Reliable, objective, hyperbole free reports such as yours attract my attention on these two new kids on the block.

What??!! Since this is Easter Sunday I'm labeling that appropriately: Blasphemy!!!!!

This gal seems happy to have her USB 0 update:

USB 1 is ancient. USB 2 came out in 2000 and USB 3 in 2008. Even a dinosaur like I has newer computers than 2000 vintage.

That's impressive! I wonder if ellipticals with their tight front nose radius are in general better at operating close to metal than are round coils of similar area. And if so, does it apply equally to concentrics and DD's? You were rewarded for thinking outside the box. Nice haul.

Something so nicely shaped (appears spherical) should be fairly easy to figure a density (weight divided by volume) -- enought to distinguish copper and high copper content alloys from lead, assuming it's not hollow. Volume is 0.5236 times the diameter (in cm.) cubed. ("Diameter cubed" being diameter X diameter X diameter.) Pure copper has specific density of 8.96 g/cm^3 vs. pure lead at 11.35 g/cm^3. Common brass and bronze alloys are within a few percent of copper. I don't know if lead alloys (which might have 10% or more lower densities) were used back when that was lost, but I'm guessing it's unlikely for a piece of this shape. I'm assuming you have or can get access to a scale that measures in gram units, with 0.1 g precision or smaller. A caliper or micrometer which reads to better than 1 mm -- say 0.5 mm or smaller (or down to 1/64 inch or less) precision is required, too.

Now there's a question I hope doesn't get out on social media (ok, probably way too late) -- I can only imagine some of the eye burning photos that will get posted.... It's suprising to me that something of that quality and value has no identifying marks. But possibly it broke off from another piece that had those, or was removable/attachable to a piece with marks. I have a feeling whoever lost that could afford to. Great find and gift for your wife.

The crowd actually destroyed trees??

The answers to most of your questions are here on the forum already. A bit of searching (by you) will find them. Some ideas: look through the Garrett specific subforum; look at the posts by user Geotech (Carl Moreland who previously worked at White's and has commented on both the V3 and TDI since he was involved in both). Use Google search with keywords such as both 'Garrett' and 'Whites'. Your views on the viability of Garrett making money off of White's products don't seem to be in line with what others have said, but that alone doesn't mean you are wrong....

50's or early 60's would be my conclusion, also. I'm surprised the axle survived. In my finds they seem to be the first to disappear. I think typically the axles are iron/steel, wheels plastic (metal on earlier ones?), body some kind of zinc alloy ('pot metal' on the cheapest ones). When I was growing up (60's) there was a series called 'Matchbox' and on the bottom it said "Made in England by Lesney". They were high quality and there are still many avid collectors with a few of the vehicles carrying crazy prices in top condition (especially with original box). Mattel HotWheels kinda took over, I suppose partly because how cheap they were (and that 'cheap' includes poorer build quality). Matchbox eventually followed suit (possibly they were bought out) and made cheapos in the Far East. Almost all the ones I find detecting are HotWheels. I'm sure many here are of my generation, likely remembering all this and probably had collections of their own growing up. Sorry for the ramble. For some of us, finding things that remind us of our youth is part of the enjoyment.

You do a better job sorting and displaying (for us) your trash finds than I do with my few good recoveries. Do you know how long that site was used? It seems like some of the hunting items go back a ways (but I'm far from an expert on those). With all your non-coin finds it does make one wonder how much the cherry pickers who came ahead of you got....

Nope. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) -- all here (but don't ignore the dropdown menus). As someone who has always enjoyed hardcopy publications (books, magazines, newspapers) I've been lamenting 'progress' for the last 20 or so years. I don't know if there are any coin/relic/beach detecting hardcopy mags left that are printed in the USA. There might be one.... (England has one or two, I think.) But you asked specifically about prospecting; most of those only rarely touched that subject, and at an elementary level. Hard Prospector mentioned the ICMJ. The Gold Prospectors Association of America has a bi-monthly hardcopy mag (titled Gold Prospecting) which comes with membership but also can be purchased separately. However, it's at a very basic level and most of the pages are reporting on club activities, etc. Kevin Hoagland writes (well) on prospecting/fossicking with at least something every month, usually a couple articles. But, again, for someone who has been doing serious effort in that area for a while, most of what he writes is going to be review. Unfortunately for many of us older than half a century, we're going to have to get used to online publications or just sit around reminiscing the Good Old Days.

There's a real skill at knowing what tape to use and how to use it properly. (Even better, what tape not to use, and more importantly when not to use any tape at all.) It used to drive me crazy when someone would mis-use tape and I'd be the victim of his/her ignorance. The wrong tape (of which there are many) on insulation of communication/electrical (e.g. coax) cables is one of the worst abuses!

I mentioned in another thread that a find like this leaves a half-full, half-empty feeling. It's great finding a key date. But also you realize if the ground hadn't been so nasty to it you would have a coin worth several hundred dollars. California is the Mother Lode of scarce and rare -S mint coins, but Mother Nature sometimes gets into a fight with her.

I do think the Gold modes are as close as the Equinox can get to many detectors' 'all metal' (minimal filtered) modes, but how close -- I don't know. Pretty sure the Equinox 800 Gold mode gives a VDI reading on all targets when no discrimination is used, and maybe when discrimination is used. (The only time I use discrimination with the Eqx is when native gold detecting and only when the hot rocks are being a PItA.) When coin and relic detecting I sometimes use the Gold modes to check what appear to be good (but iffy) targets in the Park and Field modes -- more specifically in Park 1 or Field 1 which is where I hunt. It seems to give a better indication of a deep iron target (by flashing lower VDI's) than the more standard modes (as well as many single frequency detectors) which often give non-ferrous, high VDI's on that kind (and depth) of target. But I haven't done enough in-field trials to conclude that this is really reliable so no one should take my experience so far as some kind of solid discrimination method. Still a study in progress. FWIW, I tend to give benefit of the doubt that people aren't intentionally deceiving but rather just making mistakes. At the same time I have a high standard for what kinds of mistakes should be acceptable and which ones should be avoided when going public with information. Waffle words help, though. To state something with confidence vs. with doubt makes a big difference in my eyes. How much do these videos impact buying decisions? When misleading they can hurt both ways -- costing sales to the manufacturers and/or convincing buyers to get a product that doesn't deliver what they think it will. So there is something riding on what these reviewers display. Fortunately we here have the opportunity to see many reports/reviews and get a big picture. The typical detector buyer (and particularly one who depends upon just YouTube) -- they may not get as clear of a view. Caveat Emptor ("buyer beware") -- sure, but that's easier for the idealist to state than for the real life buyer to exercise.

Maybe it's ground (mineralization) dependent. I've seen a significant difference (and I reported that here a year or so ago). My soil is moderate (2-3 bars on the Fishers). Jeff has access to varying mineralized ground and some of his is quite high in Fe3O4. Someone who understands the Equinox enough to go public (worldwide) ought to know this, IMO. Maybe his soil is such that Gold mode doesn't do better, but then he should demonstrate that. But he's not alone with his shortcomings as far as comparison videos go.

Good intro video for a more/less just out-of-the-box device. It seems the target he demo'ed was an easy one (nice and large, good shape and orientation in the ground) and he mentions that smaller targets can be more difficult to image although he added that he found a (jewerly) ring which did display well. Currently this is just over $5k here in the USA (from Serious Detecting). I guess the price is why we haven't heard much about it. Interesting that he said it learns if you feed it the right info. I'm surprised because I would have expected it to require an unreasonable amount of training data to pull that off, but maybe it's limited to perfect targets, well away from trash and optimally oriented. (Just my speculation -- I have no idea how 'smart' it really is.) Once again Nokta/Makro dives into a challenging project and is able to release a functioning product in a reasonable amount of time. The future looks bright for them and us.

I consider Jeff's "apples vs. oranges" a valid complaint, and we've been seeing this repeatedly throughout the last few months as the two new kids on the block have come out to play. Before a couple months ago I thought I didn't know my Equinox 800 all that well. I've since found out I know more about it than most of the people making these comparison videos. Hell, there's stuff in the manual that contradicts what they say/show as far as setup is concerned! And what about coil control -- the list goes on and on. I've wondered if a good comparison video would be to have an expert (well, maybe those are difficult to find) on each detector in the video handle each different detector. The guy who knows detector A the best should be the one who sets it up and swings it, etc. But that still doesn't get around the different local condition issues that the viewer will have, even assuming the 'expert' knows his/her detector inside and out.

At the risk of veering too far off the initial post (and title), one thing I've wondered about is if a detector could triangulate a target's location during the swing. It would be a big help for me when coin detecting to know that something giving me a solid coin signal was actually so deep as to not be a coin -- would save me considerable digging time. (Now I can figure it out before reaching the target, but it still takes a while before that realization occurs.) My guess is that if this were possible it would have been done already. But that attitude leads to zero innovation.... BTW (even more off-topic?), Garrett claimed their GTI 2500 could image targets. I think they had (maybe still do) a special searchcoil with an extra loop of wire in it for the purpose. But it never seemed to catch on, making me think the ability was overstated. Must be a story (posts?) out there that I've missed....

Yes, if you take the attitude that every time you detect you make sure to learn something, it will never be a waste. I've been out twice this week with a new (used) coil and I'm learning, even though I'm not finding anything exciting.

So you're saying it has an -S (San Francisco) mintmark? I'm having trouble seeing that.... This denomination+year is one where the Philadelphia mintage was much lower than SF (6.6k vs. 140k) so hoping your's doesn't have the mintmark. OTOH, in this condition, even if you could discern, it probably doesn't translate to value. But given the damage is done, regardless of its origin, I guess the rarer version makes it feel like a bigger accomplishment (or maybe just more lucky...). The flipside of that is if you know you have a very scarce coin but with the condition so bad as to make it worthless -- that might really be a punch-in-the-gut. Nice finds and I hope your next Seated is in better condition. Do you know what happened to that one? Is it chemical or physical (stuck in amongst gravel/stone for 1.5 centuries)? BTW, where are you located -- state would be nice but at least what part of the country (NE, SW,...) -- helps give us an idea where the old stuff (and how much of it) is still out there and where we have a chance of finding it.