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Got an old soccer field that is next to a couple schools built in 1959, bad part is it had new loam put in back in the 70's. I was hoping for some very old coins but thinking that may not be the case. Anyways hit 1/4 of it so far and finding quite a bit of clad, 925 silver ring made in Italy, 64 silver dime and a 41 wheatie. Someone else was hitting the other end where there is tons of trash. Looked like they gave up. Been using the Multi Kruzer to get used to it and starting to learn the audio much better in 3 tone mode. Make a really nice coin shooter machine.

Went out with 3 hunting buddies slopping in the muddy blackish sand for a few coins and a small 1.3gr 9ct gold ring. Still waiting for beaches to do more of a move. Photo of my medium dug hole which only produced an old 20 cent, but happy with depth the Tarsacci got. The others only got 3 coins between them so hard hunting with so few targets around at the moment. Happy with 1944 shilling......1946 3d is toast.

Was out this afternoon on this "chilly" Florida day (65°) for 2 1/2 hours to a soccer field with the 15" coil. I was running park one. My second signal of the day was a strong 11 and was golden in color. It was basically on the surface of the sandy soil. I thought it was junk, but it went in the "special" zippered section of the Garrett finds pouch. I moved on and hit another two rings in an overgrown volleyball court right next to the field and a little over $5 in change. The black ring is stainless, the silver looking one is junk, and the gold one is 10K. It was very hard to see the markings even with an inverted pair of binoculars when I got home. It has been a long time since I made it out, but this helped make up for it. It was fun to get out.

I've found the winter / New Year period a good time to reflect on the past and hope for the future, and that applies to my detecting as well. Since I keep a log of finds (coins and jewelry) by year I can compare that part of detecting with the recent (starting in 2017) past. Unlike previously, 2019 came up short in every meaningful quantified category: total collectible coins, total Wheat pennies, total $-value of common coins, total days hunted, total hours hunted, average hours/hunt. The causes are many: fewer permissions, fewer previously hunted parks & schools, very dry late summer / early autumn, less stamina with age(?). Ironically all that on top of the fact that I had more free time since my work load was reduced more than half. All of this needs to be addressed for 2020. In terms of gold hunting, as chronicled here I quadrupled (2 to 8 😁) my lifetime native gold finds with about the same number of hours/trips West, but that is almost completely due to the benevolence of a friend who took me to one of his gold producing sites and added some instruction along the way. I'll be on my own in 2020 which means "research, research, research!" There are other valuable takeaways besides simply counting finds, though. Knowledge is a big one, and required by me. So what did I learn last year? The biggest increase in knowledge was finally learning to listen to the quality of tones from the Minelab Equinox 800. Along the way I went from a love/hate (exaggerated description of course) relationship to one of trust. But that really didn't happen until the very end of the year. You may recall I wrote a long, sad(?) post in August about a frustrating hunt of an 1850's homestead when I was driven bonkers by EMI. That was in the heart of the dry season when not only do we lose depth due to the dry soil, but also (in good conscience) have to give up digging in public sites because of the inability of the grass/sod to heal itself. I was at an all time low. I can thank many of you for helping me make an attitude adjustment. One of the problems I had previously with trying to listen and learn sound/tone quality was that I just couldn't force myself to listen to '50 tones'. What I realized is that you can get a big boost from listening to the quality of tones in 5 tone mode. Another surprising occurrence which I can't explain is that EMI became much less of a problem. I used to run gain of 20 max due to EMI, dropping to gain of 15 in some cases, and even being more/less forced to switch to single frequency mode (and never 5 kHz where the EMI was worst) if I was still getting bad EMI at gain of 15. The last several hunts I was able to run quietly at gain of 22 consistently, including in a local park where I typically had to switch to single freq. Yes, it could be temporal/seasonal variations in EMI but I don't think so. I've hunted that particular park year round, morning through afternoon, weekdays and weekends. Maybe the source of EMI was removed, but that doesn't explain my experiences at other locations which also gave EMI problems in the past, but not now. I don't think it's the recovery speed (I've been running exclusively at 5), or mode (consistently Park 1). However, I do wonder about the 2.0 software upgrade. My loss of EMI problems has occurred since then although I don't recall it being like a switch being thrown. I've been hunting Iron Bias F2=5 most of the time since I loaded that upgrade in software. Is it possible ML made other changes which lessened EMI? And, again, it may not have anything to do with the detector. Unfortunately I haven't gotten a chance to return to that 1850's homestead give that really bad EMI a test. I haven't posted a finds photo lately. Shown above are the highlights of my last 4 hunts of 2019 (all after Christmas) and first 3 of 2020. I found a silver coin in 6 of those 7 hunts. The dolphin ring is sterling and note it isn't a closed ring (dolphins not touching) but still came up with a TID just above Zincoln (i.e. it was about 22 on the Eqx). The bronze token is from a local (Southern Indiana) intercity bus lines which was in business from the 1920's through mid-60's. The two items on the left are shown to emphasize the unmasking ability of the Eqx. That large iron loop (have no idea what it is) was about 4 inches laterally and a couple inches deeper than one of the Mercs, which itself was 6 inches deep. In another case, the wing nut (non-ferrous TID, but I don't know it's composition) was close to the surface. I think it ID'ed in the pulltab zone and I dug it specifically to see if it was masking anything. Six inches laterally and 8 inches deep was another Merc. I don't know if the Eqx probably would have unmasked that (my guess is 'no') but it does show that removing undesirable targets will pay dividends. That Merc and one of the others are the deepest dimes I've ever recovered. None of the coins (including the Wheaties) are valuable date+MM. A few final points -- Steve H's online interview by Dick Stout prompted me to reread Coinhunting... In Depth. A couple things jumped out from that book. (I'm paraphrasing / reworking but I give him credit for these concepts, at least): 1) Why are you wasting your time returning to the same places you've hunted to death? 2) When you go out detecting, spend some time beforehand considering your goals; then keep them in mind during the hunt. Thanks, Dick! Those plus a few other things yet TBD are going to make 2020 my best year ever.

Out waging the new wond around Reno, and finding out what the Equinox 800 is like. Thanks to so many of you veterans and just plain smart people my early days swinging the nox have been a pleasure. Here are some of my finds in my first two weeks.

Hi all! It was a beautiful day here on Monday -- and my buddy and I got out for some digging. We hit a park that I had never hunted before, but he's been there several times over the years. As all of our city parks are, it's been well hunted, but after a couple of hours I lucked into a little "hot spot." It was a very small area, as it turns out -- maybe 30' x 30' maximum -- but I started hitting deep coins. Each one was at least 7" deep, but most of them were Garrett Pro-Pointer deep (8" to 9"), the deepest pushing 10". My guess is that for whatever reason, the coins ended up deeper than normal in this little area (I know a layer of sod had been installed here, as I was cutting through that plastic "mesh" underneath the grass layer), and that they ended up just deep enough that they were missed by most other hunters/other machines. Whatever the case, it's always nice to get into a little area that gives up coins like that; after I had hit several coins (enough to convince me there was something going on there) I called my buddy over to join in on the paydirt. All told, we managed 14 old coins from this tiny little area, plus a few buttons and other interesting items. It's been quite awhile since I've hit a little "hot spot" that was that productive, in a public spot... Here are my digs; I got several of these as "live digs" on video, so I may try to piece together a video (if I can give myself a crash course, and learn how to edit well enough)! (The Mercs are 1935-D, 1942, 1944, and 1945; the Rosie is 1959; the Wheats are 1920-D, 1937-D, 1941, and 1946, and the Buffalo is 1937). Thanks, all! Steve

I tend to save all my finds and put them on a tray until I have time to sort them. Last year it seemed like I had too little time to sort because the two trays hold a whole year's worth of junk, jewelry, and coins. I did have additional plastic bags partially filled so the trays wouldn't overflow too much. The box holds the change that came out of all that junk on the trays. There are no picks of the jewelry because I remove that as I come home after detecting. Just wanted to share with others new to the hobby so they know that there will be junk as well as awesome finds. I used to keep track of how much change I found on each hunt, but now I just take it in and cash it out for Amazon credit. So, I'm not sure how much the change is worth yet because I have yet to take it in.

Had a bit of luck detecting recently with the Deus and 9" HF coil at a country town, gathering by the result the location hadn't seen a detector before. Ended up with 44 silvers on two successive outings, plenty of predecimal coppers and a bit of petrol money to help cover costs. Most of the silvers are .925, with the odd 50% silver makng up the later dates - the green looking shillings are 50%.

Detected a stretch of a river that had some erosion on the banks and sand removed down to the gravels. I dug up many coins including a buffalo nickel and a silver dime that someone was going to make into a ring. The best find was a 14k ladies ring 3.1g (not a genuine stone). Also dug up what looked like a white gold ring turned out to be stainless steel. The tarsacci has good recovery speed like the T2 worked great in the trashy area with broken pieces of rusted old steel cans, bottles caps, bits and pieces of iron along with all the newer junk tossed into the river. The tarsacci worked better than my T2 it found targets in a area I couldn’t use the T2. The 2 wheat pennies were dug up at a old park 6-7 inches deep. The tarsacci goes deeper it’s just that my ctx did a good job sniffing out most of the oldies at this old park.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This thread split off from a prior subject on coin detecting here. I asked someone very knowledgeable about soils and how objects move in and on them! About the "sinking of coins" subject several years ago! And got a very detailed answer! In a nutshell, coins and other object don't actually "sink" in normal soils: * They can be compressed deeper by natural, or man made forces! (Examples: Foot and/or vehicle traffic; Animal traffic!) * Soils and organic materials build up over time! Or are added by humans, or short term natural events! (Examples: Mowing; Plowing; Natural decomposition of organic plant and animal matter; Wind blown soils; Flooding; Land slides; Etc...) * Ground conditions can very greatly and affect the depth the coins were originally dropped! (Example: An uneven or rocky area that may have been a gathering area before being filled and leveled for a playing field!) * Seismic activity, and/ or liquefaction of soils buy various natural and manmade events! And there can be multiple, and combined events over a short, or long period of time! This is by no means comprehensive, and i did not even cover beach conditions and the effects of waves, tides, and currents on coins and other objects, and their shape and weight factors!🤯🤯 And this was the Short answer!🤣

Had a two story garage/shop/storage loft build overtake my life these last ten months, leaving not much free time to metal detect or fish in my newly adopted state of Oregon. Well that has been happily concluded with satisfactory results. The Eugene club (55 miles from me) got an invite to hunt a County Park not usually open for detectorists under the conditions they provide proof of all the trash they collect at the end of the hunt. Well that could be arranged very easily and the club got all it's members to show up last Sunday to this park and we had at it. I have to say I haven't touched my 800 for quite awhile now and was really concerned I was not going to know how to operate it again. I basically just wanted to get back into digging all signals and re-train myself again on the positive signals. I always liked hunting in all metal with the X-Terra and sorting out all the signals, so that is what I did this trip. This particular park is not that trashy and has pretty mild soil anyway. I have the 15" coil and started with that one for the first two hours. Most coins were no deeper than 3" and very easy to pinpoint with that big coil. I was only using a handheld digger while most others were using long handled spades. I can see using long handled spades for deeper coins, especially if using the 15" coil because pinpointing would be getting a bit harder then. By lunch time I changed to the stock 11" coil and did much better hitting the two rings my first two targets. Don't ask me the numbers because I was hunting in all metal and I don't really look at the numbers anymore. Since we were also looking for trash I was pretty much digging all targets good numbers or not. By days end, maybe five hours the club had a nice haul of pop tops, cans, slaw, nails, general trash to make the County happy and secure another invite back at another time. A good days work and a needed re-training day for me. At the end of the day I felt I hadn't forgot that much, like I had thought. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. I ended up with 36 coins, a mood ring, a possible silver ring (not marked), a flying brain pin back, a button, a set of house keys, and a gold colored (CORO) 1960's costume jewelry necklace which gave me a heart attack when I saw the brief glint of GOLD. GaryC/OregonCoast

The mxt hit a home run at an old ballpark recently with this 43 war nickel. Also found a wheat penny and some clad and a little trash. Funny thing happened on this particular hunt, I was heckled by a passerby in their vehicle who pointed at me and laughed out loud, don't know if he was laughing at me or my old White's detector . Anyway I didn't let it get me down and had a good hunt. Has that ever happened to anyone else on the forum ?

I went out today for a couple hours to a school not visited previously. The old wood chip tot lot was the target area. All I ended up finding were 4 quarters, 2 nickels, 7 pennies, a small button off something, a rivet off some clothing or a shoe, and a strange metal piece that showed up in the foil range. There were indeed some junk items today but not in the picture (can slaw, a zipper, foil, a few pencil tops). I had the feeling someone else had been at this spot before because it was really quiet. Well they didn't get these! It's getting more and more difficult in these places and the finds are more difficult to pull. All the other counties around us where there are probably good things located within school grounds have a strict "KEEP OUT" policy and don't allow any kind of public activity on school grounds.

Was nice day with the t2 going over some sidewalk strips.

Couple years ago I hit one of the swim holes not too far away and in a 10-15 sq ft area hit nickel after nickel......... Was thinking someone was trying to drown their kid by stuffing coins in their pocket and telling them to go for a swim.

What a day it has been, Working and then taking a break for an hour so I had to do a little hunting with the 800. Today I went back to a local park just to kill a little bit of time before I had to go to meet someone. I pulled into the park at about 4 pm and grabbed the 800. Turned it on and went to Park 1 with factory setting, did noise cancel, and started swinging. The first 3 hits were all aluminum and the 4th was a bolt from who knows what. The 4th hole made a noise that I had never heard before, a chatter and the ID number changed from a strong 36 to a 21 during the noise. I knelt down to start digging as the depth showed 3 arrows and I proceeded slowly to reach whatever was down there. Because of the chatter I did not truly know what to expect and moved the dirt slowly as to find the reason for the chatter. To my surprise I noticed an edge of something in the dirt, and I pulled more dirt from the sides of the edge so I could get a grip on it. I pulled it out of the ground and to my surprise it was a 1902 dime, it had seen better days but it was still a sight to see. I then hit a area where someone must of lost all of his change and someone else's at the same time. The more I pulled off the ground from under the grass, the more my pin pointer detected. I could not find a place to set the pin pointer without it going off. It took about 15 minutes to pick out the coins from the grass. I looked at the time and had to leave while having so much fun, but had to get back to work. All the coins in the picture ranged from 1902 to 2018. I think I am getting the hang of this detecting thing and can't wait to get out again. Just don't tell my wife because she gets mad.

Found this small 10k class ring this morning. And another junk ring. And few coins mostly nickels. Will try to return class ring. Has first name engraved . https://postimg.cc/gallery/ize0kr3u/

Dragged a buddy mine to an area where I found a 2 cent. Had my Tejon with larger coil this time around and got a small but nice hit near a pine tree, told him to dig it might be good. I looked back after a few minutes and saw a huge mound of dirt so i went back and relocated it. Turned out to be a 4 leaf clover charm gold plated over zinc so I said want it? Might bring you some luck... he said no all pissed off. Continuing on i found 5 Indian heads with dates from late 1800's to 1908, pocket knife and a barber dime to top it off. The Charm is now hot glued to the Tejon 🙂 What was odd is the Indian heads showed up as a 60 on his Garrett. Really strange as they usually show up 74-76 on those machines. Even on my Tejon they were pretty much on the pull ring if not on the fringe. Usually skip those signals but for some reason they just sounded a bit better than a pull ring. Too bad the pine trees beat them up. Think a bit more baking soda and toothbrush will clean them up a bit more.

It cooled off recently so I took the Xterra 705 to a park I've been hunting for a couple of years . This particular park is in an old neighborhood and has been hunted heavily for many years . I've never been able to find much there in the way of old coins just a couple wheat cents. I have used several different machines there and spent quite a few hours there over the past few years. I guess I got lucky when my first target was a 1943 s mint war nickel then 10 minutes later a 1905 indian cent. Didnt find anything else in the 45 minutes I was there. I was running the 705 in all metal coin mode, 99 tones, sensitivity 28, threshold 12 in high freq on the triple freq cors strike coil. Just wanted to share and make a post so Steve doesn't delete my acct. lol

Took the xterra out again today for a couple hrs. only intent on shallow clad. I notched everything but 40,42, and 44 on the vdi scale and set the machine at 7.5 khz in 4 tone, threshold 12 and started at sensitivity 10. I was searching sidewalk strips and gradually turned the sensitivity up to 20. I was finding memorial cents, clad dimes and quarters and not a bit of trash. I went a couple blocks then got a solid 42 no matter which way l swept the coil. I was expecting a Canadian cent because they come up a little higher than a lincoln. I was very surprised to see a 1939 mercury dime in the hole. A little further down the strip another solid 42 next to the sidewalk edge turned up a 54 Rosie. It was nice to have the machine quiet and not be bothered with trash for a change. ☺

The large coin/token was found at a school. It is the same exact coin as the smaller one that is next to it in the picture, just bigger and a couple bundles of grain, maybe (see red arrows). The small coin is a real Chinese coin that I have at home. Question is, what is the larger one? Anyone have any ideas? A good luck charm came to mind, but I could not find any just like it. Thanks for any help.

Anybody tried it? Metal Detecting In The River for Treasure Aug 13, 2017 - Uploaded by Aquachigger Join me as I metal detect and search for treasure in the river. I find a nice Confederate artillery shell and other ... Metal detecting a river full of silver and gold (part 1) Aug 13, 2016 - Uploaded by hiluxyota Went out today with Dirty Dan to a new river site , and we both left today with over 30 silver coins , gold and ... Metal Detecting In Rivers: Tips On Finding Crossings Or Fords Dec 16, 2012 - Uploaded by Aquachigger A little metal detecting adventure. In it, I give out some tips on ... Exploring an Island and Metal Detecting along the River Feb 21, 2017 - Uploaded by nuggetnoggin Nugget Noggin paddles out on the river to explore an island, where many people have camped out over the ...

Went to one of my stomping grounds to try out my AT Pro with -5 clicks on GB and noticed the town had done some trimming revealing areas that weren't usually accessible. After an hour in just a small area I got these. The -5 on the Pro gave me more stable vdi numbers, the coins were pretty shallow <8" deep tangled in roots. The copper coin has so much patina on it that I can barely see a face of some sorts. Thinking of sending it out for professional cleanup.

Met up with a couple of fellow hunters to hunt a WW1/WW2 dump site, it was a button feast today. Also was able to score 2 mercs, a barber and a wheat. Overall a great way to celebrate Independence Day, thanks for looking.

Silver & Gold at its best. I can not believe the finds some of my customers are making with their Equinox detectors. This is the 5th gold coin (I'm only counting in US finds, not England) my customers have recovered with the NOX machines. Brandon in UT, finds an old site and recovers a couple beautiful Seated Liberty Dimes (see pictures). Then the following weekend (this last Saturday) he goes back to the same site and does the Holy Grail we all dream of. Yes he unearths a glimmering gorgeous 1886-S $5 Eagle. I've been a dealer for 25 years and never before have I had so many happy customers making Top Quality Finds. All I can say, is the Equinox and the Multi IQ Technology has to have something to do with all the treasures coming up.