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Had a chance to test the Makro Multi-Kruzer with wireless headphones this weekend. I found most of the coins in Three-tone, 14kHz, with minimal notching. My oldest was a 1901 Indian Head, and my deepest was a 1941 Wheat penny on the deeper side of 11-inches! I thought I had a sliver of Spanish silver for a heartbeat, but no. I really liked the 4-Tone mode, in 5kHz, in the high iron and trash areas I hunted. It really helped me avoid a lot of trash signals. Recovery is fast, depth meter is accurate. Ergonomics are good, and the weight is tolerable for a five-six hour hunt. I like it!

Copper non-key date pennies are now worth more than double their face value, according to Coinflation copper valuation. I have a big water cooler bottle about half full of 'em. Getting rich! LOL!

Thought I would show the Wheat Penny a little respect today and post my finds.. The lowly Wheat Penny is usually only givin credit to be an indicator of possible silver in the area, so we are happy to dig them.. Today was a no silver kind of day but a couple of Wheat Pennies helped save my otherwise lackluster hunt.. I had a moment of excitement when I saw a 1914 on one of my Wheats with a little mint mark on it..I was hoping I had finally found the rare 1914 D.. After I pulled out my magnifying glass I realized it was a San Francisco Mint version which is still a respectable semi key date coin at just over 4 million mintage.. I also found semi key date 13 S Wheat at just over 6 million mintage.. Other Wheats found today were 1911, 1925 S, 1928 S and three Wheats from the mid 40s.. The two Semi key date Wheats are probably worth far more then any silver I might have found today so I thought I would show them off.. The Equinox did a great job finding these today.. A couple of them were real close to iron or had iron in the hole with them.. This area has been hit multiple times with my CTX, E-Trac and friends V3i.. Only thing left is the tough signals.. Bryan

Stopped at a park yesterday because I saw they had removed some grass from an area. First target within 3 minutes was a 56 rosie, the only coin in the spot. I went to the zoo today where they had dug up an old dead tree, only target within 5 minutes was a ugly old Merc. I was running Park 1, 2-tone, tone break set at 23, recovery 7 and iron bias 1 It was great to swing faster than I ever could with the CTX, I had to cover ground fast because my time on both days was very limited. Both dimes were hitting at 26-27 and were very shallow.

I did a thread recently where I was hunting local park areas and wanting to experiment with "cherry picking" settings that would net me the most coins the fastest without bogging down into overly serious detecting. I normally hunt 50 tones with no items rejected, which works well but which requires me to work slowly analyzing targets sounds. Time is limited so I wanted to get out and cover some area. The settings worked well enough to get a pile of coins out of some trashy modern park settings. Park 1 - Multi-IQ 50 Tones Iron Bias 0 Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7 Auto (Pump) Ground Balance Sensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMI All items from 21 on down rejected except for 13 For nickels I was being really picky, just digging good, solid 13 readings. I do know nickels can also read 12 but I did not want to recover too many pull tabs so kept this very narrow. And I have to note - I am experimenting!! There is nothing magic about these settings, just something I am trying in modern trash. Anyway, it worked halfway well and I was able to readily skim coins out of a modern trashy park area with minimal trash, and nearly all that being square tabs that read 13 like the nickels. Very little high end trash. I was getting quite a bit of ferrous high tone squeaking but only a couple that tempted me enough to dig them anyway, and got a couple nails. This weeked I wanted to try an area I had cherry picked before for copper/silver range targets, but my ear is better tuned now so wanted to give it another go with more open settings than above but still not wide open full tones. I employ different levels of intensity in my hunting that varies by location, time constraints, and my mood. Sometimes I want to recover all non-ferrous targets. Sometimes just copper/silver. And sometimes varying levels of in between. This next round I opened up the discrimination a little. Park 1 - Multi-IQ 50 Tones Iron Bias 0 Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7 Auto (Pump) Ground Balance Sensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMI All items from 16 on down rejected except for 12 & 13 This time however I rejected everything from 16 on down except 12 & 13. The goal here is zinc pennies read 21 and since I hate them it makes for my regular cutoff point in areas from around 1930 and newer. However, in older areas there are two things in particular to pay attention to, assuming you still want to reject some stuff. Indian Head pennies overlap the zinc penny range. New zincs come in at 21 but corroded ones will read lower. Indian Head pennies can read in that same "high teens / low twenties" range. Also, a $5 gold coin will normally read at 18. Ground and age can pull readings lower, and so I decided on 17 on up as being good, but 17 is debatable. I will decide on that later after digging enough 17 targets. But 18 on up has to be open because I am determined to find a $5 gold coin with Equinox. I also wanted to open up the nickel range as older nickels seem to hit around 12 and newer ones more in the 13 region. Again, just experimenting! I also need to note that I am using Park 1 - target id can vary depending on mode and frequency. I told myself I would skip shallow zinc signals but I have a real problem passing on clean sounding targets, and so dug most of these since they are shallow and easy to pop. I did finally make myself stop though as it is a time waster - zinc pennies were the most common "trash" target followed again by some square tabs. Like I noted, I detected this area before, so once I pulled the about 20 zincs aside I ended up with 10 copper pennies, 4 dimes, and 3 nickels, none all that old. However, I got three special signals. The first was as nice a 12 reading as I could hope for, just a nice clean, mellow tone. And down about 8" appears my first ever Liberty or "V" nickel, a 1909. Some time later and maybe 100 feet away another identical, mellow 12 reading - I just knew it had to be another nickel. This one was down under a tree root at about 8" and popped out of the ground dry and green - another V nickel, 1898 this time. My first Liberty nickels, and two in one day! Some time later, with time running out, I got a messy 19 reading. It was trashy sounding but just good enough to get me to dig, and my first Indian Head penny pops up next to some ferrous trash. So after 45 years of detecting, why am I only now finding my first old coins of these types? I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and lived there my entire life up until 5 years ago. Anchorage was founded in 1915 and most of that area is paved over core downtown. Most of the town is far newer. I considered 1930's coins to be the great old finds, with only a couple ever from the 20's, and never anything from the teens or earlier. The bottom line is these types of coins just did not exist where I lived. And then I got into nugget detecting...... So anyway, a couple firsts for me, and that alone made it quite fun. I used some cleaning tips mentioned on this other thread (steel wool) on the 1909 Liberty but left the other alone as cleaning it would probably make it worse. The IHP has a couple weird corrosion blobs on it so have not messed with it. Anyway, opening up the extra notches did not get me into too much trash except for the zincs I did not resist digging. The big lesson is that deep Liberty nickels, or at least these two, were the most wonderful mellow 12 signals one could imagine. So my current working theory is newer nickels will tend towards 13 and older ones 12 while in Park 1 mode.

I am hitting some already hit park areas but going about it a bit more methodically cleaning up stuff I missed. The areas are not particularly old and so the last couple hunts I have rejected everything from 21 on down except for 13. I am in Park 1 but pushing sensitivity a bit too high probably at 21 or 22 so I am getting quite a bit of very high tone ferrous falsing in the high 30s. Iron bias set at zero. I have been half tempted to either block 39 and 40 or set them as a low tone ferrous. I do like hearing them though as 39 in particular is a “tell” that an item is ferrous so I may have to try the low tone experiment. Or lower my sensitivity. Or maybe even try iron bias! Still I am not getting hardly any ferrous fool me enough to actually dig it. The high tone, high 30s signals are very wishy washy whereas a coin signal tightens up and normally hits in the 20s except for those quarters coming in around 30. I am basically cherry picking the copper penny/dime/quarter results and “hard 13” nickels. I am hitting some not particularly old but quite trashy locations and don’t want to get too ridiculous chasing targets and so far this is working pretty efficiently. If the areas were older I would open it up down to 17 and include 12 for the nickels. What I am using now makes a nice cherry picking mode for newer picnic type areas. Been running recovery speed at 7 or maybe 6. Getting very little trash fooling me at this point, especially in the high end. Probably more square tabs at 13 faking me out due to digging nickels than anything else. Only a few bottle caps. The areas have been hunted but I can tell people have passed on the nickel range due to all the trash, so even going for real hard 13 hits only is still piling up the nickels. When I say "hard 13" I mean a target that hits real hard at 13 and exhibits "roundness". The only other target tends to be newer square tabs, which being thinner and square generally do not sound as solid to me. The ones that trick me are less than an inch deep and at that point just easier to pop them out then spend time trying to figure out if they are good or not. 24 quarters, 35 dimes, 31 nickels, and 46 pennies. Eight were wheatback pennies so silver coins were possible but did not get any this time. I did get a nice little sterling silver and opal ring however so I guess that counts! Interesting these days since copper pennies are no longer dropped that with clad dimes still being dropped dimes have caught up to copper pennies numerically as a find these days. Sure was not that way when I took up coin hunting over 40 years ago! Of course wheaties came out of the ground practically new back in those days. Seems the coins and I are both aging.... Been kind of fun coin hunting again. I normally do gold nuggets and jewelry with coins more a bycatch while jewelry detecting. Right now though I want to take advantage of wetter spring weather to hit park areas that get too dry later to be doing much plugging. Easier digging now and much better chance of the ground recovering well. Once the summer heat starts I will get back to my regular detecting but for now this is a lot of fun as a change of pace for me. Park 1 - Multi-IQ50 TonesIron Bias 0Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7Auto (Pump) Ground BalanceSensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMIAll items from 21 on down rejected except for 13 Follow Up Thread

I been hunting this park for 2 hrs a day since last Sat the 24th. Anyway I have pulled out in excess of $35 - $40 in clad and a cpl silver rings and a few worthless tokens. This morning I pulled out $6.37 in two hours and only dug one tab and had on mystery 25 signal that I quit looking for at 12". I already had an 8" diameter plug and at 12" I just quit. There were a bunch of women show up and started exercising in the same area I was detecting but I was getting ready to quit so I headed toward my truck and on the way I decided to make a cpl passes of areas I already hunted. Well to my surprise in less than 50' and two passes 4' wide I picked up 85 cents and that got me to think that maybe I should grid it and cover the area again. I will admit when I swing there is a good chance I miss an area 6" or so between swings as I move forward but in the past when I tried gridding all I did was wear myself out and found very little or nothing. Since this park is such a producer I am thinking when I finish the last 3rd of the park maybe I should go back and start over covering the park in a horizontal search of what I been hunting. I am also wondering since I turned up the sensitivity yesterday if that's the reason I should go back over what I have hunted. I got the sensitivity turned up to 25 with no chatter or interference's. I been using park 1 and other than turning up the sensitivity I am in factory pre set. I have hit few bottle caps and I know colt 44 rings up but Bush beer don't. Tokens been ringing up 31 & 32 but I recognize them after digging a few. The separation between trash and good signals is beyond by belief. Three times this morning I hit signals that went from 23 - 30 and I kept swinging to see which signal want the most prominent and when I dug I got a quarter, dime and penny. One time 2 quarters and a penny. Also in the holes I found rusty nails and a lead sinker. I may not be right on the amount of clad I have dug because I haven't counted it exactly but I know I have a pile of clad not counting pennies of $93 and about $35 of it is E-Trac finds. Maybe someone can answer this. Often times when I pin point for say a quarter that's ringing up at 29 when I start to pin point the detector shows 13 while I am pin pointing. It don't bother me because I am listening for tone but always wonder why the detector don't show 29 when I am pin pointing a 29. All I can really say is I am one happy detecting dude with the 800. My E-Trac may go to rust unless I find a good reason to use it for anything other than back up. One last thing. I have charged it twice and get almost exactly 12 hours per charge. When the battery is almost dead the 800 with shut off on it's own. I do think that Minelab should halt production of the 800 so others don't get one and that would reduce the competition.

Aside from the fact you might find gold jewelry in the nickel range, why do you hunt for nickels? I also am a detector nut myself and do understand the concept of detecting for anything just for the fun of it. When I do coin hunt however the fact is most older nickels I find are in such poor condition that it’s doubtful they are even worth face value. Yet most silver coins I find look as new as the day they were dropped. Many silver coins found will grade out decently, but that is very rare for old nickels. This means the chance of finding high value silver coins is vastly better than the chance of finding high value nickels. Or so I believe. Newer nickels are in better condition, but key date Jefferson’s are not exactly worth a fortune, and they are few and far between. Then there is the fact that going after nickels usually involves more trash per coin, at least in my experience. If I focus on silver dimes and higher there is very little trash that ends up in my pouch. Anyway, is anyone digging nickels for any real reason other than that finding an old Buffalo or V nickel is a fun find? What’s the highest value nickel anyone has found? I have some War nickels that might be worth a few bucks, but that’s it for me.

I was invited to a permission by my hunting partner and friend Flysar yesterday... a turn of the century Rodeo Grounds and Picnic area. He has hunted this location a few times previously, and has found a Barber Quarter, a Barber Dime and a Buffalo, but warned me that the targets are sparse and the ground is loaded with iron. We were both very curious about what the Equinox could do in this environment. There were three of us hunting, I had the E600, he had his Deus and the third was swinging an AT Max. We started by marking a few targets.. I set out in Park 1, 50 tone, Recovery 3 and Iron Bias 0. I marked 6 targets and he marked about the same with his deus. As I mentioned in another thread, the Equinox was deadly on deep rusty iron. In a few cases, it was even giving me id's in the high 20's-low 30's and never bouncing up to high 30's. The Deus on the other hand, marked 6 or 7 old rusty bottle caps (a few of which the Equinox showed in the zinc range... 18-21). I will say, when comparing the marked targets between the three machines... we usually ended up with 1 "I would dig it" (and usually from the machine that marked the target), and 2 "I wouldn't dig it" by the other two machines. So, with the testing results ending inconclusive, we decided to break off and hunt. Over all we spent a solid 3 hours around the entrance and stadium of the rodeo grounds and other than Flysar finding a wheat, no old coins were found, only a few pennies, a clad dime and a clad quarter between the three of us. We decided to call it a day... mostly discouraged. As my friends drove away, I decided to take one more pass on the outside edge of the grounds, near the horse trailer entrance next to a large pasture. My first target was the penny with a cross stamped out in the middle. I thought to myself... "well that is a good sign". Within 30 minutes, in an area about 20 yards square... the other 5 targets in the picture along with the cross penny were in my pocket. I had spent all morning chasing iffy and sometimes repeatable high tones, digging all manner of iron bits (one square nail, which I was happy to find), working hard to try and make good targets out of the clicks and wheezes... and boom! these targets came in with roundness of tone and clarity. No doubt they were diggable. The three silver dimes all presented at 26-28, the war nickel was 13-14, the wheat was 24-26 and was the deepest at about 5". The other targets were 3-4". Interestingly enough, the ground in this area was dense and hard packed, but not dry... it had plenty of moisture, but it nearly took a digger to break the plug. All three dimes hid inside the plug from my Carrot on '3' with not response. I had to break open the plugs to find them with the pinpointer, and only after standing up to re-sweep the hole and plug with the 600 to find out where the target had gone. My takeaway is to never give up on a site, especially that has old ground. The targets are out there. Thanks to Flysar for inviting me along and giving me my best silver day to date. Tim.

I dig a lot of ring tabs and their decapitated brethren -- beavertails, and thus my avatar. Since those were used between 1965 and 1975 and likely dropped in that time window you get both an upper and lower bound ("someone was here drinking out of a can as recent as 1965"; ditto "...as long ago as 1975") on a site's usage. (Like always there are exceptions, such as a site being backfilled with material from another location). I'm wondering if a similar conclusion can be drawn from crown caps. Of the (not nearly as many as you, Strick) bottles caps I've dug I recall one specifically still having the inner cork seal, many with the plastic seal, and a moderate number with neither. 'Neither' could mean it never had one, it had a cork one that decayed over the years (my gut feel for most likely explanation), or a plastic one that someone intentionally removed. Does anyone know the time window of usage for cork inner seals and/or the initiation of the plastic liners? I recall when I was either in elementary school or more likely, high school, a Coca Cola promotion where the plastic liners of crown caps had NFL emblems (teams, players, can't remember details) and that sending in a complete set would return a (American) football as your reward. (I still have mine....) So that would have been 1970 or earlier. Still, there could have been multiple years when both cork and plastic were simultaneously in use. Addendum: The football I received from that promotion had an imprinted (not ink-signed) autograph of Tom Moore (the running back, not the coach) and I justed looked him up on Wikipedia. He retired after the 1967 season.

You can watch the whole video or skip to the 8 minute mark for the comparison.

I have mentioned this park before. I use it as my testing grounds. Mainly because it is one of the oldest parks in the town where I work, but also because it has been detected hard over the years, including by me during my lunchtime as often as I can get out there. Over the past 2 years, I have probably logged 60 or 70 hours at this park. Last summer, I thought I had eeked out the last wheatie by running my Vaquero in All Metal (after spending the prior year and a half hunting it with an AT Pro, ETrac, CTX, Explorer SE Pro, and even a few times with the ATX). Last fall, I hunted this location 3 or 4 times during lunch and came away with goose eggs. So of course, when I received my Equinox E600, I couldn't wait to see if the hype about Equinox and pounded locations was at all true. To all on this forum, my story will come to no surprise. And even thought I trust the members of this site implicitly, and the results your all were sharing since the release... I am still gobsmacked with my own results. I played a little with the different modes, but for the most part, I ran Park 1, Noise Cancel, Ground Balance (not tracking), Recovery 3 (max on the 600), Iron Bias 0, 50 tones (a bit in 2 tone), Multi-Frequency. Over the past 3 weeks, 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there, an odd 1 hour hunt... I have spent about 5.5 hours swing time. My 45 minute hunt today rewarded me with the oldest of all - 1917-S, and when I dropped the carrot into the hole to measure the depth, the top was below ground level... similar to the tax token I dug last week. In addition to these oldies, I also found 35 Lincoln memorials (most copper), 7 nickels (all Jeffersons), 5 clad dimes, and a clad quarter. All I can say about the Equinox is... wow. Tim

I pulled a Steve tonight and sold my CTX....I've found so much with this machine that it's paid for itself easily..I still have a 5 gallon bucket full of coins that I need to cash in...not to mention all the gold and silver jewelry that it found for me. In the end it was an easy decision...because I have a new CTX that has barely been used At any rate I made a deal with myself a while ago that I was not going to buy any new detectors unless I got rid of a few..... (Merton are you listening).....Hopefully the 800 will be here before our Pismo trip next month. Also on the chopping block was the AT Gold I bought for Lisa several years ago. She proclaimed that she no longer wanted to use it after a short stint on the beach with the CTX...I'm thinking she will like the light weight of the Equinox and may want to use it also. The 800 is going to be good for my relic spots thats for sure.. strick

I posted this on another forum as well looking for some input on war nickle VDI's I've been hunting an old baseball field for the last couple of days, cherry picking though an unbelievable amount of trash targets. I scored silver 2 days in a row, using a fast recovery speed and basically 2 tones. I decided today to open up the nickle range to see if I could score some nickles, especially war nickles. Withing 45 minutes I had 5 nickles in my pouch, nothing old or deep, but a solid 13 VDI. I decided to go back tomorrow and see if I could pick out some silver nickles among the garbage. So, tonight I pulled out 15 or so war nickles to see what VDI I could expect, well...They read from 13 all the way to 24?? I did the test twice and the numbers differed from nickle to nickle, that just shot my narrow nickle range all to hell. Maybe someone else could pull out some war nickles and see what you come up with.

Finally was able to get out with the Equinox and do a little hunting. Let’s just say I no longer wonder if the Equinox is deep.. There are a few things I would like improved but depth is definitely not a issue.. My ground is not friendly to most brands of metal detectors..The 1900 S Barber Dime was a full 8”.. The tone was a soft but solid high tone in all directions.. No iffy about it.. I also dug a copper Token the size of a nickel at a full no BS 10”.. Same situation.. soft but solid signal all the way around.. This target was near iron but not in the same hole.. A nice surprise were the Nickels that all came in at a solid 13.. All 6 Nickels I dug today including the 7” 1924 D Buffalo were only Target ID 13.. I dug several bouncy 11-12-13 signals and they were all broken or rolled up Beaver Tails.. The Barber and Indian Head Cents All had bouncy numbers but consistent high tones..The ID numbers seem to up average as they get deep..My biggest complaint is the Depth Meter and Modulation.. The Modulation is great from about 7” and beyond.. Deep Silver and copper has a very nice soft tone so you know your on to a deep coin.. There is very little Modulation above that.. I believe the Depth Meter is calibrated to quarter size targets and I think if it were calibrated to a penny or dime the meter would be more useful.. I know a lot people don’t care about that, but for my style of Turf hunting in manicured Parks, I don’t dig mid or low conductors unless they are deep. Otherwise I would spend all day digging tabs and slaw instead of Old Coins. The Equinox runs very quiet, fast and loves small targets.. Should be a Button Monster for you Relic Hunters.. Anyway, that’s my first impressions.. I only have very few hours on it and have a lot to learn yet..

PU PU Platter.

Interesting as we normally see gold nugget videos from Oz. The finds remind me of what you would see in California gold country.

Some weekend Inspiration.

Great video....

I thought it would be cool to encourage folks to share their finds big or small. It seems most only post their finds when it’s a gold ring or old silver but most days for me look like this. Today I got out to my ranch permission and after 2 hours I came away with these keepers on the Deus. The war nickel is a 43, 10 yen coin, a 1950 cinco centavo, a Pisces medallion, an old ring of unknown origin and 4 wheats.

Last night after finishing work at 5pm i got home had a shower and dinner and had a kip for a couple of hours . At 10pm i woke up and got my Explorer 11 and took my Car to the beach , i can park during the night free so the Bus wasn't necessary this time. The tide was in and i just waited for a while till around 12 midnight then walked to the first beach . It looked built up and i was wondering about giving up but i knew that further West it might not be like that so i kept searching . Eventually i found a target and it turned out to be a Silver bracelet after that there was almost nothing for quite a while. I walked on and found hotspots and the coinage started coming in . at around 1.30am i turned round and walked over my tracks and then suddenly i heard a low tone and thought 20p coin so dug and in the torchlight i saw a glint of yellow , i had my spyglass with me and it is a 9k 2.7g Gold ring and had D in the Cartouche with 375 next to it , there are stones but they are small. I walked on and found more coinage then at the end of my search i found a mobile phone that was smashed , it had a plastic cover on and inside the cover there was a £10 note so that was rescued and then i threw the phone away . It was well beyond its best . At about 2.30am i stopped searching and got the car and headed home . My total for this search was 1 Gold ring , 1 Silver bracelet , a 20 Euro Cent and £43.71p in spendable coinage . My next hunt is on Sunday probably .

I got my old Eagle Spectrum out today just for the fun of it. Those are still great machines... I used the original 950 coil and hit a local park for an hour or so. Found a few coins and a nice little 925 ring. My first glimpse of the ring was I thought I had found a gold one ... But hey it is a nice little silver.

Most Hi-Tech, most user friendly, understanding that the most expensive isn't necessarily the best, and if it had to be the ONLY one you own. GO!

I don't do a lot of coin shooting, its not because I'm not interested, its because I literally live on a gold field so its actually easier for me to go find a nugget than it is to go find coins. Clermont the town I live in has a colourful past with gold being discovered here in the 1860's, so some of the coins to be had are quite old by Australian standards. Clermont also suffered from a massive flood in 1916 that killed over 60 people whilst they slept, this happened because the town had been built on the flats beside Hoods Lagoon an ancient river channel that is now a water hole, Hoods lagoon is away from the main present day water courses that flow past Clermont (the confluence of Sandy and Wolfang creeks). When both creeks get major flooding upstream (in the case of the 1916 flood it was due to a cyclone crossing the coast 300 kilometers away) the water backs up and flows out over the flats, in 1916 it backed up so far the water ended up inundating the town completely (some say 10 to 15 feet). The tragedy was further compounded because it not only happened in the middle of the night when people were in their beds asleep but also flash flooded at tremendous speed. For those interested I've included a couple of links to recent newspaper articles marking the centenary. ABC news article ABC news article 2 I have a good friend Paul who is mad on coin detecting, especially wading in the surf. He has an advantage in the surf because he looks like he's about 10 feet tall (obviously an exaggeration) so can wade deeper than most with some amazing finds for his efforts. He and I often go gold detecting together and on occasion we go on a coin shoot, the fact I had the Equinox 800 to play with was a good incentive on a 40 degree Celsius day, so out we went while it was still coolish targeting an area he had scoped out on previous occasions. The area he selected was near the banks of Hoods lagoon and was selected because the old town was once there but also more importantly the size of the gum trees told him they were old enough to have been there providing shade for people trying to escape the heat of summer. People like to lay down in the shade, they also place articles of value at the base of trees when they go for a swim, so the immediate areas around the bases of old gum trees are prime locations for coins. Paul having a play with the Equinox I have not even tried the EQ in the coin modes (other than having a bit of fun with Field mode when I was out prospecting, but that's another story) so you can consider me to be an absolute new chum, all I did was set the threshold tone to my liking and put the Tones on 50 using the Park mode. I wondered off from were Paul was digging up a 1 cent piece (he rubbed in the fact he had the first coin for the session, so it was game on). Now to be fair to Paul he did kind of "lead me" to the path of silverness and I was making him use an Xterra 705 as his CTX was back on the coast on lone to a friend. Sure enough in no time I had a sweet signal that screamed "dig me", it's funny how metal detecting for non-ferrous has a universal language even coming from my "Gold Prospecting" background. To me the signal sounded very sweet and mellow with the target ID complimenting what I was hearing, even though the dirt in Clermont is highly mineralised (it is a Gold Field after all) the Equinox 800 just purred along. My first Silver with the Equinox 800, a 1931 Shilling This coin would have been lost long after the 1916 floods but was still a decent find in my books, especially considering I'd only just turned the detector on. By this stage poor old Paul was a little distracted, I don't know who was more pumped him or me, he sure covered some territory with those stomping long legs of his as he hot footed it over when I screamed I had a silver coin. We shot the breeze for a bit, probably one of the highlights of this type of detecting with a good friend and definately more sociable than gold detecting where you have to keep miles away from each to avoid interference. Getting back to it I then pinged onto another "good" sounding target only inches away (the EQ really does makes a stand out signal on silver that's for sure), this time my second coin for the morning popped out of the ground. 1920 Six Pence I've really enjoyed being involved with the Equinox, its well outside my normal scope of detecting which I found challenging, being away from my comfort zone has helped me to grow in ways I had not expected as a long term gold specific metal detectorist. Tapping back into my roots chasing high frequency gold has also been extremely rewarding, I'm really looking forward to the coming months as others start to talk about their experiences with this brilliant detector. JP

I know, this doesnt fit a topic here...find a bank near you that still has a coin counter...inquire as to when they empty their half dollar bags. Some banks empty them each month. Some empty them only when full, which is fairly rare. The coin counters don't reject halves for weight, which means the 40% and 90% silvers will be mixed with regulars. MOST banks will also not mind selling the full bag to a customer, since it costs the bank nothing to do so, and costs them to send the bags to a coin servicer. If you get a bag of halves with silver, buy the other bags emptied at that time. A few weeks back I got pretty lucky on the halves, so bought a quarters and a dimes bag...expensive, but this time worked out nicely. Ground here is frozen solid...have to do something !! HH