Search the Community

GarrettDetectors - Published on Jan 3, 2018 Based on a customer request, Garrett’s Steve Moore and Miguel Ardito spend several days in the field with two of the company’s most popular detectors, the ACE 300 and ACE 400. For those just getting started with their ACE detectors, this video offers tips on detecting in yards, in the park, on scraped lots, and even a little relic hunting. Other topics covered include: obtaining permissions; researching sites; target recovery techniques; advantages of different ACE searchcoils; and the use of wireless accessories. Along the way, Miguel and Steve make a few nice finds, including silver coins, a gold ring, and interesting relics.

Its really amazing just how much clad adds up when you do not count it for a long time back when I was living in Ohio I had a 1 1/2 gallon plastic jug I would throw all my clad coins in after I would detect,when I moved to Arizona I had forgot about it well I opened a box that I had packed and brought back to AZ with me and low and behold I find the plastic jug with all my clad coins from Ohio keep in mind the only place I ever detected while in Ohio was my own yard and under my house in the crawl space, well I counted all the clad that was in that jug excluding all the pennies so just quarters,dimes and nickels were all I counted there was $293.00 in just clad coins not counting the pennies there is probably another $50 in pennies give or take it was like a savings account that doesn't collect interest there was at least 2 1/2 years of clad in that jug a lot of the pennies I am going to throw away because they are literally disintegrating but it just amazed me just how much it adds up

At 8 am this morning i got up thinking whether i wanted to brave the rain and hit the beach . After about 1 second i thought yep. I got myself together and grabbed my Explorer XS and went to the Bus stop . I passed a beach along the way that gives me an idea whether it will be worth it but wasn't sure . I went to the same place as the Boxing Day hunt and when i got there i saw enough beach below high tide that made me think oh yes . So from just after 10 am till around 12.45 pm i searched the beach and it looks like no one is searching at the moment as i was finding lots of coinage about . I found a what might be a Silver ring and something that also might be Silver and as i was digging a hole for a coin i saw nearby a broken Silver chain bracelet . I carried on past the area that went quiet and wandered past a few beaches that i know to be quiet , at around 12.45 i was knackered so i walked the mile plus back to the start point and gave it one last check before finishing . My total this time was £29.63 p plus the Silver bit or bits ,a copper Pendent "Religious"? and for the Americans here i also found a 1981 Quarter Dollar "lower left" . I find US coins here and there on my local beaches as well as EU coins . My oldest US coin i have found on a beach is a US Quarter Dollar from 1935 which i have kept , not the best condition but is nice anyway . I might go tomorrow but it may have to wait till i have done something else first and that depends on the weather that is getting in the way a lot . I have also reached today the total i was going for for the year and as a result will donate to 3 charities the last £215 i have found . Those will be Alzheimer's research UK , Cancer Research and Brain Tumor research . Anything i find tomorrow if i go will also be donated . Wonder if there is anyone who can guess the total coinage i have had this year ? I have also had 4 Gold and 25 Silver rings and a few other Silver bits including chains or bits of. I have been out 88 times this year or 89 if i go tomorrow .

This morning i went to one of the beaches i go to with my Explorer XS. The weather was windy and wet last night and i thought "hoped" it would shift a bit of the beach off . But i was mostly unlucky .But i found an area of 200 ft by around 70 ft that was scuffed a bit so i got on with the job of hoovering up the coinage . I hoped for a Gold but no luck there , i did find an old Silver ring . I left after around 2 hours with the ring , £23.78 p in spendable coinage , 2 Euro's and for the Americans seeing this a US 5 Cent of 1993 . I might go again on Friday if the beach has a good pounding by the weather , but i doubt it will be .

Hello. Only new here. Have been detecting bit over a year, mostly coins. Heres how im getting on lately if only i could jag this every day.

It should be an easy goal really. I made it a personal challenge within the first 10 minutes of swinging my coil at an elementary school in an old neighborhood of my hometown, built in the 1930's. With my kids playing in the bark chips, I powered up my Etrac, and dug my first wheatie within the first 10 feet of starting. I said to myself... "self, you will find a silver coin here". That was in May. Since then, I have stopped by this location at least a half dozen times, usually when time was too short to fight traffic and drive into Portland OR to hunt the old parks and schools there. My hunts at this school have been under two hours each time... but still plenty of time to use a methodically test several areas of the plot. I have used my Etrac, Explorer SE Pro, CTX and briefly, my ATX. My first visit, I found 4 wheats and a couple dollars in clad quarters along with an equal amount in other clad. Most of my recoveries were less than 6". Clad showing up in the 2-4" range, and the wheats in the 4-6" range. All the earmarks of a site that hasn't been overly pounded in recent years, and still giving up old coins. There is a fair amount of trash and iron in the ground, I found myself digging plenty of can slaw and pop tops, pencil erasers and rusty nails, bits of chain link fence and other undesirables... but I was able to isolate enough high tones to keep my interest. So, I started my research. I found that the existing school structure was built in the mid-90's and is positioned on the opposite side of the plot from where the original school structure was built and stood in the 30's. Sadly, much of the prime playground was now covered by the new building, parking lots, asphalt playgrounds and basketball courts, as is the case for many old school grounds. In the illustration below, you can see where the old school buildings stood (blue blocks in the lower right of the picture). Armed with this new knowledge, it made sense that I pulled several wheats from the area just off the edge of the playground on the left side... that ground existed from the time the original school was built. I have placed yellow dots to indicate the general area I found my original 4 wheats and a few additional wheats during subsequent trips. During my second trip, I also found an aluminum tax token from Washington State (shown in red), and I was convinced I was digging a silver coin... high tone, 6+ inches... silver in the hole... Aluminum. Not unhappy about that find... more proof that this site is dated and this target was a solid 2 way tone in 4 directions... so it gave me comfort that those that came before me, left a few goodies behind for me. In one of my follow up trips, the clad finds diminished, but I did find a silver ring in the area used as a youth soccer field. But in these several hunts, maybe 5 or 6 hours swing time... no silver coins. Last night, I spent about 1.5 hours coming in from the opposite side of the field (where the old school previously stood), and my Etrac was nulling all over the place. It was expected... I'm sure that was a lot of fill dirt and loaded with bits of iron from the demo. But surprisingly, I recovered a 1930 wheat and another tax token just below the basketball court, in an area that should have been previously covered by the old building... so my guess is that it was dirt moved into that area during the demo and it happened to contain a few old targets. But again, no silver coins. I post this, for two reasons... to share my misery (and hopefully ultimate celebration) of my thus far futile attempts to find just one silver coin in this old ground. I won't be able to give up on it until I do... which could be a long long road ;). And second, to see if anybody has any tips looking at the pic and positioning of the buildings (old and new) as to where you would focus your hunts.. Obviously, a lot of my time has been spent gridding the small area where the majority of the yellow dots are... not to say I won't be re-gridding that area (which I plan to do with the ATX after reading the other forum thread which also included the Tom D. Behind the Mask article link.) in hopes to clean out anything that may be masking a nice target. It has become my obsession. LOL. This site has to have silver, and I am going to find it. :) Happy Hunting to all. Tim.

Some of you may recognize this guy from the Equinox videos - Derek MeLennan. Derek and his wife Sharon have 12 years of combined detecting experience and for the last few years have used a wide range of Minelab machines, from the G0-FIND series through to the GPX 5000 for personal detecting and to promote responsible detecting through their not-for-profit company, Beyond The Beep. Since February 2015, the couple have been regularly providing outdoor learning experiences in schools, and they have also created and implemented a detecting programme for veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Here you have a two part story on what it is like to discover a 700 year old hoard of silver coins! Well written articles with great photos - enjoy! Every cloud has a silver lining – Discovering a Medieval Coin Hoard (Part 1) Every cloud has a silver lining – Discovering a Medieval Coin Hoard (Part 2)

Many moons ago I could take the heat 8 hours or more coin hunting. Today is a different story being older and yet so tender. I sit around taking a trip down memory lane on these hot days that hit around a 100. I love nugget hunting but coin hunting has paid off over and over again for me. I started out back in 65 when everything was coming up silver. To find a silver half dollar was a common thing and a silver dollar now and then. I've found lots of coins but yet to find a gold one. Don't get me wrong I'd love to find one and I'd eat humble pie if I could but my world is not depending on it.Oh that silver coming out of the ground after a hundred years is beyond words. I've had this luck lots of times over the years and I hope see some more of the same. Like said It's Not Over Until It's Over. So when in heat get in the shade! Chuck

It's finally cooled down enough here to get out and hunt a little, temps have been up around 106 and staying in the high 60's overnight. Yesterday was warm and humid and most of the time the sun was hidden by the overcast, me and the French girl hit one of my regular parks late afternoon for a couple hours of trying to find the elusive silver coin I know is hiding someplace there. I've found a dozen wheat's and beaver tails are plentiful, to rub salt in the wound one of the neighbors has told me his story of finding a seated dime in his front yard next to the park, he keeps forgetting he's already told me the story...I'm sure I'll hear it again. I've been playing with a customized Deus fast program running the disc at factory preset GB slightly negative, sensitivity at 95, 14khz, reactivity at 2 1/2 silencer -1, iron vol 1, audio 4, 4 tones with the highest frequency threshold break point elevated to 89 and the frequency set at 800 as a set hunting program and an alternate same settings with full tones to switch back and forth to help with audio discrimination. I've been playing with multi-notch and only searching display numbers 50-78 and 87-99 I'm digging a higher percentage of targets and trying to limit some of the foil while still having a chance at a gold ring, although it seems to make the audio a little Chirpy, that's where switching to the unnotched full tones gives a better second look. The locals were showing up and I was working my way back to the car when I hit a very solid tight target locked on at 90 with the round hf coil 14 kHz, down about 6" out popped what I thought was an high voltage pg&E connector, when I rubbed the dirt off it was a little Buda. Thought it was a lead token/game piece at first but after a rinse and brush the metal is much to hard, weighed almost 28g and the specific gravity is around 10.14, almost silver? My guess based on where it was found it could have been made in something like a high school jewelry class, back when I was in high school we did stuff like this and everything was mixtures of what ever silver scraps the kids collected at home plus/or bought from the teacher at class. Almost everything all the work was cast or sheet silver it was cheep and easy to work with, we used nickel silver too but the SG is much lower I think. Hard to say how he wound up buried in this little park but I think it's has to be good luck to liberate him.

I just returned from a trip to Oregon to watch the Solar Eclipse. I took my CTX 3030 just in case. Well, we arrived in Central Oregon a couple of days early and stayed in a U.S.F.S. Campground on the route. I checked out the empty spaces and found a few clad coins. Judging by the layout and size of the camp spaces and the lack of any old roads near by I was guessing it to be built in the 70s or 80s. After checking all of the obvious places, I moved out between the trees where someone could have set up a tent. After a few minutes, I got a nice signal and found a 27 Lincoln in pretty nice shape. My wife was waving to me to come back to camp. She was talking to an older woman( I can say that, she is six months older than me) and she asked me if I had found any treasures and I replied that I had. I shared the 27 penny with her. She told me that her father had started her collecting pennies at a young age and she didn't have a 27 s mint. I gave her that penny, and it made us both feel good. All night long, I kept wondering why was that penny there? The next day, I had to go back and see if there were any more old coins there. I did find one more coin in that general area. A very nice Merc. I still don't know why those coins were there.

Yesterday 150 pieces and 78 €.today 52 pieces and 31.50€ https://postimg.org/image/i4oz4p9kr/

I had about 30 min to kill between calls on Friday so I decided to hit a park close to the next appointment. This park I had written off about a year ago as a target poor environment. It's very small and isolated. So I'm detecting along and see a couple trees in the back that I did not get to last time I was here. I got the Coiltek small elliptical coil on the CTX. As I get near the trees I pick up a couple pennies. Next I get an iffy target but it's reading off and on in the quarter range on the CTX. There is another penny a couple inches away I can tell. So I dig about 5 inches down and out plops this 1925 Peace Dollar!.... WTF? Gotta be a fluke I'm thinking...some kid stole his grand parents stash and lost it in the park. I'm tickled pink but I would have rather found in all the old home sites I've walked hundreds of miles searching lol. While detecting I noticed that I was hearing lots of deep iffy targets and I had pulled out a couple of old twisted metal objects which indicated Old Dirt. I got home around 5pm and got on the computer and went to Google earth. Clicked Historical imaging and saw that the area was an old homesite. The park has been untouched all these years. Looking at the old historical imagery it almost appears that there was an old baseball field due to the triangular shape. So I told Lisa I'll see you in a couple hours lol. Not many targets so I dig everything that hits good and not long into the hunt I pull out this intact pocket watch. I don't know what I like better the watch of the peace dollar. Most of the watches I get are in pieces so this one is the first one thats totally intact and in fairly decent shape. Hit the spot again today and got some old spoons etc....but no more old coins. HH out there! And the ring is fake btw... strick

I'd much rather detect at the beach or the Beautiful high Sierras but sometimes it pays off the hunt near home. For the last few months they have been tearing out the Main Street near where I live so I finally decided to check it out. There is a train Depot there. Fun and something to do. Got a 1870 Spanish coin and other goodies... I enclosed a pic of what the coin would have looked like in its prime.

Took the Deus to my beaten jewelry patch at a park and decided to relic hunt for deep squeakers instead. There used to be a farmstead on the land and a road bisecting the park...both long gone. Hunting slowly 18khz, 0 discrim, silencer -1, reactivity 3, notch 0-38, I caught a signal nearly at the edge of detection. Two directions two different tones and faint. Pinpointing was difficult wiggling-off. I switched to 8khz, and dropped reactivity to see what's up, something I don't normally do. Loud and clear two directions two different tones...hmmmm? Stabbing into the soil I'm stopped dead at 1-2 inches by a hard object. Move 90 degrees, damn, same thing. On the fourth stinking try I see a brick and think, I'm not digging that up it'll leave a crater, but the pinpointer is flipping out saying dig. I found another brick below that one and both bricks sat at 45 with the signal coming between them. Stabbing between the bricks with just enough space for my screwdriver it's a wonder I didn't scratch it as I was kind of wildly flicking soil out. Must have been near 7 to 8 inches and it was on a 45 degree angle. I didn't even know what it was except United States and a number 2. I knew it was my oldest coin found though. I've hit a few silver dimes and several Indian cents in this unasuming park but never did I think it would give up a coin like that. I've taken it to a coin dealer and he says it's too worn to ID the variety and to soak it in oil...where it still sits. Keep on swingin'!

Hope the finder can keep the coin, not be penalized for finding it at a minimum. Mike http://www.kitco.com/news/2017-05-21/400-Year-Old-Coin-Worth-Over-17-000-Discovered-In-A-Moscow-River.html

What dreams are made of! Skip the long intro and start at the 3:30 mark.....

The idea of another 14 kHz machine has been simmering on the backburner for quite some time. But which one to get, nose heavy At-pro, troubled MX Sport, all new Impact, depth challenged F75 DST, new white coiled Deus version umpteenth,... problems, problems,... the sheer agony of it all. So I stumble upon this nice looking second hand MXT All Pro. It's got Eighties Design written all over it. LCD reminding me of my Hewlett Packard Scientific Calculator, Black metal box with the field manual printed on it. Nothing touchy screeny or I-tector to be had. Am I as my stepdaughter often says becoming "Vintage", longing for the days when switches clicked, knobs turned and machines didn't great you with a goodmorning message. Goodmorning,... you've got to be kidding. Haven't had my coffee yet! So impressed with my TRX, tactile, functional, well thought out. My brain and mostly gut feeling pulled the trigger on the deal. Here's to 30 year old tech, 25 year old whiskey and most importantly,... I'm really hoping this one is spot on,... most importantly high quality LP record sound quality.

The wife and I got out for a little detecting today..... Pretty bleak. She found a dime and a quarter, both clad and I got skunked. So I console myself in that I did my good deed for the day in helping to clean up the little park we detected.....

"(Reuters) - An 1804 U.S. silver dollar sold for $3.3 million in one of a series of auctions that brought in a record total of more than $100 million for a renowned private coin collection, organizers said on Saturday. The silver dollar, one of only eight of its kind, was snapped up at auction on Friday in Baltimore. It was one of more than 200 coins sold at the event." Full Story Here

The little woman and I decided to get n a little detecting since it was such a nice day .... So, we loaded up the rig and hit the road... found a little park that yeilded up some clad... No silver or jewelry but it was a great day anyway. The little rectangular pendant had me going there for a second because I have found 14k gold that had the same coppery look.... But it was just copper. Her finds on the left, mine on the right. She has adopted my MXT and I use the V3i. and yes there was trash too. I think I dug 3 pull tabs and a little foil. The wife did a few more pull tabs.

You may have... This is a neat site to compare with graded coins: https://www.pcgs.com/photograde/#//

Hi all One of the coins my friend send me photo off. Nice find and such a beautiful coin to find. ( going to a museum) REFERENCE HERE: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s7932.html Looking forward to join him soon. Europe here i come. Long time overdue holiday. GoldEN

HI all Was detecting with couple of friend and it was not my day.I couldn't get not even smallest nugget. Nothing.Zilch. That is quite rare for me cos on my detecting trips i rarely come home without at lest couple little ones. Well got this huge signal and here it is. Was on a surface between all other rubbish. I touch it with a pick but happy with a find.: GoldEN

A few guys up in Sonora California have been on a roll finding some really good stuff recently found a jar half full of Mercury dimes