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$36.40.. plus 1 x 'old' 2 cent and 4 x 'old' 1 cents.. also an Euro and a NZ $1.. but best of all, there was a photographer shooting 5 topless girls in the early morning light (i thought i'd be the only one there, so did they).. needless to say i dropped the detector straight away and watched the show for a while.. i didn't take any photos of the girls but when i got back i did get one of the coins (sorry about that)..

Had a little time for a property tour and short initial water hunt at a new permission this afternoon...the place holds promise! It's an old cabin/vacation spot that dates back to the early 1900s. I happened across the owner at the public access last week, and he offered free reign to detect it anytime. After running thru the water a bit, I realized it has likely not been detected in the past...or not detected very thoroughly. Dug a few nickels, including the no date buffalo...and numerous old pull tabs and ring tabs. The ring turned out to be just gold plate, but I believe it has some age to it. The other pic is of the lower jaw from a northern pike...was an interesting item to see in the scoop! I still can't believe I stumbled across a site like this these days...will definitely be many future trips back to this place. The owner is super cool and friendly. Hope y'all got out today as well...beautiful, cooler weather today and tomorrow here in MN.

So my question to all is what is the largest item you have ever dared to dig. Mine was a 11 1/2'' bronze sun dial. I thought at first I found the worlds largest coin!!! Well it was a vintage 1980's sun dial. I got a good laugh and put a scratch on it, cause the target was so large. At 5'' pin pointing went out the window. (I still have it) I would love to hear your stories and photo's alike. Please don't be afraid to embarrass yourselves!!! We all had a what the hell am I thinking moment.

Hit the park at 5:30am and finished up at 9:00am. I think I hurt myself!!! Anyone who thinks the MK is lacking is goofy!! Decided to run the knock sensitive/off center 11'' to make sure the problem wasn't me. The grass was wet and oddly the coils knock sens. was reduced. Still had the same huge centering problem. (Still waiting on the new coil to arrive), But that being said, Man did I find the coins. Most were at the 6'' to 8'' depth. Coin to trash was 0 until the old english cap and a pull tab (couldn't help myself). Any How, this is how it worked out, Hand cramps included!!!! Ha Ha Ha 15 Quarters 4 Nickles 29 Dimes 9 Pennies 6 Hand cramps

After another long hot week and some things that are weighing heavy on my heart. I decided to hunt a little woodlot and creek to take my mind off the grind of life. I walked about 1000 yds down the creek with little luck until I found a odd item that looks like an umbrella handle. A short distance later I retrieved a very very small tea cup (cool). After striking out on the water, I thought that I might have better luck on terrafirma. Shotgun cases woo hoo!!! I then decided to hunt near a giant of an oak tree, every bit of 40'' through. Hoping for something good, I got a good deep hit. At around 11'' out popped a very large musket ball that measures .690 to .695. Thinking from a british brown bess. Spent another hour farting around and tripped up on a 97 number that kept bouncing down to the high 70's. Normally this would be coal, but the tone did not have the crackle that coal usually has. Woo Hoo out popped a 45 mercury dime. My second 45 in a very short time. Turns out that there were very small fragments of coal around the merc. The dime is cool, but I love Rev. War musket balls!!!! I ended my day with a 22 casing and a 22 bullet. Another good day with the MK!!! Time to have a beer and cool off!!!

My usual places are being eliminated one by one. Most of my places are public in nature. One of my favorite places I tried to hunt today and there was a police car sitting there. A bad sign. So I pulled around the back like normal and notice everything locked up and new cameras installed... So he comes back there and I speak to him. I told him we had been metal detecting that place over a year and now notice it locked up. As he put it, "fighting and stuff". In other words either drug related, gang related, or general hoodlum behavior. This has happened a lot to me lately, good places being off limits now for nothing I've done. I went to another place where a known idiot has been that likes to dig craters. I had hoped he would have moved on by now but no. Instead it looks like a mine field now over the entire area. That moron has dug so many holes it is unreal. Always the same, dirt left on the ground and a non packed remnant of the plug in the hole. That was enough for me today and another place permanently marked off my list. I'm starting to get frustrated more and more and today I even told my wife "Between the hoodlums and idiots messing things up, I may as well just sell all my equipment and give this hobby up." Anybody else feeling this way? I enjoy metal detecting but here lately it's peeved me off about how other people's behavior can impact my hunting grounds..

“According to Miller, the country isn’t running out of money, there are just more coins “sitting in pots at home,” instead of circulating through the economy.“ https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/07/20/is-there-really-a-coin-shortage/#3a28fe2df0a3

Went back to an old poured concrete foundation in the woods which is a popular Elk hunters campsite. This is a site where I found my first seated dime a few years ago. The area is loaded with modern trash and lot's of iron nails and old tin buried near the foundation walls. I brought my Teknetics G2 with both the 5" and 11"x7" coil as I also intended to try some nugget detecting near the creek. I didn't find any nuggets but managed to pull 2 nice V nickels, 1890 and 1883. I set the detector in disc mode after ground balancing at 83. The ground here is very mineralized. I then set the tone break at 40 to separate ferrous from nonferrous and started swinging . I dug everything that hit in the ferrous range and all one-way signals that sounded good one direction but like iron the other. I also managed a few relics and a small pile of trash.

Just keep finding clad. Charged up the Blisstool V5 last night for a morning hunt before the heat set in with a blazing hot sun starts baking me. Since most areas are pretty dry, not wanting to ruin any grass areas. Went back to a well hit spot where the ground would just damp enough to make for some easy digging and the ground would not dry out. The place is a good choice because the sprinkler system keeps the grass nice and green. This morning. True to form, the sprinklers came on, the grass at my spot was still wet. The rising sun and warming heat soon dried the grass. Made for a clean hunt. Ground balanced the V5 to perfection. Ran smooth with a nice stable threshold all morning. Used the 7x9 search coil again, which is just going to stay on this detector. Since I haven't used the V5 in several weeks, as I was testing out the new Simplex coils, it did take about 1 hour to get back in the swing of things. So a lot of trash was dug, just to get a feel of the audio responses between trash and good trash ( Canadian clad coins). Made for some good education today. There are a couple things I can say about the V5, it loves deeper Canadian clad coins. Pretty much already cleaned the place of surface to 5" deep coins. Finding there sure is a lot more at the 6-8" range than I thought. The V5 just sees them loud and clear, quite surprised how many are dug at the 7" range. Noted all those pesky dimes came from that depth. The only coin that came from a shallow depth of 4" was the Toonie. It sounded like a large surface target. Have to remember that for next time. Hunted from 6:30am to 11:15am, at that point it was too hot to continue, packed it in and drove home, guzzling a bottle of warm water. Yeah it heated up a bit in the cars trunk. This was only my second hunt, the more I use the V5, the more I like it.

Hit a new spot that used to have car shows on the field so it is a haven for trash. Enough iron there to sound like a loud threshold hum so I only spent an hour scouting it out and bit of cherry picking. Usual clad in the shadded areas and this tiny bell button that rang in the gold range but it is just tiny and bronze. Had a bit of trouble looking for it as it was dark and not the aluminum or gold color I was looking for. Will be hitting that are again as the woods are old. Should be great this fall/winter as it is mostly pines.

The Three pence "3D" Like all other pre-decimal Australian coinage the three pence was based on the silver standard. The 16mm, 1.41g coins were minted in sterling silver (92.5% silver, 7.5% copper) from 1910 till 1944. In 1947 the coins were debased to 50% silver, 40% copper, 5% nickel, and 5% zinc. The debasement resulted from Australia needing to pay off its’ huge debts incurred during World War 2. All threepences have a plain edge. These are the best of my 3d collection, many more elsewhere. Note Date of release and Number produced under each coin. When I get a chance will move onto 6d, Shillings (1/-) Florins(2/-) and Crown(5/-) and silver round 50 cent.

I like a bit of a challenge and, during the recent lockdown here in Oz, I decided to tune my Nox 800 to hunting just threepences. For those who don't know, a threepence used to be Australia's smallest silver coin before converting to decimal currency in 1966. They weigh about 1.3 grams and are 16mm in diameter. Once free to roam, i went to an old goldfield that lasted from 1855 to the late 1930's. There were a couple of old homesteads in the area that lasted until the mid 1970's. I figured i had pretty well worked out the best settings for the coin and was pleased that, after a full day's hunt, I detected 14 of the little beggars. I didn't get back to put in other hunt for larger coins as it persistently rained for the next three days and I was lucky to get my vehicle and caravan out through the resulting boggy bush tracks. Still, I have narrowed down several old homesites and, what I believe was, an old pub site. Now for another leave pass from the Minister for War.

Hello all, A little primer first; as some of you may know, my Equinox is in "the shop", due to previously posted issues! No worries; using the old trusty At Pro! So between Covid, and the horrendous heat wave we are experiencing, i haven't been out much to detect! But many of you have been out, and posting! So i just had to suck it up, and get my butt out in it!! Summers here used to be a nice balmy Easterly breeze most every day! The last several years have been unusually hot and humid, with little to no breeze, and record temps! Dangerous conditions, if you don't hydrate well! So, i decided to hit a few local parks, that I've hunted previously, a year or two ago! And stick to the "shaded" areas to make it bearable! Yesterday i had the 5x8 stock coil on, and did about 3 hours, before it became unbearable! I was soaked, but did well enough for what i expected to find! Today was much the same, in a different park! With the 8x11 stock coil! This park has very large tree's, so the added depth helps here, due to very rich soil! My results; as you will see below; are fairly typical of my park area's! Oldest coin was a 1955 D nickel! Along with a few early 60's; and up to present day coins! Not exactly ideal finds, but goes with the age of the area's that are accessible here! And it keeps my skills up! I included some of the junk items in my "paper towel" displays for future reference! I'm looking forward (probably 6ish weeks) to getting the Equinox back, and get back to the beaches! 👍👍

So I've been getting a lot of clad coins with both the Equinox and the Vanquish 440 in the local parks, but even in the older ones, silver coins have escaped me for a couple of months now. In between thunderstorms this afternoon, I hit the neighbor's parking strip, and in less than ten minutes, I pulled two silvers and a wheatie! My first silver quarter, AND my first Canadian silver. The quarter is pretty trashed, but I'm glad just the same! Felt good to break the slump!

Here are most of my good finds of the past year. I have a lot of pennies, a few dimes, 2 quarters, and 1 nickel. I saved a few old pull tabs because they were out of use before I was around. I have a button, a toy car wheel, A few bottle caps, a spoon head, a few keys, a EP co cap, a knife, and a broken toy gun. I have a few finds not shown here. Like an arrow to a bow, a game horseshoe, another toy gun, and a few older coins that went into my coin collection. The gun in the bag in from the 1950s I believe, and a picture of a mint condition one is below. The mason jar liner was un broken when I found it but I hit is with the shovel( I saved it anyway). The zinc cap was to far gone to save. Hope they are interesting to look at.

Wow! Look at what just came out of my aunts backyard! It looks like a 1976/bicentennial coin collection. It clean up really nice after a lot of work. It was not very deep. I am really glad I didn’t damage the acrylic(I think it is acrylic). I wonder how it got into the ground. Did someone bury it on purpose? Who knows. It is a great display. I can’t believe how nice it is. What do you think?

Split from this thread Have you read some of Mark Gillespie's posts about using the TDI/SL in a school yard loaded with coal waste? Here's one.

There has been some discussion about detectorists being welcome or not on various public properties. This post is related to that. I'm calling it a "feel good story" but it probably feels better to me than it does to you! Couple weeks ago I was at my (new) favorite park which has been providing old coins (Wheaties, Buffies, silver War Nickels, Indian Heads, and even a few silver dimes), not generously, though. On this particular day I wasn't having much luck, it was getting hot, and my hunting spot was starting to experience other visitors. Although I don't mind people seeing me, I do like to keep my distance (even before the pandemic), in particular to allow them to enjoy the park -- it's meant for everyone and I can find coins pretty much everywhere whereas their activities may be more confined. I decided to check out a crushed stone parking lot that is no longer used. Part of it was in the shade and it was getting pretty hot. I had gotten some good signals there while traversing it previously on my way to greener pastures and I figured there might be some goodies which other detectorists hadn't bothered even considering. I was digging a promising target when I hear a garden tractor approaching, then stopping about 10 feet away (good social distance 😁) and looked up as the driver turned off his engine. "Well, I've never seen anyone detect a parking lot before" to which I replied "glad to hear that; maybe for once they left me some good stuff." Then we proceed to talk for 45 minutes. Thinking he might know of some secret spots I asked him how long he had worked here and my heart sunk when he said "six years". But then he told me he had grown up across the street in the 1960's! Talk about my attitude doing a 180. I proceeded to pick his brain and boy did he deliver. Sledding hill, former concession stands, former residences (the park has expanded since he lived there), swimming holes, picnic areas long overgrown, hiking trails that once were frequented but since forgotten. He knew some of the history of the park from 40 years before he even had lived there. I started wondering if I would remember all this 'treasure' he was revealing. He told me about other detectorists having been there and said they were respectful. As long as we fill our holes there's no problem detecting the park. Now not only do I feel better (I've always felt a bit funny when park employees are around) that I'm welcome, but some of the spots I previously thought might be off-limits are now fair game. If someone else questions me (not likely, but you never know) about what I'm doing in a certain spot I'll just say "George said it was OK." If they don't know George then they have no business asking me anyway. Oh, the target I was digging turned out to be a 5 inch deep copper Memorial penny. I dug a couple more relatively deep targets the next time there, having subsequently brought my Estwing rock hammer (way faster recovery but be careful to chip around the target -- a case where the White's TRX pinpointer really helps). Still only modern coins meaning the parking lot has been backfilled in recent times, and probably on more than one occasion (so the desirable old coins are probably quite deep). I've since moved on to the lush 'gardens'. Plenty more stories and photos of finds to be posted in the future.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/nation-world/federal-reserve-powell-money-coins-pandemic/507-ef711276-60da-40c7-96c4-4fe258d7d996

Hello all, I was able to get out for a few hours hunt today! I charged up the 800 last night , and needed to test it! After the Er 41 error i had, and posted about, a few days ago at the beach! Steve's Lake Tahoe Hunt yesterday with the AQ inspired me to search my childhood memories for a place where i could fresh water hunt near home! Not an easy task here in South Florida, beleve it or not!! There are tons of freshwater canals! But very few lake's that weren't for some modern housing development drainage basin in the last 20-30 years! And they weren't ever ment to be used for recreation! Let alone anything with a beach that had any history of use! And yes, there are still quite a few alligators 🐊 around to be mindful of!! So "head on a swivel" is a must! Among other hazards! So i drove by some of the spots i could remember from years ago! Two of the three that came to mind were closed off!! It wasn't looking good! The last one was just right, with few people nearby! So i gave it a shot! I didn't come to the realization that i had never detected fresh water before, until i was swinging the detector in it!🤯 So i spent the next two and half hours enjoying the experience! What a nice change it was, not getting pummeled by the surf of the beaches! I've got to find more places now, I'm hooked! I would have liked to end my adventure with a nice piece of gold or silver jewelry! But that wasn't the case this time out!! I found many bottle caps of various stages of decomposition! And a respectable amount of clad and zincons! But wait!! The story ain't over yet!! Generally, I'm not in the habit of looking at my finds very good when I'm hunting, i just seperate the trash from the treasure, and clean and sort later! Especially when i am alone, and there are eyes on me!👁👁 I had vaguely noticed that one of my "treasures" was odd sized! Bigger than a quarter, and smaller than the 69' Kennedy that i found at the beginning of the year! It was "coin" sized and solidly encrusted, so in with the coins it went! Along with a few other encrusted smaller coins! I can generally tell, with salt water encrusted coins, what they are! But i was in new territory with these few! My time was up, so i headed home! I did my usual dumping and sorting of the pouch contents, on my tailgate for a gross decon! Then off for a soak, cleaning, and examination! The "odd" coin was giving me a hard time, so i had to soak longer than the rest! I just figured it was some odd alloy, or some kind of blank that was probably trash! But i was still careful! The persistance paid off, and although it was badly corroded, and very thin! Enough details surfaced to identify it! It was a "bucket lister" for me, even though it's pretty much worthless monetarily!!👍👍 And now the unveiling: 1935 Walking Liberty Half Dollar!! 😵 In Sad condition!! 😩

When the coronavirus reached Queensland, Magnetic Island decided to go cashless. Cards only! This has led to a sharp drop in the amount of coins recovered, a severe enough situation to take a serious hit on my weekly beer money.. I’m not the only one complaining, other beach hunters on the island are in similar strife.. The virus outbreak has been a double whammy for us; not only are there no more coins to be found, there’s also no more tourists who could otherwise be counted on to lose their jewellery in the sea.. Are we the only ones suffering from this dreadful dilemma? Or are the rest of you in as much grief as we are? Having said this, there has been a bit of a silver lining.. I’ve been forced to get creative and am now hitting the island’s historical sites.. So far I’ve found a few more old pennies and shillings at the old school (a wooden structure with a palm thatched roof first established in the late 1800s).. I’ve also been back in the hills with Foxy Noxy and its new 6’’ coil to go over the old gold diggings.. No luck yet but I’m ever hopeful, getting a better feel for the island’s geology and how it all fits in with where the gold diggings are situated.. I’m casting my net a lot wider to include obvious creek catchments and the surrounding hills..

I Finally got back to the park where i found the Kennedy Half in February! Went with the AT Pro again, but i had the 5x8 stock coil on this time! I haven't used it nearly enough! The 8.5x11 is waiting for a new coil cover, so it was a no go! It was still very steamy out, but i managed to find enough good targets to keep me on task! Now when i say "good" targets, they are not of the caliber that most of you post! But that's the hand I'm delt, living where i do! The beaches have been very lean as of late, and i needed to get my legs, ears, and brain, back to hunt mode! I thought i found a nice chunky silver religious pendant within the first five minutes!🥳 But after cleaning a little, it was just plated pot metal!😞 Oh well, at least that got my heart pumping! I detected a little over two hours, and the legs and sunlight started to faulter! It was a decent hunt! And i have alot more ground to cover there! Even if only to retune my body and senses, until the beaches liven up a little! Next hunt there will be with the Knox!👍👍

Have you ever had a dig and you look down and you say 'Oh MY?' I got this hit as I was leaving the beach not too far from where I 'found' the toilet paper. It turns out that the toilet paper is worth more than this coin! haha Why? When I got the number on the 800 it was 18. I was just about to finish my 3 hour session with a penny I thought. When I saw the edge of a large silver coin in the sand I said this is odd. It doesn't match. When I got it in the scoop it was not heavy enough to be real. I could see a couple of spots on the edge without my glasses and knew it had to be fake. When I got home I saw the sandwich line. You can see other fake things about it too but it is probably not counterfeit because it doesn't say United States of America on it. There were a lot of targets and any one of the washers could have been a ring. I dug a lot of holes.

Out again today in my current favorite (century old) park. Three Jefferson nickels in the first hour -- very first find was a consistent 12 (no 13) TID on the Minelab Equinox -- something I've been skipping over given the thousands of pulltabs in this park. I figured it was going to be a nickel kind of day but with 30 minutes left of the 3 hour hunt I had only added a couple corroded Zincolns. Then in a picnic area I got a nice shallow 13 TID, which could still be a pulltab but it was my 4th nickel. Shortly after I was about 1 foot from a utility pole and got a low-mid 20's signal which sounded very good in one direction but flutey at 90 degree angle of attack. I was also hearing some iron grunt, but when I shortened the swing amplitude over the target down to just a couple inches there was no iron sound. Strength indicator (what is popularly called "depth indicator") showed 4 bars = moderate. So far, so good, but as most of you know when near a utility pole, lots of decent sounding targets can show up -- copper and aluminum wire, copper lugs, steel bolts. And in a picnic area (which I was), the dreaded aluminum screw cap, especially when flattened, can sound good with TID low-mid 20's. It was even possible I was hearing an Indian Head penny or early Wheat penny. Digging down in the 4-5 inch range I popped out a disc which looked about the size of a nickel, but it was green (copper signature) and the TID was too high for a nickel. My next thought was 'token' but it was smaller than the tokens I'd been finding in this park, although could still be a different variety. A spray of water showed part of a shield. Hmmm. Shield nickel (no), 2 Cent Piece (unlikely) so I'm still thinking it's a token. But using a magnifier I clearly saw '1864'! What is a 150+ year old coin which hardly circulated even 125 years ago due to its unpopularity doing in this 100 year old park? Just in the last 9 months I can find three posts of USA 2 Cent Piece finds: post 1, post 2, post 3. Those are in better shape than mine, but it's the first ever 2 Cent Piece I've found so I'm going to count it. Mine is also an 1864, which I guess isn't too surprising given that 44% of all 2 Cent pieces ever minted in the USA had the 1864 date. (Throw in the next year, 1865, and almost 3/4 are accounted for.) Nice article in Wikipedia points out that they were first minted late in the Civil War in an attempt to alleviate the shortage of coins (caused by hording) but after the war ended and coins were in sufficient supply their popularity dropped considerably. 1873 was the last year of mintage and those 1100 were proofs for collectors. In 1872 only 65,000 were minted for circulation. Many (but unknown number) were returned to the mint and melted. We've discussed the small motto vs. large motto version of the 1864. Currently mine is so badly encrusted that it's difficult to tell. I can only see the 'W' in 'WE' and the 'R' in 'TRUST'. I'll get a friend with high quality camera to take better photos and maybe we can figure this out. (I'm still on hold cleaning with more than soft brush in water and olive oil until I can do more research on cleaning coins without damaging.) Odds are certainly in favor of it being the more common large motto, but I can still hold out hope, can't I? (fingers crossed)

Back out to the football field this morning for 1 1/2 hours. It had rained yesterday, so the ground was great for depth today. There was a spot that had about 5 pennies that were down at about 9 inches. Each of them was caked with sandy dirt, so I didn't want to rub them to pieces. I thought they might be wheats, but was not sure (I think only one is a wheat). In the same 9 ft. square area I got a 36-37 ID on the Equinox using 50 tones. It also was as deep as the pennies. This find is my first ever silver half dollar! It is not really pretty, but it is silver! It cleaned up fairly well using baking soda and aluminum followed by aluminum polish that I had around for headlight restoration.