Search the Community

Please don't laugh!! last week i was excited about a 1968 dime, then i dug this in a new baseball field parking lot/fill dirt, its only my 5th time out learning the MXT, a 1946 wheat penny

I made an executive decision to ditch work yesterday and go detect....been fiending. My last trip a few weeks back, netted me a trip to the Doc, got poison oak worst of my life,lol. As I was heading out, here comes my son...turns out his forestry class was cancelled...COOL! So we hiked back to a camp we have been hitting on a buddys ranch. Started off warm and sunny, ended up cool and rainy. Not alot of good targets , but I got the quarter and my son got the Franc...his oldest coin so far. Best part was just getting out in nature and hiking with my boy.

Ran over to the park to get my Makro-fix after church---- wanted to hit it before the game started... I got a couple of videos.... one is long 6.23 minutes and I can't figure out how to chop the center out of it,,but i promise I will learn... I will look at it again and give you some times that you can skip.... Going GOLD hunting next weekend at the Rye Patch !!!!!!! Carry on ! LINKS: _____________Part 1 and 2_________ 1. https://goo.gl/photos/dpoXDkTMomq22wc6A 2. Listen at 30 seconds and you can hear it hit the coil... https://goo.gl/photos/pXUAJoGXqbWNSkAH6

This puppy was dropped in 1859 no doubt. Pretty stoked! The dime was an added bonus. Also found an indian net weight. Glad to get out,looks like wont get another chance for awhile,jobs are piling up.

You know, I would like to know more about coin machines(park hunters). What makes the good ones good, and what makes the great ones great.

Look Guys I found this site by accident and I am not sure if they are serious or taking the P, So can one of you translate this huge amount of confusion tell me what you think,lol. there are many stories there, one after the other referring to UK Detecting and US Detecting, is this for real or not ?? John. http://thedailydetectorist.com/

Hi Starvin, Where are you from?

Here is a dilemna Ive wondered about,maybe someone can clear thisup for me. I spend 90% of my time relic hunting. I fully realize that claim ownership means you own the mineral rights. But...can I metal detect for relics/coins on someones claim without seeking their permission? The only obvious to my intent would be my choice in detector...usually a Tejon...rather than say swinging a gmt ,but saying Im coinshooting,lol. Anyone have thoughts on this? Ray

We have been on a tear lately!! Amazing and unbelievable really!! But I ain't complaining!!

Sometimes a video is all you need. I know this video may seem long and many of you will not want to watch a 16 minute video. But this is one you WILL want to watch. (Sorry, it is not all gold nuggets but hopefully you will forgive me) Watch in full screen for the full effect! Enjoy!! I know I sure did!!

My buddy Mark and I hit a 1850's house site a couple times and Mark was on fire!! Thanks for looking Ron Swenson Ron (CA)

Hello all, I had been out detecting with a friend and the place turned out to be a bust so I called my wife and had her come pick me up. I told her to bring her detector and we would detect a few pullouts on the highway as we headed home. She got there and we went by a spot at an intersection where some old diggings came down almost to the highway. She started detecting and I walked over to the edge of the diggings and started detecting. Within a few minutes got a booming signal with my GB Pro. I looked down a saw what I thought was a large flake of gold. I thought to myself, WOW! I reached down to pick the piece up and saw that it was a gold coin. The coin turned out to be a 1843 D (Dahlonega,Georgia) two and a half dollar/Quarter Eagle. It has the large D and large date. Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

We have a small park in my town that has been here since late 1800s , no one has hunted this that I know of including me, didnt want to stir up any of the garden club members so I left it alone.Last summer they completely redesigned the park (maybe 1/2 acre) they removed all the sod and put down all new sod. Never gave it a second thought until last week my father in law said we should try to find what they did with all the turf, I called a buddy that hauled it off in a dump truck, he told me where it was out of town 1 mile. I went out to my new find that day, and there it was all spread out like he said. I saw someone parked near the area that lives here also , I was getting my DFX out and he came over to see what I was doing . I told him the story of the park sod that was all to myself now, not having any idea that he had a brand new old Minelab in the box still. (Explorer 2) bought it on eBay was going to resell, didn't know how to run it. He followed me while I started picking coins up pretty regular, then he left next thing I know he is back and with his detector right beside me asking how to run it. I told him I wasn't familiar with it, still following me yakking with his minelab making all kinds of racket. I couldn't even tell what my machine was doing. He did find 2 coins and his battery was going dead, he said he didn't have the charger to charge it back up wants me to find him a charger so he can hunt my new find. I am laughing about this ordeal but I'm a little slow to find him this charger. Out of town nobody out here to bother you my own private stash or so I thought. I figured I had better come back tomorrow after work in case he got charged up and gonna wipe me out, so after work headed to my turf and sure enough footprints were everywhere on fresh dirt, detected anyway for 2 hours, found around 45 coins now that minelab didn't , makes the old DFX shine now. Even though operator didn't have a clue how to run it and he was running with a dead battery. I am laughing about this. Oldest coins here so far are 1919 but im sure there are older. Question is should I find my new detector buddy his charger quickly like he moved in on me or maybe stall him a bit? LOL. Anybody know this minelab EXPLORER 2, AND HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO MY OLD DFX? THANKS RICK.

Editors note: split from beach detecting thread. I had just commented on returning rings. Fred's responses were so good deserved new thread - Steve H Yes, Steve...some can be but many cannot. I found a classring many years ago and finally tracked the owner down, mailed the ring to her and never heard a word from her...goodness is its own reward...I hear. I just took some pics of the junk and stuff I found the last 8 months...mostly found with the 3030 and some found with the x-70... 19 silver dimes and 6 silver quarters froma very well worked 90 acre park...and one lonely gold ring. a pile of junk money and other goodies and wheaties, silver, and good goodies

Editors note: Mark contacted me regarding the use of a PI, specifically the White's TDI, to try and get better performance on coins at a difficult location. I asked him to post here to get the ball rolling on the subject - Steve H The reason I'm asking these questions is because where I live all the old schools used coal for their heat source. After burning the coal the waste was spread out over acres of land to get rid of it. Most is the size of a bb up to maybe a small marble. It is some sort of iron makeup because it attracts to a magnet fairly easily. And as you well know a regular VLF machine is rendered about useless with the exception of very shallow targets. Over the past 7 years I have owned or borrowed each of the following machines and none can get any depth over 4" in these areas. The following is a list of the machines. Tesoro Vaquero, Tejon, Lobo Supertrac, Garrett A250, Teknetics Eurotek Pro, Fisher Gold Bug Pro, F75 and the LTD version, Whites XLT, DFX, V3i, Minelab Explorer SE, Etrac and CTX 3030. Please keep in mind, not all the machines were mine. Some were loaned to me just to try in this bad coal cinder ground. One interesting note about the Minelabs, when auto sensitivity is used the machine will throttle down to 8 or lower in these areas. Now you might be wondering why I'm so interested in this one particular area well it is because it was one a huge group of ball fields used back in the 40's right on up to the 70's. I have pictures of actual ball players and at times there were hundreds of people watching games. Now that said, there should be many silver coins at this location, but none have been found and I can only guess it is the ground. Because over the years we have buried coins at 4" deep that none of the machines mentioned earlier can detect and 4" is not deep for any of these machine. So my assumption is that the material robs the transmit signals from the machines to the point depth can not be achieved. I have talked to Carl at Whites and Dave at 1st Texas about these extreme harsh locations and actually sent them each a 4 pound box of this material to test. Dave suggested ground balancing to the material and using the motion all metal mode to hunt. This provided some positive results, but only to about 5" in depth. On the other hand Carl was working on a PI prototype at the time and could only provide his comment, which was, no VLF would be able to perform at these locations. After reading many of your post and watching your videos I decided to contact you for additional information. I sent Carl another message after reading about your postings on the Whites TDI and here is his reply. Re: dirt Quote Originally Posted by markg Carl, a guy that hunted the digging in Virginia swears that the Whites TDI will punch through this kind of dirt. I know you can agree or not on this subject. But the cost of buying one to try would be a gamble. What do you think? Quote Originally Posted by Carl-NC just tested your cinder soil with a TDI... it's actually pretty mild compared to my Australian soil. The Oz soil is strong and has a very tight ground balance setting, whereas the cinder soil is weaker and has a broader GB range. So I think the TDI would handle this stuff easily. Regards, Carl I guess I really would like someone close to where I live visit and try a pulse machine. That way I would know. I can provide an open invitation to hunt about any evening.

Steve, I know you covered a lot of the same info in your comparison of VLF gold detectors, but please reiterate for the slow kid in the class. I haven't done any coin and relic hunting, but might want to give it a try. The conditions I see are: Trashy, lots of iron and nails Moderately mineralized ground, not city parks and such, but old desert settlements Reasonably priced Suppose you could only take one detector to such a location. What would it be?

I took my ATX hunting at Lake Tahoe and found this 1899 Morgan silver dollar at 12" deep in highly mineralized ground( lots of black sand). Thanks for the invitation to your new forum Steve.