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Went out yesterday and today grid searching the racetrack area and the old farmhouse. Yesterday I didn't find much, a couple of old wheats and a pistol ball, a pocket watch adjusting weight and a very small button, what may have been on a shirt or shoe. I let the person that was shooting know that I was going to leave a flag out when I am out on the field near the gate. This morning I went out again, another blustery fall day. Didn't think I'd find much more but boy was I wrong. Today I hunted an area behind where the farmhouse was, there were two sheds as well. All is gone but the well now, luckily they filled it in because it can't be seen. The area is only about an acre. About halfway through the day I noticed I was already down a third on the Equinox battery, so I flew back to the house and grabbed my PD battery pack because I started finding coins and wanted to finish the field. I bungeed it to the shaft. It doesn't weigh that much so while the detector is charging I can drive on. It will charge the machine fully at least twice. It was a great day. Got an 1897 IHP, a 1908 V Nickel, 3 old wheats (1917,1919,1920), another old button, an iron hunting overall button marked "SWEET ORR", a musket ball and an adjustment tool of some kind not shown. The tiny thing at the bottom was the big find of the day, 1/3-ish of an 1852 Trime. It's difficult enough to find a Trime, but at least I got the good part! It appears to have either been clipped or broken, I could not find any of the other pieces.

Got out to the park again for the morning with Ozzie. There was pretty solid frost in the grass to the point where I had about an inch of "snow" on my coil a couple times. Bunch of coins, mostly modern. Tried to stay near some of the older trees in an area I haven't hunted before, and pulled this nice Barber. Happy Hunting.

I had some paid holidays to use up before the end of the year so I took today off and drove to my favorite park. There’s an old high school football field there that’s now used as a kids soccer field. Everything old is deep in this field. I’ve pulled other mercs and wheats at about the same depth, but I took a picture of this one. Third target of the morning and if I wasn’t fresh and listening well, I would have walked right over it. I was using my equinox 800 in park 1, F2-0, reaction speed either 4 or 5, can’t remember, sensitivity at 23. Decent enough signal once located, but with some slight iron grunts. I removed the plug and dead center in the hole (a very good sign it’s a coin and not a nail) the pinpointer goes off, one more little scoop of dirt and then the ‘44 merc. The TRX is just a hair over 10”.

After getting a new coil for the Equinox under warranty, it had its maiden voyage today at the local football field that has been hammered by the other 15"! The dime gave a 31 signal with some iron sounds mixed in; it was down the length of the Garrett carrot. The coil works like the other one, possibly with a bit less EMI. The dime is nothing spectacular, but the conditions were good for detecting and I'll take silver any day.

We had a monster storm yesterday that dumped almost 3" of rain on us, but Thursday I got out for a little while, and went back to the same place today. I'm gridding a really hard hit area at the old horse race track. Where the grass is an old house and a couple of barns stood. It's at the end of the track, a half mile straight. There was another big barn here too that I posted finds from previously. I didn't find much but what I did find was good. Thursday in 3 hours I got these: 3 wheats, 1918, 1919, and a 1957. A small Baptist Sunday School attendance pin, silver plated and enameled. A nickel plated D buckle, and a couple of whatzits. I think the object on the right is just a splattered bullet. Today I got out there again, it was a pretty dangerous day. While I was hunting I kept hearing black powder gunshots, almost all in my direction. I did range work in the Army, and sure know when I'm being fired at. Have to say it made me a little nervous. 😬 Luckily I didn't hear any 'snaps', nor the sound of anything passing. Did pretty good, got an old fancy pocket knife, a re-purposed old sinker, and another whatzit. If you look close at the knife it's decorated 1800s style, lots of figuring around the brass scales. Today's finds were scant but better, a 1917 wheat, a 1905 IHP, an 1800s round ball two piece button, and a flattened thimble marked "Singer Sewing Machines". Not a great couple of hunts but good enough for me. The IHP was an interesting find, I dug because I got iron tones and ID's with a 21/24 mixed in. Upon pulling the plug the high tones disappeared, and all I heard was iron. I put the plug back and went on, but something told me to go back. I pulled the plug out again, checked it with my pinpointer, plucked some nails, and when I broke the plug open, the penny dropped out. 😀 Drove back up the road on my golf cart, and when I got to the end there was a guy zeroing the scope on a Black Powder rifle, pointed right at me behind his target. He apologized for not knowing I was there. Good thing he didn't pull the trigger.

A BIG CONGRATS to Lain in the UK who scored BIG TIME w his MDT……. https://forums.tarsaccisales.com/forum/1/ancient-tarsacci-gold-uk HH! Aaron

x35 coil coin deep 86 gain 2 sweep speed 10.5khzi was in a soccer field just looking for modern targets when up comes an 1891 Indian head penny .

Went back to the farmhouse today, Chase wanted some detector time so I invited him down. It was a cold morning, 50s and windy but good for the hard work ahead. Chase got there shortly after I did, my first find was a 1990 nickel, and it really didn't get much better. I had to dump my trash bag 4 times, lots of plumbing parts, matchbox car parts again, molten metal and just about everything that gives a false good VDI and tone. Bullet shells, you name it. 😀 The place is getting sort of lean. Here's what I got, some of it is interesting: The usual clad and memorials, nothing older than 1972. Remains of some kind of brooch with rhinestones, it was pretty mangled but still had 3 stones. A 3 ring bullet flattened, some sort of knob that has a coin edge. The most interesting finds aside from the bullet were the aluminum penny token which is about the size of a quarter, and the small brass "E. Faber" fountain pen tip case which contains a small pencil. The token is corroded and broken so that the date doesn't show, just the bottom of the memorial and "One Cent" on the back. It was a fun day, always good to have Chase along. He found some stuff too.

Ok ok I know, the last time I posted that I found a half cent, it turned out that it was a V NicKLE. But yesterday I found an 1852 half cent, except it is a Canadian coin. What's really interesting is that I got out of my car, walked 30 feet, put the coil to the ground, and bang, there it was. This is a rugged hilly and full of trees 1000 acre park. The odds huh!

Kinda an iffy day today, I was worried it would rain this morning but I drove just outside it to the farmhouse I've been hunting (and mowing). They tilled the field so all the cornstalks were knocked down! This made hunting outside the circle easy. Here are the finds, I dug so much trash, most of it was broken Matchbox cars, even a small helicopter. I have dug at least 10 or so cars in parts. Shame, I would much rather dig a coin collection than a matchbox collection. Even dug a Wonder Bread truck! They are everywhere. Got the usual clad, all 70's to 2012. 6 wheats from 1911 to 1947. 4 dimes, 3 memorials and 3 Zincolns. I was thrilled to find a piece of Civil War Calvary spur to put in my display box, dug a whole one just like it last time. The brass ring thing is some sort of tack as well. The 1911 wheat fooled me, at first I thought I had an IHP, it was so green. Best find of the day albeit in parts about 4" apart was the sterling leaf earring. It could be soldered back together, and the screw still works.

Finally got around to getting permission to mow a circle in a farm where an old house stood. The grass was at least 12" tall making it tough to search it. Beautiful day, started in the 50s, went up to 75, nice breeze, not a cloud in the sky. Loaded up my off road mower and drove down to the farm. Only took about an hour to mow the place, I blew all the grass out of the circle. Cut it down to around 4", and also mowed the sides and center of the road. The circle is about an acre. The house stood off to the left. I didn't really start finding a lot until the afternoon, mostly digging molten metal, bits of junk, pull tabs and beer cans. Here are the finds, all clad/memorials but for one 1930 wheat penny, and 6 Zincolns. I think I found where the front door was, I dug the keys and then started finding spills of coins, one had at least 6: My favorite find of the day was this tag, at first I thought it was a holed large cent but it turned out to be this: 1930s "Tail Waggers Club" ID tag. TWC started in England in 1929, quickly spread to the US. Apparently from looking at pictures of other tags this is a very low number so it's one of the originals. TWC was a charity for animal rescue and was very successful. It still exists in some form today. It says "I Help My Pals". Bonus: they came to till the place in the afternoon, so now I don't have to worry about corn stalks and can find the other 5 buildings.

Here's one for you US coin enthusiasts. A New England shilling, found in a random collection, which also includes a Pine Tree shilling and two 'Continental' pewter dollars. A wealthy family from England, whose ancestors had business with the US in the early colonial days, "discovered" the coin among a random collection of US / British / Spanish coinage assembled by the family in years past: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58982457 Some history of the NE coinage: https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/NECoinage.intro.html

Riddle of the rainforest coin. Ancient Egyptian visitors to Australia or miner's mishap? ....Link to Coin....

Most of the freshwater lakes that I have detected were man-made during the last 50 years so I have not found many older things in them. Out of thousands of lake coins that I have recovered I may have found a couple of silver Rosies at best. I've always been a bit envious of some of the older lake finds that I've seen on this and other forums. The fresh water seems to preserve them so much better than the toasted ones I've found at the beach. Recently, I hunted an older lake and about an hour into the hunt scooped out a 1968 10k class ring. It was in pretty good shape so it was probably there a long time. After finding a blackened silver ring a short time later I got a jumpy "32" reading on the Nox and was expecting another silver ring. However, I saw a large black circle in my basket and was shocked to find that it was a 1959 Franklin half! Despite the discoloration it is in amazing shape. I have found silver halves in schools, parks, deserts and beaches before but never while wading in a lake so this was a memorable hunt. Gold is what I'm usually after but this find was a pleasant surprise!

Today was kind of a nasty day, windy and light mist from time to time. Went to my new farmhouse permission, hoped that everyone finding silver coins would somehow rub off. 😀 I'm hunting this large grass cul de sac that the house stood behind. It's pretty large, about a half acre. The grass is really high. I may bring my mower here to cut it so I can find stuff more easily, but today I toughed it out. Did pretty well, went up and down the road, found a couple of coin spills, one with two quarters, two nickels and a dime. Went back to the circle and went back and forth over it wading through the grass with sensitivity at 24. Got all this today: A 1979 Mattel hot wheel car, surprisingly good shape. An odd piece of brass stamped Peerless Lock Corp Pat pend, two wheats, a 1930, and a 1940 something, they were in the same hole. 4 quarters, 4 clad dimes, 3 nickels and 3 memorials. 4 Zincolns. Trash was about par for this course: While making a sweep across the field I got a 17/18/19, I always dig those. After scooping up the top grass and some of the gravel, the TID improved, a 27-29. Got my best find of the day, and had to stop for Chinese take out because dinner is on me whenever I find silver: I really want to find a Barber, the dates here are right for it, but I'll take a nice Mercury dime any day.

I've recently been posting photos and commentary on a muni park which has been producing old coins inconsistent with the park's establishment date. Since I wrote that update I've been out an additional 20 hours and although the number of old finds per hour has decreased, there have still been some goodies dribbling in. Besides what I show in the photo below I've also recovered another 6 Wheat cents. Here are the best finds in those last seven hunts: Clockwise from upper left: a wristwatch with a five letter brand name ending in 'EX'. Want to guess what it is (and also what I over optimistically hoped it was)? Sterling child's ring with red glass setting, 1892 (plain) Barber dime, copper alloy token with "Good for 5c in trade" on one side but no company name on the rerverse 😞, 1943-P silver alloy Warnick, and 1937 (plain) Buffalo nickel with all four digits of the date still fully present. That brings this site's silver coin total to 3, Buffalo Nickel count to 2, and Wheatie count to 25. There's no question now that there was human activity (accompanied by loss of coins) prior to the 1974 date posted on a plaque as the time of establishment as a municipal park. The dime deserves special documentation. I got a moderately weak 19-20 dTID on the ML Equinox which is spot on for a Zinc penny in my area. However, the weakness of the signal caught my attention. Yes, I occasionally find deep Zincolns, but that is unusual. Even though I sometimes pass over strong Zincoln zone signals, I always dig the weaker ones. After cutting a 6 inch diameter plug and removing a nugget scoop's worth of additional loose soil I was at a depth of about 4" and rechecked the hole with the detector. (I was already getting a weak but clear tone on both the Garrett Carrot pinpointer but wanted to get a better pinpoint location from the Eqx 800.) To my surprise I now was getting a solid (but still moderate strength) 24-25. I was liking this 'Zincoln' more and more! I loosened another 2-3 inches of dirt and after removing it I couldn't get a reaction on my White's TRX pinpointer when going through the hole. In my recovery pan I did get a signal and when I saw the light metal reeded edge of a small object I was pretty sure I had a silver dime. A squirt of water revealed the Barber head and a four digit date (which I couldn't read with my detecting glasses -- no matter as I can do that when I get home). I've recovered at least a couple dozen silver dimes with the Equinox and this is the first that gave such an low dTID initially. (26-27 seems to be the sweetspot in my typical soil.) This may have been an example of a coincident small piece of iron (small enough not to even cause the Eqx to grunt -- and note I keep all notches wide open when detecting). I did recheck the plug and hole after recovery without hearing anything obvious. I've graded the dime as a Good-4 on the Sheldon scale. A couple weeks back @Raphis posted a Barber dime for which he was unsure of the date. That one has more like a Fair-2 grade. I was curious how much of his coin was lost to wear and he cooperatively weighed it at 2.15 g which is a 14% loss from its mint state 2.50 g. Mine comes in considerably higher but still shows an 8% loss at 2.30 g. It would be overstating things to try and use those measurements to conclude when the coins were dropped since multiple variables determine a coin's circulation lifetime (i.e. from time of minting to time of loss). But I suspect both were dropped no later than the mid-1950's.

Wanted to give the Apex with 9" ultimate coil a good run so hit the area again that I had hunted a bit before. Found a strange coin that was super light and little larger that a half dime, had no clue but was 10 Mazuma Play money. Odd to find that in an old area. Other finds are: 1 Flat button broken back Harmonica but the reeds were rotted away 7 cents in clad Odd looking fish lure or might be a whistle not sure but it's very old. 1911 V Nickel, 1892 V Nickel, 1899 Barber dime, 1910 Barber Dime, 1943 Merc Dime, 1897 IH penny, 186? IH penny, 1895 IH penny, 9 wheaties. Musket ball Very old Silver Claddagh ring was under roots of a tree, made me almost break a sweat Couple of old cufflinks, one is white enamel and other has guilded front.

Went back to the farmhouse Chase and I detected last weekend. We got 1" of rain so things were better for hacking around, wanted to get back there and see what I could find. Got there at 9am and stayed until about 4. First thing I dug was an 1908 IHP by the road, hoped that would be the theme of the day, but it turned out differently. There is a lot of trash here, and apparently this house burned. I dug a few clumps of molten metal (aluminum) that gave me a clue, the trash to finds ratio was off the charts. 😳 I dug the heck out of it to clean things up for a return trip. It takes about 40 minutes to get there. I think I dug a little bit of everything! Sinkers, glass fuses, broken tools, hair rollers, rivets, bullets, and of course a lot of pull tabs and aluminum bottle caps. Here are the finds, mostly clad but some other cool stuff: A big Smokey the Bear token was the most ironic find, solid 28. An old brass World Association of Girl Scouts badge ca. 1950s - 1960s It originally had blue enamel. Dug this small heart, I think it is aluminum, it has weld marks for a pin: A device for a ribbon of some sort that was a 4/5, and a Yale key found near the fuses, probably a spare key kept with the fuses. Not much but interesting nonetheless!

The wife and I spent a few really smoky hours at the gold rush camp site. It has been a little harder to find the good targets. The ground is hard as hell and I had to make a thin custom pick to break up the ground. I was digging mostly old round balls and sprue pieces with the DEUS. She was complaining about square nails coming up as 17 on the Nox. So I lowered the sensitivity and upped the recovery speed a bit which was just a guess? Anyways the next sweep netted a half dime and she is possibly still mad at me for finding it at her feet. Chinese coin was a lucky find on my way out. I can’t seem to take a good pic with this 12 Pro max so this is the best I can do. Thanks for looking.

Got an opportunity to visit a couple of places recently, hoped they'd be a bit better but the prospect was exciting anyway. I got in touch with Chase and invited him down, these are supposedly un-hunted places. The first one was pretty clean, we didn't find much of anything. Huge field over 30 acres. It had been "turbo-tilled" so it was easy to hunt after a corn harvest but possibly because of that method of tilling the only thing we heard for the most part was deep iron. Theory is the soil was "fluffed" up with air making any targets deeper. We hacked around there for about 3 hours, and the finds bags got heavy with iron so we quit and went up the road to another permission, a farm where a farmhouse that was taken down in the 80s along with 4 outbuildings stood. Chase is somewhere out there... 😀 It was an extremely trashy site, lots of iron and shotgun shells, so we sorta just coin shot it. I heard and saw just about every signal from -9 to 40 on the Equinox. Very difficult! By the end of the day (it got to 84) I managed to pull some stuff out, my trash was plumbing and steel, 2 toasted matchbox cars (China) and a pretty mangled cap gun. Here are the keepers: 2 clad dimes, 1979 and 1980, two memorials from the 70s, and two wheats, a 1952 and a 1911. One aluminum button from the prior site, and a small iron disc that long ago lost its identifying characteristics. I kept it just because it was round. my favorite find was a vintage Montgomery Ward Credit Protection key fob, ca. 1940s. It's bronze, and was hit by a lawnmower but it I straightened it out. Never knew the first credit cards were coins. Going back to this site soon, there's gotta be some silver there. At least the penny is over 100 years old.

Several days ago I found a 1809 half cent. I detect usually with 3 other people. Two of them have 20 years each and the third has 45 years hunting. None of them has ever found a half cent. They are calling it the find of the year. Maybe the find of a lifetime. The day before I found a 1902 barber dime and a 1916 Canadian dime within 20 feet of the half cent. Here are the pics. Now the half cent is in lousy condition but enough detail to ID it. I didn't show the reverse of the half cent. Nothing there except the hint of a wreath.

We finally got a couple of days of decent rain here in Central Texas. It's been dry as a bone for the last few weeks and the ground was getting pretty hard to dig in. The wife gave me her blessings to go hunt all day long, so I headed to one of the parks that has been producing very well. When I arrived I could tell that this place had received a fair share of rain. With hopes riding high I began my hunt. This was my first hunt in some damp soil, I was in for a rude awakening! This dirt is the stickiest gooiest mess I think I've ever dug in. After almost 2 hours all I had to show for my efforts was three or four pieces of clad. My spirits were sinking faster than the Titanic. My plan was the grid off areas until I got into something good. After about an hour and a half of that and only four Wheaties to show for it, I decided to do some freelance and just wander around aimlessly and head to my car and call it a day. I got into an area that I haven't spent much time in and the first signal I got was a big old aluminum token from a chamber of commerce. About 30 ft from there I get another signal hitting in the mid 30s dropping down to 30 but jumping back up to 33-34 on the Equinox. Usually that means sprinkler head or a large piece of aluminum. Cut a plug, took out about six inches of dirt, stuck my pinpointer in the hole expecting to hit the target. I started scanning the dirt that I had dug out and almost fell over backwards when I saw some big shiny in the dirt ball :-) This was the very last thing that I expected to find today. Good thing nobody was around cuz all I could do is just sit there and laugh like a madman as I was taking pictures of it. I spent about another hour wandering around the park and decided to call it a day.

Hello Friends, Last Thursday, I had a couple hrs of free time to go on a hunt. I decided to try my luck at one of the older parks in my locale. This park has been hunted so many times by the locals over the years, not to mention I have hunted this park over 100 times in the past 13 years (but only about 10 times with my Nox). This park has a plethora of non-ferrous trash, iron, and a good bit of EMI, which obviously can mask an older, deeper find. I love the challenge this park poses to the old coin TH’er. It’s not a very large park, either, but the old coins/tokens/jewelry (7-9+”) were numerous here. I have over 300 silver from this park, over 1500 wheat pennies, and close to 100 indian pennies. However, a decent half day hunt from this park today would be 5-6 wheats, and maybe an injun if you’re lucky. Finding silver from this park today is a real challenge. So, for a couple hrs last week, I took my Nox to this park, with the hopes of digging a few oldies. I noise cancelled and ground balance my machine in the area I was gonna hunt. My machine was still jumpy from EMI, but that’s the norm at this park. I wasn’t willing to drop my sensitivity below 23 because the deeper targets are quite faint/obscure with respect to audio. If you swing your coil too fast or too slow you’ll go home empty handed. I saw some older plugs just a few feet from where I was hunting from a couple months back (I remember finding a few silver/wheats on that short hunt back then). My first target I located sounded like a deep injun, but it turned out to be the enameled copper/brass Star Of David pin. My next target was so obscure and deep, that I had to swing/wiggle my coil from every direction possible for over a minute just to tell myself that I should dig this target. The ID numbers were bouncing all over the place (from deeper iron and nearby shallow trash), but I narrowed my coil wiggles over the spot that was repeating mid 20’s ID’s. At 6”, my pinpointer was still silent at the bottom of the hole. It was hard to say if I had to dig deeper or widen my hole. There’s a mod I made to my Propointer that increases the depth by almost 2” (you can find the mod on a number of YT vids, so with the mod engaged on my propointer, I started to hear the target off to one side at the bottom of my plug. After a couple more inches of hard-packed dirt removed from my plug, I saw a flash of silver. It was dime sized and well worn. After reading the date, I couldn’t initially tell if it was 1892 or 1902....What do you guys think the date is??? It’s a Philly mint. I was so pumped after finding that coin!! I rechecked the bottom of the plug with my pinpointer and there was another target next to the dime, but it was only a small, rusty nail. I only dug some deeper pieces of aluminum and a couple bullets in the immediate area to the barber dime over the next 30 min, so I decided to finish my short hunt at an adjacent section to my parked car. That’s where I found the Rosie and all the wheats, along with the Bally’s Aladdins Castle token. It was a very successful, short hunt for me that produced some elusive oldies. With deep, elusive, partially masked targets in the ground, one can never give up hunting a site with that criteria. Let it “rest” for a while if you get skunked on a hunt at a site like this, but never say “I’m never going back there again because there’s nothing left to find!”....the most elusive keeper finds are also the most rewarding to find! HH, Raphis - Dan

This time i left the ORX behind, as i had hunted 6 times and found nothing with the ORX, so out came the Tarsacci, 6.5 KHZ black sand on , and salt balance on set at 43 and gain on 7 out of 10, i started going over the ground i covered with the ORX and started getting hits, up come the 1896 indian penny . the ORX is a nice machine but the Tarsacci has a great ability to find good targets in iron and mineralized ground , and its a very noticeable difference, and it came threw .the hole the penny came out of had three iron objects in it

Been camping for 3 days, just extended for a fourth because camping season is winding down, and I seem to have carte blanche at this one to dig anywhere. First day I hit 2 tot lots and the beach, unfortunately they must have removed all the old sand and refreshed it. The lots produced 30 some odd coins, some small worthless jewelry and some small brass beads. The little heart is .925, the only silver I've found so far. It's an earring. Got some stuff at the beach anyway, the ring is cool, but stainless. Next morning I went to another tot lot and did much better: 80+ coins and some small jewelry, again all junk. Hit another tot lot in the evening: I was approached by a staff member who asked me to hunt for a particular piece of hardware in a gathering field where they have Cornhole tournaments. They also have bands here and used to have vendors, but replaced that part with a basketball court and a dog park. Never found the part, it was steel and probably got hit by a lawnmower this morning. By this time I was really coin shooting, ignoring pennies for the most part. 60+ more. That funny looking wingnut at the bottom is a bass guitar tuning key. I've pulled over 200 coins from this place in 3 days, the earliest quarter was a 1966, and the earliest penny was 1963. About $30 total. Got one more day and two more Cornhole courts to hunt. I've pretty much cleaned this place out! 😀 Next year it'll be full again.