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I asked Joe how many gold rings he has found and he told me near 800! That is an incredible number in my book. It gave me pause to think about some of my local 'legendary' local beach detectorists. I have not met one. His name is Walker. I have met another one Tim Tidd and he told me about other local legends. Over on the nugget forum we have several 'legends' contribute to the discussions there. One is Reg Wilson among several others. Here is a link to a project Reg is working on to preserve the memories. So, who are the LEGENDS of the Beach? What are some stories you can share about them? I know some are still hard at work at enhancing their legends but I don't go to other forums. Are you a LEGEND and want to share a bit of your lifetime successes with us? There are legends that hide and many who would never visit a website I would imagine but let's try to change that. Mitchel

I got out once again today to try and build up my pain tolerance so when I get a deep machine. I hunted a few hours and managed about a dollar in clad plus two wheats and buffalo. I also found a silver ring and this moon brooch/earring. I don’t know if it’s plated or what since I have never seen these markings. Thanks for looking and happy hunting.

I took my wife, and two young boys to the river for a couple hours this morning. I figured I'd bring my Detector, and get a couple hours of hunting in while the kids played. I have been hunting the rivers all week long. I possibly put in close to 30 hours, with very little success. I am learning the machine with each swing though. I was hunting in Park 2, knee deep in the water, a spillway at my back, and open river in front of me, with a strong current. My settings were default, except the Iron Bias was switched to F2 giving it a value of 6 automatically. I went with 50 tones, and periodically did a ground balance, increasing the number it settled on by 2 or 3. (I had heard this was a trick) My first target was an all to familiar aluminum piece, followed by a metal flake. I thought to myself, "That's ok, one of this holes will eventually surprise me. I only have two hours so I'll just dig away, and enjoy myself" I was right, my third dig was about 2 inches down, I saw the glimmer. I knew this was no beaver tail. I pulled the ring, and lifting it thought "wow, looks like silver" I scanned the inside, seing a hallmark my eyes immediately caught 14k. I stood up, and started walking towards my wife grinning ear to ear, almost deviously. It took her a minute to notice I looked odd with a smile like that, and asked what? I showed her, and she promptly made me stow it away, convinced I'd lose it I went on to pull three more rings, my next one being a MASSIVE Palladium wedding band (I had never heard of Palladium when I dug it) Each time I would approach my wife proclaiming yet another victory, and each time she would say "no, I don't believe you" and then I would show her. The next two were one Sterling Silver, and one Stainless Steel. I also found a total of 8 fishing lures, and a commemorative medallion for a 1988 space flight. This was by far the best day I've had medal detecting, and was a reminder of why the hobby was love at first dig for me. I know a 4 ring day is not gonna be a regular thing, so I'm chewing it slowly. I couldn't be happier with my first gold experience, and wanted to thank all of you on Detector Prospector for being so kind, and answering any questions I've had. I know I'll have many more, and the experience you guys bring to the table is quintessential to my learning this fine hobby. I wish you all the best of luck in your upcoming hunts. As always HH - Luke

This video also demonstrates that both low conductors are in the same exact VDI range.

I squeezed in few minutes a 4 hours session of today... Enjoy with me the two rings I found...

I am doing the same test as I did with GMX and NOX. The first test I did was with the infinium with a 8' mono coil and I got nothing.I did a test one time with the same size white and yellow gold rings, and the yellow gold gave me a dig me hit and white gold nothing.This machine does not like small deep white gold rings.I bet the new AQ would hit it.I then tried the X-terra with the 6'' 18kz dd coil.I did it in prospect mode with max sens. and got a very soft signal but repeatable. This is max depth for this combo.I then tried it in coin mode with every thing open in 1 tone and I got a very soft hit with -8 and 48 as id which are iron wrap around #'s. The infinium did hit the 9" nickel I buried 8 years ago with a nice soft signal.This machine likes deeper yellow gold better in my opinion.

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!👍👍

I have found a few silver chains on the football field close to me, but a gold chain has eluded me. I'm sure there is one there, but I will need some guidance from others. Might anyone know what a thicker gold chain would come up as on an Equinox? Thanks for any help you can provide. Please see pic for about what I'm thinking.

I hope you get a deep monster gold ring with the new Impulse Steve. How long does it take you to get to lake Tahoe?

I don't know what about You, but even if during the years I found heaviest and more obvious pieces, I really miss only few of them... As an example this tiny cross and the star in my mouth... Not that I'm too religious, almost atheist indeed, but I love the shape of some objects...And rarely find again the same shape too...

A common misperception among those new to metal detecting is that metal detectors can identify one metal from another. How much we wish that were true. The reality is that for all practical purposes the common metal detector target id scale is based on a combination of the conductive or ferrous properties of the item multiplied by the size and shape of the item. There are two common terms in use for this scale. The Target ID or TID scale is the most generic. White's also popularized the use of Visual Discrimination Indicator or VDI numbers. You will see references to both TID and VDI numbers and both refer to the same thing. The problem when you use Google is that TID also refers to Terminal ID number, which is for credit card machines. VDI gets far better results as the preferred term and so is what I will use from now on. The VDI scale is almost always arranged the same way by common convention although in theory it can be rearranged any way you want. The common scale has ferrous items on the low end and non-ferrous items on the high end. Ferrous items are like mirror images of non-ferrous items and so the most common arrangement of the VDI scale is with small items in the middle with ferrous getting larger in one direction and non-ferrous getting larger in the other direction. The ferrous and non-ferrous ranges actually overlap in the middle. Large Non-Ferrous Medium Non-Ferrous Small Non-Ferrous Tiny Ferrous/Non-Ferrous Overlap Small Ferrous Medium Ferrous Large Ferrous We can assign a numeric range to this basic VDI scale any way we want. Many early machines went with a 0 - 100 scale, with the ferrous compressed into the low end of the scale: 100 Large Non-Ferrous 50 Medium Non-Ferrous 20 Small Non-Ferrous 5 Tiny Ferrous/Non-Ferrous Overlap 3 Small Ferrous 1 Medium Ferrous 0 Large Ferrous The idea of ferrous as negative numbers made sense due to the mirror imaging in size between ferrous and non-ferrous. A very common White's scale runs from -95 to 0 to +95 95 Large Non-Ferrous 50 Medium Non-Ferrous 15 Small Non-Ferrous 0 Tiny Ferrous/Non-Ferrous Overlap -15 Small Ferrous - 20 Medium Ferrous - 40 Large Ferrous The "positive only" 0 - 100 VDI scale seems most popular these days with other manufacturers, but the scheme varies. Two very common setups are 0-40 ferrous and 41-99 non-ferrous OR 0-10 ferrous and 11-99 non-ferrous. But as I noted you can set this up any way you want and so other scales do exist. When we look at just the non-ferrous part of the scale, what is important is how the detector "sees" the target. In very simple terms conductive targets are either very weak or very strong or somewhere in between. Small items are weak targets. Low conductive metals are weak targets. Large items are strong targets. High conductive metals are strong targets. The shape matters. Irregular shapes or thin items are weak targets. Rounded and thick items are strong targets. On a conductive scale of 0 to 100: 0 = very small targets 100 = very large targets 0 = very thin targets 100 = very thick targets 0 = very low conductive metals 100 = very high conductive metals 0 = very irregular shaped targets 100 = very rounded targets, especially is a hole in the middle Add this all up and small gold items are low on the VDI scale and large gold items high on the scale. Silver being a better conductor than gold, a silver item will read higher on the scale than the identical size and shape gold item. In general silver will read higher than gold. However, a very large gold item can read higher than a very small silver item. Chasing thin hammered silver coins in the U.K., especially the cut varieties, is not that different than hunting gold nuggets. What you rapidly figure out is the metal detector VDI scale can only get repeatable results on certain man made items that are the same every time, like a U.S. nickel or a U.S. dime. And even these signals degrade when deep in the ground or in proximity to other items under the search coil at the same time. Given all the limitations, it is a wonder we get any degree of accuracy at all with detector discrimination systems. With that, I give you a standardized White's VDI scale taken directly from the control box of my White's DFX. This -95 to 0 to +95 scale is common on many modern White's detectors. Nearly all other detectors have the same relative positioning of items just with different numeric scales, an exception of note being the Fisher CZ detectors, which use a rearranged scale. This DFX scale is helpful because it includes gold coins. The main thing I want you to focus on here is the relative positioning of items on the scale. As a detectorist operating in the United States, I always pay attention to just three things 1. where do the ferrous numbers start? 2. where does a U.S. nickel read? and 3. where does a U.S. dime read? If I know those three things, I can adjust almost instantly to any detector scale in existence, because I know how everything else reads in relation to those three points on the scale. Standard White's VDI scale Looking at the scale you can use gold coins as a rough guide to where large gold nuggets will read, although coins being pure gold and round will read much better than gold nuggets of the same size. It might take a one pound gold nugget to read the same as a one ounce $20 gold coin, which in turn reads very close to the U.S. silver quarter reading. On the other end, tiny gold, tiny ferrous, and salt water, being a low conductive target, all overlap. This is why if you tune out salt water on the beach, you also tune out single post gold ear rings and thin gold chains, which read like small gold nuggets. If a prospector tunes out salt alkali readings on a salt lake, there go the small gold readings. And the chart shows that if you get too aggressive in rejecting all ferrous items, good items can be lost also. When I say small it is important to note what we are really talking about is small/weak readings. A large gold item buried very deep in mineralized ground will have a very weak reading and appear as a small target to the detector. This means a very deep large items can appear just like a very small gold item and be lost for the very same reasons as those small items. Again, think weak targets and strong targets to get a better feel for how things react in the field. To sum up, gold and platinum are low conductive metals, and when also small in size read very low on the VDI scale, even dipping into the ferrous range. The foil range is the sweet spot for ear rings, thin gold chains, small womens rings, and platinum items. In general women's gold rings will read below a U.S. nickel and men's gold rings will fall above a U.S. nickel on the VDI scale. Nearly all gold nuggets found by most people are going to read nickel and lower just because nearly all gold nuggets are small. However, as this photo I made using my DFX and some gold nuggets shows, gold nuggets can read all over the place due to their shape and purity. Surprisingly, if you add silver to gold the conductivity drops as alloys are less conductive than pure metals. This makes many gold jewelry items and gold nuggets far harder to detect than would be the case were they pure gold. See this article for details on this nugget photo Some Gold Nugget VDI Numbers Target id numbers for naturally occurring gold nuggets You can get some great spreadsheets for jewelry VDI numbers for White's and Minelab detectors here. There are no doubt many people who have read this who are just shaking their head and thinking "this is why I just dig everything". I absolutely agree, when at all possible, that is the best solution. Unfortunately it simply is not possible in some locations where trash targets outnumber the good by thousands to one. This is where knowing the VDI scale and how it works can pay off. The best book ever written on the subject of discrimination is "Taking A Closer Look At Metal Detector Discrimination" by Robert C. Brockett. It is out of print but if you find a copy grab it, assuming the topic interests you.

Not been out in a while since the lock down but things are starting to ease..A Little. Had some good winds Monday and Tuesday so I got wet both days. Mondays hunt one 1944 Class ring then a small young ladies 10k ring. Tuesday rocked with 4 14k wedding bands and 1 10k and several silvers. Silver needs cleaned .......Year to date totals.... 46 Gold rings and 46 Silvers... Good Luck to everyone and be safe..

Out for 1 1/2 hours today to the same place and same area. About 50 ft. from yesterday's find was this "beauty". At the price of gold currently, I will take ugly gold any day.🙂 That makes 5 gold rings all found within a line of 100 ft. Same settings as yesterday except for noise cancel. 15" still rocks on the Nox!

Thought I’d give a quick update and some photos of the (good) stuff I’ve found so far. I have a little over 40 hours of metal detecting on the Equinox 800. This is the entirety of my metal detecting experience! Thanks to everyone on the forum who has helped guide me. I haven’t included the junk in these photos, but trust me, there is a fair amount! There seems to be less junk dug the more hours I put in though. So far I have found: Currency Two clad quarters Five silver dimes (A Barber, three Mercs, and a Roosevelt) Seven clad dimes Seven Nickels (A V!, two Buffalos, and four Jeffersons) Fifteen Wheat Pennies (Ranging from 1919 to 1957) An old Chinese Coin Jewelry Two enameled pieces (Either broaches or buttons) A Catholic medallion depicting Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and The Sacred Heart of Jesus Tokens A token from an old pool hall Relics A creepy cool stamped metal doll head! Just found this morning at a local park not three blocks from the house! Found the face first, and the back of the head a little deeper. Most of this was found in parking strips in a Helena, MT neighborhood, Except for the doll head… Still looking for that $5 gold piece!

Well, I am back from hibernation, and received a call to recover a lost Palladium ring. The person was tossing a small ball with two hands up into a tree. He felt the ring come off. I went and searched the lawn in front of the tree for a fairly large area, then behind the tree, which is scrub brush and leaves..Real tough swinging a detector in that. Do any of the members have an idea as to what the VDI should be. I saw one post say 12 and 13, but others guessed it would be in the lower gold region. I am using the EQ800, all metal mode , V2 update. I would think that this should give a good signal as the loss was two days ago. I am wondering ig the ring, being a light metal may have landed in the branches as it is similar to spruce boughs. I am going back tomorrow, and look for ideas and known VDI's from others. PROP

Part of this fine DP forum is sharing finds, stories and MD'ing knowledge. So now you get your chance to help others and yourself. On a recent post started by GB, I was helping educate some of the people asking questions about certain finds at a Volleyball Court. I then realized it might as well be it's own thread, so here it is. We (most of us) are stuck indoors right now, so what better thing to do, than self educate on your favorite hobby and the results will help you for the rest of you MD'ing carrier. I have 3 tasks for all of you who want to learn more about your detector, your own capabilities and your very important pinpointer, all in the attempt to find the elusive Diamond Stud Earring. #1. Try to find your wife/girlfriend gold diamond stud earring with your detector. Be sure to tape it to a plastic poker chip 1st so you don't lose it. Many detectors (even some in the $2500 and or price range) will miss most of them. It might take some adjusting, but eventually some of your units might get it. Listen to the signal width, see what it reads on the ID screen and notice how far off the ground your coil is (better have proper coil control) and then the target is no longer registering. Once you teach yourself the capabilities of your detector, it will help you down the road at the beaches, volleyball courts and tot lots where some of these sparklers get lost. #2. Use your very important pinpointer to find the diamond stud. If you have different models of pointers, test each to see which one perform best/worst. This will help you down the road knowing which pinpointers are useless (for this task). #3. Post your results. That's right, even you newbie hunters get you be an expert this time, because you actually took the test and not only learned from it, but are helping others who may not have access to a diamond stud. I've found my share of gold diamond stud earrings in years past, but it took many attempts before I got it right. What's nice, is when you get a call to find it and there is a reward. On 3 of my diamond stud finds, I was the 2nd person with a detector to look for it. One of those rewards was $500, so knowing my detector and what is the best pointer for the task, sure helped. Why did the others not find the stud? They never practiced to find out how it responds to their detector or pointer. Don't just assume it will beep like a coin or ring or even foil. I look forward to reading your results and hoping you'll realize the importance of detecting knowledge you just taught yourself.

Got out today for about 2 1/2 hours to a local rec. center/pool that has been closed down due to covid-19. I have not detected there before, despite being close to home. At first I hit the side of the gravel parking lot because the gates had all been padlocked to any fields. I found quarters, the large coin/token and the .925 pendant from Thailand. The signal for the coin/token was a STRONG 35. https://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins.pl?coin=14173 I thought it was another buried can, but the sound went away as I lifted the coil, unlike all the cans I was digging. It was on the edge of the parking lot close to a flower patch of the neighbor next door. I moved to a new spot and in the front of the building was the .925 ring on the first dig up front. After that I saw that the field was open and went onto the kickball/small baseball field. There were a lot of quarters and dimes. This spot is close to virgin because the quarters would be gone otherwise. There is more jewelry waiting! The 15" coil impressed me again.🙂

Hi, I'm new to this forum and fairly new to metal detecting. I currently have a bounty hunter tracker 4, and I'm definitely looking to upgrade. I had my eyes set on the minelab equinox 800. Upon further research I sort of realized that the 600 is only really lacking the 20 and 40 kilohertz frequencies. Obviously the 800 also has many more options as far as settings go. My question is is the 800 simply a better machine for gold prospecting? and will a 600 perform just as well at finding gold jewelry? I'm not particularly into gold prospecting in the traditional sense but I do like Urban prospecting 4 jewelry. Will the 20 and 40 kilohertz frequencies be of any benefit in hunting for jewelry? Or will the 600 do just as well for the $400 less? I'm a poor man so if I can get a quality machine out of the 600 I'm all for it, but if the 800 is that much better then I'll fork over the $400 I guess LOL

Went out for a couple hours on Sunday night (looks like daytime, but the lights were on on the field) to the local football field where there have been other goodies found. This is the third time out with a gold ring in the pouch on the way home. I really like how the 15" covers the ground and sings out on rings. This is 10K with a single diamond. Running Park 1, 18 sensitivity, ground balanced, all metal, 50 tones, and 0 iron bias. This rang in a strong 9 and 10. I knew it was a good possibility when I stopped to dig it based on the solid numbers and the tone.

Finally made it to an old park I figured was hunted out. As usual, there is no such thing. This park has a sandy volleyball court which aerial photos indicated is over 50 years old. Other than the (wooden, yay!) posts that the net is attached to there are no impediments. Any advice on approach (e.g. coil choice, ground balance tricks, target depths to expect, target tones, TID's to accentuate/ignore) would be appreciated.

I have been keeping an eye on the weather forecast for the last week and it paid off. I found one beach with some nice sand movement and I hunted there for five days. I managed to dig 5 gold, a few silvers and $70.92 in clad. The diamond chips on the two rings are real and all rings are 14k. One of the 14k is plum gold and another is 14kpc (pc= platinum coated). Good luck out there and happy hunting.

Yesterday I managed to get out to the beach and keep my social distance from the others and most of the targets. There has not been much sand movement except to deposit and sand in my Southern California beaches. I was at the black sand line and got a 15 and hoped it would be better than just the couple of pennies I had found and it was. It is like a thin silver wire ring. I haven't gotten one quite like it before. I was pretty much done with the beach soon after that find and on my way out I detected near a lifeguard station. The station had been place up on a mound and a dozer had been used to scrape up the sand. That made the surface I was detecting about 1 ft below normal. I got a dime signal with the Nox 800 and I kept digging and digging until I was down a foot. Out pops this silver band that weighs just 1.86g. The other items are just a collection of recent finds and still some others are just to show unsorted containers from trips in the most recent past. The hand is there to give it scale! haha

So, last night was not four in a row night for gold. You can't win them all. Nevertheless, I detected a different spot on the football field. I have found the blue-tipped bullets before, but they were really the hot ticket last night. They came in a tight 16-17, so they are a must-dig. Same settings as my other posts. The 15" coil is able to get the small stuff as shown in one of the picks. There is part of a "Diamond" stud earring that sang to me as a solid 8-9. Crazy that it was able to pick that up as I'm swinging away at a recovery speed 7 to cover a lot of ground before the lights go off on the field. Not much for change, only a little over $3. Lots of nickels, however.

Yesterday's gold ring was found on the second dig of the day. Today's was literally the first dig of the day. It was in the grassy area where people sit and eat concession food by the fields I hunt around home. It was a 10-11 on the display, and I was using the same settings as yesterday. It is 14K.

Was out this afternoon on this "chilly" Florida day (65°) for 2 1/2 hours to a soccer field with the 15" coil. I was running park one. My second signal of the day was a strong 11 and was golden in color. It was basically on the surface of the sandy soil. I thought it was junk, but it went in the "special" zippered section of the Garrett finds pouch. I moved on and hit another two rings in an overgrown volleyball court right next to the field and a little over $5 in change. The black ring is stainless, the silver looking one is junk, and the gold one is 10K. It was very hard to see the markings even with an inverted pair of binoculars when I got home. It has been a long time since I made it out, but this helped make up for it. It was fun to get out.