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I love hunting the wet sand at the beach but I am fortunate to have a few lakes to detect when conditions are sanded in. My last trip to the lake produced 3 more gold rings but the best one was a deep class ring that I am guessing was lost many years ago because it is over 40 years old and has very little wear. It's a hefty little ring at 14.4 grams and has a name in it so I have already taken steps to locate the person who lost it. I found this ring in an area that I have hunted many times before but this one was deeper than most and found using the "all metal' mode of the Excal. I usually hunt lakes using some kind of discrimination because of the trash but this find may encourage me to go back and try for some more deep targets and just tolerate all the trash.

Rainy morning here in the Mid Atlantic, but I timed it perfectly so I would miss the rain. It was 64 when I got there, but the sun came out later and it was perfect for detecting. Targets were hot from the rain. V2 is no different for me than the earlier version, they didn't change anything or much, yay. Today I tried lowering sensitivity to 87, and found iron wrapped less. It still hit coins at 10" at least. There were no events at this beach last weekend, so I didn't expect much, and really didn't expect to be the only one there all day. The tide got extremely low from the wind, so all the right things happened. It was also a bit sanded out by the wind from Lee. Didn't dig much trash, just the usual junk and annoying .22 short bullet shells that are everywhere here. Here's the haul, 6 earrings, one pair. Unfortunately none are silver or gold. I even got more copper memorials than Zincolns! 8-7. 🥳 I found the first tiny butterfly with the clasp on it, so I was pretty sure I'd find the pair, and I was right. Got at least one of every coin, so I wasn't missing anything for sure. Best find of the day was a 64, it was just too solid and clean for a pull tab: Moroccan 1 Dirham, worth about 10 cents US. It's at least 2002, and features Mohammed VI on the obverse. Exactly the same size as a US quarter, and made of copper/nickel. Parts of Morocco were destroyed recently by earthquakes, so it's kinda ironic to find a coin from there, never seen one. I find the strangest stuff at this beach. 🤔

Two things motivated me to go detecting yesterday, Hurricane Idalia missed us by about 50 miles, so the weather was perfect, and we had a Blue Moon Tide so it was extremely low. Otherwise I didn't expect much, as this beach gets hit hard on the weekend and Monday. The weather last week was kinda miserable with the hurricane's approach. Tide was high and it was pretty windy when I got there at 7am but would be negatively low at about 10, so I hit the high beach for a while. Got some coins and a couple toys, some pretty good coin spills but not like other hunts. I was using the Hoover program on my Deus 2 with a new twist, sensitivity low, Audio response at 6, and I set Magnetic Reject to "Accept". This is an old steamboat landing place so there is a lot of black sand, I figured I'd try it. Thanks again @midalake, I'm really dialing this in. 🙂 Here's the total take, kinda surprising. Got a pretty good amount of clad over my 6 hours there, I even hunted the southernmost beach. Got the obligatory Hot Wheels, guess a kid did some sorta voodoo with the bus, and the toy fire truck was over a foot down. The lighter is a really nice torch lighter. But here is the highlight of the trip, the four objects in the bottom right corner: Because the tide was way out, I got a strong 60s signal at the waters' edge and after about 4 scoops dug this 1941 Mercury dime! Got my shoes wet because I wear them instead of sandals due to the nasty pebble beach. Oh well. Once I got the dime out I got a another 70s signal immediately and scooped out this old silver filigree crucifix, I'd put it in the 1920s but it could be older or about the same as the dime. It has the same patina as the dime and no hallmarks so I'm assuming it is silver. It weighs about 1-1/2 grams and the dime is 2.2. Went a little further and got a pretty solid 47 signal, and after scooping a ton of muck, pebbles and fine sand I got this tiny gold ring, again no hallmarks: You can see above it's no bigger than the dime, it weighs about .3 grams. I'm not sure if it's gold but my wife likes it. 😀 She has a "nose" for that stuff 🙄 The last real shocker was this old Navy button top with some gilt still on it, apparently the back was lost or rotted away. This is not a high end beach but you just never know what interesting stuff you will find if conditions are right. 🤣 I've found really old coins and all kinds of crazy stuff here. If anyone knows the best way to make silver silver again I'm all ears! Or eyes. 😏 Trash was just a handful, got some Peloponnesian pull tabs and sinkers and zipper pulls, the new beach nightmare.

Been a busy summer.... finally back in the water, just starting to get out once a week . My 5th trip out for the year, been to this spot with the Excalibur last few weeks, bleak ..So I went in with the AQ and Eric Foster 10 inch coil as a last effort. Came across a small area on the slope that held some deeper targets........after a hour a small 10k came up, 3 scoops, maybe 12 to 13 inches down..hoping the open area moves or opens up a little more, not many heavy targets. Mostly wheat pennies and merc dimes, no quarters and only one nickel. I did dig a few pieces of crab pots only because they were deep faints.. I do skip all shallow targets since the target history of this beach with the excalibur told me it could be iron....

A rare early medieval gilded silver brooch has also been found A rare early medieval gilded silver brooch was also found by a member in the same area shortly after the dig, which is decorated with snake heads and will also be going through the treasure process. Cai said that the brooch could be dated between the late Norman to early Medieval period of 1150 to 1350 and would have most likely belonged to an individual of high status. The brooch, he said, was a particularly rare item to have found and could indicate that the area is an "important one" with two potential treasures having been unearthed within weeks of each other. Elizabethan ring with links to noble Shropshire family found in field By Megan HoweNorth ShropshirePublished: Jan 28, 2022 A metal-detectorist has unearthed a rare Elizabethan hawking ring most likely belonging to a member of the noble Grafton family of Shropshire

Shame on me for running this so close to my other post, but I went to my local big beach (1 hour drive) again today using the Deus 2 with my "Hoover" program, which is now turn on and go, except when there is black sand in which case I turn down audio response to 1. Got up at 5am to be there by 7, and met my goal. Nobody was there, not even walking the sidewalk. Tide was going out, and there was no wind at all. It was about 72 when I got there, but in two hours it jumped up to 82 and humidity was 80%. Now I understand why y'all in Florida don't get out even when it's 82. 🤣 Absolutely brutal. I hacked around the smaller of the beaches but the most popular first, there are a few stores and restaurants so it gets the most traffic. Lucky for me I did that because the bigger beach had been hit hard, I almost found nothing there later. Found a few coin spills and some Hot Wheels of course. 😀 I went to the bigger beach and by that time the tide was out, lowest tide I've seen in a while. Got sick of zigzagging the high beach, there were holes everywhere, and some of them not filled in. 😵 The only thing that amused me here (it was about 92 then) was this sand castle Chichen Itza: I ran the entire shoreline at the water which was full of jellyfish and got some junk and maybe one coin but nothing to speak of. Coming back along the first beach I got some small jewelry, and wished I could get in the water because that's where the good stuff is. By then people were coming to the beach (not many, first day of school here) and a couple kids got nailed by jellies, so that wasn't an option. Went to the other side of the casino, found some coins and talked to some nice folks, even recommended a detector to a mom whose kid is interested in detecting. Told her to get him a ML X-Terra Pro. 😀 After reading what y'all write about that detector I may ask Santa for one 😁 But I love my Deus, and you'll see why. First the trash, low tide is really weird here, why would anyone bring an old antique fuse to the beach? 🤔 Not much crap for 6 hours of hunting, pull tabs sound like pull tabs, and bottle caps aren't even a thought. For some reason though, pull tabs in the water are 71+ but 63-65 on the beach. 🤔 they're still brassy sounding but I always check the ones I see so I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I can skip them for the most part. Now the finds: 45 coins, two Hot Wheels, a small toe ring (plated copper), and a plated earring with a fake opal. I had decided to stay another hour, and it was a good thing I did because about 16 of the coins came from one spot, including 2 one dollar coins: A John Adams and a Sacagawea dollar. 🥳 At first I was just getting 93 after 93, and then sometimes 95 and 98. The 13" nailed them all, and I didn't leave that 3x3' spot until there wasn't even an iron tone 😀 I think I got a nickel and a dime there too. What a way to end what was kinda a boring mundane hunt! Got another couple dimes and left. Here's a gratituitous swan photo:

Last night I just had to get OUT and detect. We haven't had many waves but you just have to get out in the night sky and low tide and detect. A few dry sand coins and then only a nickel for over a mile. On the way back I got a bit of an iffy signal and it turned out to be a corroded, copper cross. At least it was something. While I was digging it around 1 AM a guy came up to me and just was asking questions. I told him about the energy needed to make targets get washed up. I showed him what I found and upon his parting he wished me good finds. That was nice. About 20 minutes later I got a 12 with the 800/11 and dug down about 7 inches and discovered this 'thing' I've never seen before. It's a ring but for two fingers. Then I couldn't read it to know if it was real or not. I couldn't make out a k so I thought it might be cheap. When I got it home I could see some workings and also read 417. It weighs 6.7g. The internet says it is 10K. Yahoo! It has been a few months since a gold ring ... that this one is a double. But what do you call it? What are the key words? I found this one online for sale from a pawn shop. It is 3.6g. Solid 10K Yellow Gold Two Finger Bar Ring 3.6gr. Size 5 | eBay

This post is a bit late, it's been a hot and busy week. Got out last Monday at 6am to go to my local big beach, should have been pretty packed because the kiddies go back to school tomorrow. Glad I got out of education before the summer got cut short. 🫤 My first surprise was that they raised the parking rate from $2 an hour to $3. Probably explains why there was no one there. No detectorists or people. 🤔 It wasn't too bad a day, didn't get all that hot, but for quite a while I found nothing. I zigzagged the upper beach, even grid searched some sections, and the finds a started trickling in. I hit a Hot Wheel burial, and found a few coins. Came back along the surf line and did a little better. Here's all the trash: Just some odd bits and oddly enough some brass. And the finds, 5 more toy cars, two lighters, two earrings, a sizable child's ring, an aluminum pencil sharpener, a massive junk chain that gave a really odd brassy iron signal, and about $2.50 in coins. The hoop earring on the left turned out to be silver, .925 from Italy. So there's that. 🤣 In 3 weeks I've found over 20 toy cars, is this a sign? 🤔

If y'all are following me I just got back from a week at Emerald Isle, and 3 days later went out to a local beach. I knew that going on a Wednesday wouldn't be great as the beach gets heavily hit on Monday, but I also know from watching the other detectorists there that they don't follow the tides. No one hunts the "surf" or the cuts made by tides. This is basically a river beach hunt. I knew I'd at least find something. Weather was good, not too bad temperature or humidity. Got there fairly early, a severe thunderstorm knocked our power out overnight so I had to wait until power was restored. May do some more of these mid week "cleanup" runs, it wasn't great but fun. 🙂 The river was flat and the tide was soon to go out. I mentioned my D2 program is a "Matchbox Slayer", heh, yeah it is. Dug 9 more yesterday! Yikes. These cars ID anywhere from 90-95. I got at least 6 of them in one spot right at the water line. On the coin and jewelry side, not much, but the total finds to trash was over 50% so I'm happy: Got a small Pandora style "A", and a small charm. Zinc plated sinker was a 76. The keys were the only iron tone with high tone I got, it was curious enough to dig. The treble hook lure got me, hate those things. All this stuff came from the tide area, again more good finds than bad but I dug a bit more trash than I did daily on my beach trip. Just a handful. Anything with a fairly pure tone in the 60s I dig because of my white gold ring tests. As usual it was great to get out.

This year's Emerald Isle Beach trip is behind me, it's a place we go for my wife's birthday week, (😀) and she doesn't mind me going out early in the morning and some evenings. I get up at 6, hop on the trusty golf cart, and go. I condensed this all to one post because quite honestly it wasn't a spectacular week despite finding a ring for a woman, and getting out as much as I did. By 10am the beach was packed, and I found I was pretty much the only detectorist on the beach every day, but don't know if anyone was nighthawking. I checked the beach cameras but didn't see anyone. After the nice woman posted my ring find on Facebook they started showing up. 🤔 What I was impressed with is how my Deus 2 performed, I dug many coins at around a foot deep, and even buried my own gold ring about 8-10" in the wet sand and got a solid 64 both ways as a test. I've been tweaking a program I'll call "The Hoover" which seems to do very well at this beach and a couple others I've been hunting, but sadly I didn't find any gold that I know of. The best part of the program is the verifiable ability to skip most junk, I've had a finds to trash ratio of over 50% every time I go out. Iron is always iron, and aluminum is a touch trickier but once the sound of it becomes familiar, you can dig it all and see for yourself. 🙂 My friends call it the "Matchbox Slayer", and you'll see why 🤣 In 6 days this is what I got for non coin finds: An assortment of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, a pair of cheap but whole sunglasses, a very cool "Pill Fob" made of stainless steel, a working Casio watch, two lighters, and some small jewelry bits. The chain may be gold but the "E" pendant which probably was why I found it is plated. No hallmarks. Next are the coin finds: 138 coins, $13.68 in change. The darker coins are many of which I found at nearly a foot deep. The trip was not without something decent, my wife took a bracelet and a pair of silver earrings. 😀 ".925 IBB TH" Hallmark, Thailand silver, International Bullion Board. Here are the settings I was using all week: ********** "The Hoover" Based on Beach Sensitive Options menu: Audio 9 Audio filter 5 Audio type high square Display profile xy, I use this to push the ID and Ground readings to the corners which keeps the glare from hiding the numbers. Sometimes the graph is useful too. Fe tid on Menu: Disc 10 Full tones offset ft 0 Bottle Caps 5 Notch off Silencer 0 Sensitivity 95 Salt Sense 3 Freq Max 40 Iron volume 6 Reactivity 1 Audio response 3 Ground Balance menu: Tracking GB on Magnetic reject ********** Never really had to change much, and it worked well in the water too. If you try it PM me with questions, comments, and abuse 🤣 I promise you'll find lots of Toy cars, they are going to be in the 90s.

This is a very smooth running and processing detector. In a way it's like the Manticore in that when you have some basic skills to work with these detectors will give you a lot of information. With both the key is to listen for peaked souding responses. This means the machine is processing something within it's ideal, optimized range ("clean metal" with the Manti). "Emenating" responsed (ones that are connected to the ground more) such as a hairpin don't re-acquire in the same consistent way. A target that's blended with the ground like a cap is a much wider response. (SAT notwithstanding). got this one yesterday down deep its 18k, 10.1 grams. cjc

Been camping at the beach this week, I found I'm the only detectorist hitting this place. Not getting a heck of a lot of incredible stuff, but I had a great thing happen today I thought I'd share. I was out on the morning grind, it's hot and humid here, days hitting 92 and 70-80% humidity. I'm taking a couple showers a day and going through a lot of clothes. 🥵 I'm doing about 2 miles of Beach, I'll reveal the location in my recap. I was detecting the upper beach and saw a woman running toward me gesturing to get my attention. I walked up to her and she explained she was up all night looking for her daughter's ring that she lost in the sand yesterday, a gift for her 16th birthday. She said she was even thinking about going to Harbor Freight and buying a detector! She had called ring finders but didn't think the $50 minimum would be worth a disappointment as they had been looking all last evening and overnight, so she wondered if I would help her. I had my D2 with 13" coil and my excellent new program fired up, this program hit my own gold ring at over 8" buried in wet sand at the surf line with no variation in TID. Damn thing is a 64, so I'm glad pull tabs sound worse than the ring does. 🤣 Y'all will see how I did when I post, trash to finds is off the charts. I love V1.1. She showed me where to look, unfortunately a woman was out there setting up for the day with a Beach sail and a bunch of chairs, but she said we could look and move anything we wanted to. Well it didn't take more than a minute or two to make one happy lady. Right next to one of the chairs I got an 81, instead of scooping I used my composite trowel and out popped the ring. The 13" nailed it even with the metal chair there. 😀 I'm pretty sure it was .925 with a man made ruby, but it could have been gold, she did say it was an heirloom. Asked the woman if it was ok to take her pic since it was my first retrieval, and she said sure! After giving me a huge hug, sweaty as I was, she said wait and she'd go get me a reward. I said "absolutely not, why don't you buy the woman who let us search around her stuff something". 🙂 You can see the sand on her legs, poor woman was desperate. I was glad to help. She ran off to tell her daughter.

They say you have to dig a thousand pull tabs to find a gold ring. Today I reset the counter back to zero again with this chunky 10k.

It's always a good idea no matter the weather to hit the beach the day after the 4th of July. Brutal day today, 92 and about 60% humidity, no wind to speak of. It wasn't too bad in the morning, and I outlasted all the other detectorists, but by noon it was just plain nasty. The first beach was the large one using the D2. Ran into José operating the beach groomer, I've talked to him before, he has a keen interest in metal detecting and US history. We talked for a bit, he explained how the groomer worked, and said about the only thing it catches is chains, and it mangles them. 🫤 He tried to let me hunt as much of the beach as possible, and worked around me. I was very happy. Despite the groomer being run over the entire beach, the finds just kept coming. Maybe it's the reason I found so much. Second beach was the small one, only a few kids. Over the 4th these beaches got really trashed, but were cleaned up by county employees or locals. Fireworks and trash everywhere. 😵 Here I used my Equinox 600 with a 15" coil that Chase lent me. Didn't take long to find out how much I prefer the Deus 2 with the 13" 😀, it's way lighter and easier to use, also gives a lot more audio information than the Equinox. All I found at this beach was $1.26 in clad, the targets jump out because the beach is clean. I also much prefer the 10x5 Coiltek for hunting here if I'm going to use the Equinox. Trash was very very minimal today. I've got the D2 tweaked so that it really doesn't find much junk: Bottle caps were courtesy picks. Yes that is a live firework. So here's what I got 73 coins, about $8.50, a toy car, an old button and an earring that is just bling. The earring was over a large iron pipe and the Deus picked it out easily. José explained that the replenishment sand comes from a very old county here, so that explains the 1916 wheat I found nearby where I dug a 1916 Mercury dime a month or 2 ago. The button is very old. The little oval was from some sort of brass bracelet. Fun but very difficult day, about as bad weather as I would want to be out in.

It's been raining a lot here, yesterday I had to cut the grass to get it done before the severe weather we're supposed to get this evening. I am posting this in the Deus 2 forum because I have some observations from today, I was using the D2 and the 13" coil with a customized Beach Sensitive program. I told Chase I was headed up to my local beach, and he got there early with me. It was hot and muggy but now and again it got cloudy and we got enough wind off the river to keep cool. Went through a lot of water today! Last weekend the beach was packed, and this weekend was too apparently. I like to go there early on Monday regardless of tide if it was sunny at all. There were not many people there as expected, I didn't see Chase but he was there before me. Went out to the motel beach, and my first find was a dime, and then I spotted a dollar in the sand. 😀 I knew it would be a much better day than I had last weekend. He finally appeared and we went down the beach searching different parts of it. Here's my observation; I found that audio response causes the detector to make a lot of extraneous noise if auto tracking is turned off. Turned it down from 5 to 3 and it got a lot better! It ran really quiet most of the time until I got over some black sand or a cellphone was nearby. Now the proof: Here's all the trash I got. The bottle caps were all sight picked, love the old round pull tabs that give off a beautiful tone without the brassy sound, some of the others did too, but I was after nickels and ended up getting some. The iron was so close to the surface I dug it. The rubber bat was just funny. 😀 Now the good stuff: 33 coins and a dollar bill, almost $6 in change and paper money. Best was the 1945 wheat. Old coins turn up here all the time. An earring that sounds good when dropped so I included it, a sight picked bracelet with beads and brass. 3 toy cars, the big pickup truck is a Hallmark Christmas ornament without the Christmas tree in the bed. It was a fun day, I hope the storms go by without incident.

A funny thing happened at the beach today, I was to meet up with Chase at a local beach, one I now dub the "Beach of Low Expectations". I was detecting the beach cut in front of a motel, and saw a flip-flop, a half empty Corona bottle, and an iPhone. Sure enough the phone worked, and had ID and credit cards in a pocket on the case. I asked a woman nearby if it was hers, and she said no, but she thought it might belong to a woman who was very drunk and noisy on the beach the night before. I took the phone to the motel office and asked if the woman was staying there, and the manager said yes, the people were still checked in. She said I could bring it up to her room, and mentioned they were trouble. I decided to take it myself being the fearless individual I am 😏 Went to the room and knocked, once, twice, finally 5 times when I heard "GODDAMN IT" and someone coming to the door. It was the woman, nearly naked, not sure if she was wearing much at all. I tried not to look at anything but her face, first time someone looked better in their license photo than in person. 😀 I said "You might want this back", and that was all I could get out, she said "Thank you", took it, and closed the door. Yikes. 🤣 I went back out to the beach, Chase had got there, and I dug very little. 😵 .68, a copper arthritis ring (ID'd by my wife), and a bling earring. 🤷‍♂️ That was my Karma for returning someone's life. 🙄 We still had a fun day, the weather was great, and there were lots of nice people out there today. I think we did better than the other detectorists from what they said.

On a camping trip to a campground that used to be an old hunting lodge, it's changed hands twice and is owned by a large company now. It's near the Outer Banks in North Carolina, this is my third year coming here. Beautiful weather this week, it should be a lot of fun. The campground isn't full at all, and the General Manager has graciously allowed me to hunt pretty much anywhere I want. There are 148 acres here, and a long stretch of waterfront but no beach. There are piers and the water isn't all that deep so I may go in the water at some point. 😬 Maybe. There has to be some jewelry out there. I didn't have a lot of time today because I got the green light at about 1pm, so I went to the volleyball court and the recreation area that has a few amenities. Dug a bunch of coins and this nice looking kid's ring. It's a little crab with some sort of stone, sizable and not precious metal. Next I went out to the tent camping area. I've found a lot of live ammo here from the old hunt club but not today. Got another bunch of coins and got my favorite find today, this really old signet ring. It's kinda beat up but it has a "V" on it, it appears to be brass but it's very thin and strong. I'll have to clean and test it when I get home. No hallmarks. Here's the total take for today, lots of old clad, a couple of nickels and copper memorials. I did get 8 Zincolns but left 3 in the trash: And here's the trash. Very little iron, but can slaw is still a problem.

Today was the last day I could get out before a week long relic hunting and possibly water hunting trip. It's been raining since Saturday night on and off, windy and in the 60s so I didn't expect to find much at the beach I went to. I recently updated the D2 to V1.1, did some air tests to create a new beach program. Used Beach Sensitive, disc at 10, no notch, no Silencer, Bottle Caps ended up at 5. High Square Full Tones audio. Gotta say I really thought XP had got the iron falsing under control with my air tests, even aluminum makes a distinct "brassy" sound with this program. However, all that glitters is not gold. 🤣 This beach is rough, at one end there is a motel and the beach is almost all pebbles, you cannot go barefoot or wear sandals if you have old feet. 😀 In the middle it's a mix of sand and pebbles in bands, and the other end it's a mix of sand and red clay. Ground balance varies from 79 to 95 depending on where you are. Got here early hoping at least someone braved the weather and came to the beach, it looks like some did and I was the first to hit it. 3 other people showed up later and complained they weren't finding anything, I sort of had to bite my tongue. 😏 Iron did false until I changed bottle caps a bit, there is quite a bit of junk in the sand. Pushing disc to 10 helped a little, I'm glad they fixed the audio. With disc at 10 most iron will disappear. (Thanks Andy!) Most pull tabs have that brassy sound, I dug a few to prove it. I think one was in the 70s so I dug it anyway. That one fooled me. I was getting coins here and there, they jumped out sharply with very close IDs. Managed to get at least one of every US denomination, and a nice 1945 wheat. That was a great sign. On the pebble beach I got a 47 and found this tiny ring, I doubt it's anything good but it was a solid tone and ID. It was just in the surf, and pretty deep. Next one was this bling ring, a hard 85. Looks like it's been there a while. My best ring today was this tungsten carbide and malachite ring that my wife took immediately, it was a 54: About $15-$30 on Amazon. 3 Keys Jewelry. Here's the total take: And the trash: The doll swims if you tighten the innerspring by spinning the arms. 😀 Second small doll I've found there and second pair of tweezers. 😵 It was interesting to see the difference between air testing and real world, never done it before. Think I'll stick with real world.

I would normally post this in jewelry or coins and relics, but I think the D2 forum is best because I'm testing V1 and a program that I got from @ColonelDan. It's based on Beach Sensitive and it's really good but still in the testing stage due to the V1 update. I first tried it at my small beach but because it's not after Memorial Day I got totally skunked, just some junk. I felt as though I could rely on this program however. Today I went to a larger beach about an hour from my house eager to try the program. I had been fooling around with a Beach sensitive program of my own, but this one seemed better as it doesn't use any filters at all for the most part. This beach is in strong contrast to my little one, the little one has pure white sand with a little black sand mixed in, this one is pebbly and coarse in some places, and others it has red clay mixed in. Got out there pretty early, and my first target is possibly gold. It's a small bezel that was probably on a watch. Got some coins and Hot Wheels, the usual stuff, one of the big things this program does is to make coins stand out and skip many pull tabs. It did its job. I was poking around a palm tree, and got a really nice 93 ID and tone, and to my surprise dug this 1916 Mercury Dime! It's not a D or an S, I was shocked but really shouldn't be, I've found other really out of place coins here. It was probably brought in with the sand. It's all brown and trashed but still silver. Here's the total haul today, not bad, and thanks go to Colonel Dan for his program. I used it beside Relic Reaper even in the wet, and I was impressed at its solid coin IDs. I used the Reaper to check anything that "pipped" in the notches, and even scored 4 nickels. And here's the trash: A few bits of pull tabs that were outside the notch ranges, some whole ones that were also below, and lots of tiny metal bits. Otherwise the same old same old, just well... Better. 🙂 Nice beach day overall! I'm fine with the update, nothing degraded or incorrect in my opinion.

It's been a while, I also need to do a wrap up of relic season, but I went to Myrtle Beach for a week. I was hoping to score some high end stuff, but I was in the Southern campground district instead of the hotel strip. Spring break had just ended two days before we got there. The campground is enormous, more than 800 campsites and about 2,000 lease/rental houses. It also has about a mile of beach, and there are two more large campgrounds heading north as well as a couple large condo buildings. Each morning and most afternoons I got to hunt the beach at low tide, the tide is about 5 feet so it goes way out. There were 4 sections, High dry, trough as seen above, mid dry, and wet. The top 3 were all random finds, in the wet you could zigzag for a short time to the surf, and soon you would find a line of good finds. The best stuff was probably in the surf trough but I didn't go in the water, especially after seeing a kid running down the beach with a 3 foot shark in his hands to show his parents. 😀 Tried to get a good shot but all I got was this: I know, what shark? 🤔 You can see the hotel district in the background, never made it there, it was about 4 miles up the beach. Overall it was kinda disappointing, but still fun and I lost over 5 pounds over the week. I met other detectorists who were complaining instead of lying about the dearth of finds, I kinda had to laugh. I was using the Deus 2 with the 13" coil and a modified Beach Sensitive program done sort of like my Relic Reaper program. No disc, no notch, ears for discrimination. I knew from reading others' posts that there would be all kinds of crazy IDs and sometimes no ID, but I dug everything that sounded good. Thing was everything was deep for the most part. I got so I'd scoop at least 5 times not only to beat fill-in, but to get to the find which was usually in the 4th or 5th scoop, anywhere from 8-12" deep. Because using square full tones and turning on a find identifies almost all iron, I had no problem skipping it but dug some randomly either because it was close to the surface and dangerous, or just to check. I did find that low tones with IDs of 5 to 15 were usually bling jewelry. I also blessed the 'no beach tents' signs which kept stakes to a minimum. It was the only thing you couldn't legally do on the beach 🤣 Here's my Day 1 trash getting used to the place: Glad I got rid of that surface trap iron! This is my last days' trash showing that I got better but still watched for surface iron: Ok. Now for the finds: Crap finds Bling finds A small handful of junk jewelry including a tungsten ring, a stainless spinner, 3 earrings, a tiny ankle bracelet chain, and some earring parts. The best one is below, .925 with a big CZ. Big finds: A huge monster truck Hummer that was 2 feet down, a small toy car, sunglasses. An iPhone 13 and case that was about 6" under the surf and vertical, it would have been 6 feet under water at high tide so it is dead. A huge bling buckle found close to the surf about a foot down, I think it took 8 scoops to get it. It has rhinestones or CZs and is some kind of plated zinc. https://www.buckle.com/blazin-roxx-glitz-belt-buckle/prd-5491537906 Coins: 99 coins, oldest was probably 70s. The place was huge and so nice that we booked it again next year before leaving, my wife loves the local shopping and restaurants. Shame I couldn't get her a gold or silver ring. A few more gratuitous photos of the place: Cool spider crab

Some time ago I have started adventure with Atrex and I have to say it is an exelent detector for places detected to dead. Atrex bring new live and new discovery. On such a field I manage to make discovery of a year a little gold weding band with latin inscription inside. It is dated 16 cent. Few day later on same place about 50 meters away next tiny gold weding band.... also an old one.

I was able to get out a couple times this weekend to a local soccer complex. I stayed on the sidelines and in the shaded areas. I took the Deus II with the 11" on Saturday and was able to find 121 coins in 3 hours. There were 29 quarters and 29 dimes along with mostly pennies. I have hit this place many times before with the Equinox 800, so I was a bit surprised by the number of high conductors that sounded through the machine gun sounds of bottle caps and pull tabs. I ran the fast program with a few changes. The black ring that came from behind tall netting that stops balls from going into the water, is stainless. The pendant was right in front of a team bench; there were many targets under the coil, but the 72 ID was unwaivering. The other ring is aluminum. Today, I took the Equinox out for old times sake with the 15" coil. I wanted to cover some ground and focus on numbers between 5-12. The gold helmet, the second one I have found (the first was also at this park by the basketball area), rang up a steady 8. I was in Park 1 with the horseshoe engaged and 7 recovery speed.

This makes 10 gold rings and 14 total gold with the Manticore since my first hunt on Jan 15. It is size 4 and weighs 1.38 grams. I also found a 1964 Rosie. Nice to detect my name. LOL I do believe that I am getting the hang of this machine.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about finding a large college class ring. Now that the ring is on its way back to the owner I can share a few more details about it. The ring is from Texas A&M University and the gentleman lost it in the southern California surf in 2009. He returned the next day with a metal detector but was unable to locate it. 14 years later, on a cold, dark, wet and windy morning I was holding the ring in my hand admiring its golden sheen in the glow of my headlamp. The owner was very surprised and grateful to hear that I would be returning his ring. After speaking with the ring's owner I found out more about the rich tradition of the "Aggie ring". The Aggie class ring just might be one of the most cherished, celebrated and recognizable college class rings in the world. The rings are made by the well known Balfour company and, I believe that, Texas A&M is one of their biggest, if not their biggest, clients. The Association of Former Students oversees a lost and found program and maintains a registry to help reunite rings with their owners. Their website states that there are about 60 Aggie rings reported lost or missing each month! That should give you an idea of how many thousands of Aggie rings are out there. There is even a large bronze statue of an Aggie ring on campus! Now that I understand more about the history and significance of the Aggie ring I am really glad that I am able to return this one. https://www.tamu.edu/traditions/aggie-culture/aggie-ring/index.html https://www.aggienetwork.com/news/tagged/?tag=294

Been getting silver almost every time out with my Manticore so far, even at the park. But I've mostly been on the beach where I have consistently been getting Mercs. Yesterday just a '47 Rosie, but still silver. Today, I got my first gold with the new machine. A very solid two way 25 that wasn't shifting. Just 25, 25, 25 both ways. Showing 6" deep - which is kind of shallow for good targets on this beach and that's about how deep it actually was. I'm pretty sure I've got a nickel down there. Nope! 14K white gold, 6.4 grams - it's tiny, barely fits over the first knuckle of my pinkie, but I'll take it. And just to keep the sliver streak alive I guess, I also pulled a very tiny, ornate little silver ring. Not stamped, but the acid turned red and pretty much all silver comes out of this salt black - the below was after some electrolysis and silver polish to take down the black to more of a gray. It started as a much larger black encrustation that I suspected was silver due to the 80's it rang up and because it was black not green. Until the acid turned a nice blood red I still wasn't positive though. - Dave