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I had a lot of stuff to do around the house for the last 6 days, couldn't wait to get out to the old house again, despite how cold it was today. It started out at 32 degrees, and ended up at 38. 🥶 I have Reynaud's in my hands and feet, so I brought two handwarmers and kept them in my vest. I sure needed them, as most of my hunting was in the shade. I was in the shade of the treeline in the distance. Where it was darker the ground was frozen about an inch down, so it wasn't too bad. I just had to break through it in spots. Today I had the WS6 Master with the 9" coil. My goal was to search places I had not looked, there is a lot of erosion where I was today. Lots of large and deep fissures that were difficult to hunt. It ended up being a really good day, I got a find I have been hoping to get for a long time now 🥳. Trash was the usual stuff: Lots of busted brass and copper, buck and musket balls, some harmonica bits. Here are the large finds, one is a broken rein guide, one might be a barrel tap plug, and I have no idea what the center item is: And now the finds, a lot of really old stuff. 3 Tombacs, brass buttons, plates and horse tack. A large buckle in 3 pieces, a pin with threads on it. The thing above the big buckle has a hole on either end, I'm guessing some sort of handle. At the edge of the field I got a solid 88, and dug my find of the day: A 1776 silver 1 Real coin minted in Mexico. This is a first for me, to find one of the larger Reales in such great shape without a hole! I also found what I think is a pistareen: It's silver, about the size of the Real: It is marked with suspiciously Spanish symbols on both sides. Despite the cold it was a great day! 🍀

I have to say that this farm is not the most productive place I've ever hunted, but I'm doing ok. In 4 visits I've covered about 3/4 of the place, and got some pretty good relics and coins. I kinda expected more but imagine I'm not the only one that has detected there. There is one spot loaded with aluminum bits, another that has a lot of molten lead, and yesterday I found what was probably a barn site that is nothing but nails. I've been lucky hunting one side where stuff was dragged out by the farm equipment, but I'll have to consider higher reactivity or other coils for the barn spot. It also has lots of steel bits which was probably from a roof, I have a place like that in front of my house. I walked about 6 miles again, made some great random finds but also dug a lot of trash. I must have walked a fence line because I found a lot of copper fence wire. Here are some of the interesting large finds, someone here once told me what the spiral wire thing is but I forgot. Got a musket ball and a couple of post-civil war minié balls, what might have been part of a stirrup and a really cool rein guide. The porcelain "Frozen Charlotte" doll head was on the surface. They were popular from the mid 1800s to early 1900. The strangest large object was this: A brass strip with a triangular pocket. No clue. 🤔 Here are the finds, some unrecognizable bits, a really nice large tombac, rose tag, some kind of reed, some brass buttons and a lead button. I dug a pretty toasted KG2 halfpenny, and a 190x V nickel was my last find. Using 40kHz in Relic netted me this small silver object, possibly a "Tree of Life" pin, the trunk is missing. You can see where it was attached and the pin weld on the back, size compared with the Trime I dug here the first day: Yep, it's that small, and thin. It was also about 8" deep. I looked for the school house, but there is nothing near where it was, and a new house has been built further in, so next I'll look for the old church that they say was here. I'll probably only find random stuff from now on. I'm going to dig the yard, but it will be a trash fest 😬 🍀

Back at the old farmhouse today! I gave the landowner some of the stuff from last time, the silver spoon bowl and the flintlock trigger guard. The farm apparently has a barren section, a place behind the house where relics are extremely old, and then what I call "Aluminum Alley", the next spot is loaded with iron and lots of can slaw. 😵 I have not got to the largest field yet, but I did walk through it and it made the day better. Trash was hellacious this time, lots of small lead and bullets, large junk too. Despite all that, got some pretty cool relics, I think I found the rest of the barrel tap, it was really far away from where I found the spout. I found a drawer pull, buckle bit, the end of a skeleton key, a very small rectangular buckle, a silvered Dandy button, a small strap with initials on it, and a small General Service cuff button. I also found this cool token: The Crescent Machine company of Ohio, they made woodworking machines until about 1946. https://mycompanies.fandom.com/wiki/Crescent_Machine_Company This is the serial number for a really early one, the company started in the 1890s. This strip of copper or brass has initials, it looks like it was linked: And here are the coins I dug today, when I was leaving I took an arc through the big field and scored the 1887 IHP and the 1899 Barber dime: The wheat is a 1920. 🍀

Another installment of digging at the small farm, got out yesterday to do some digging. I met up with the owner who provided more history of the place, and I gave him the crotal bell I dug 😢 along with some of the other artifacts that are too big to display. The owner said his wife would be thrilled! It's going to take a while to get through this place, thankfully there isn't a lot of newer trash in the ground. It's really an honor to do this for them, but as I surmised they are not particularly wanting everything, but they do want me to be forthright about what I find. I have no problem with that. It was a beautiful day, the ground was perfect, not too wet or dry. I started at the bottom of this hill looking for stuff that might have washed down it, in my scouting trip I got a Trime so I knew there would be more. Nothing at the bottom where the field is eroding, but starting a little higher produced some great results: A mix of the old and newer, not sure what the object with the square hole is on the top left, but the trigger guard, rein guide, Tombacs, brass buttons including one I've found before, buckle bits and a nearly complete 1700's shoe buckle, and a Braided hair large cent (no date 😵) made it a great day. The knife blade appears to be Tombac and the silver object below the trigger guard is a taco'ed spoon bowl that I can't straighten. The round object in the bottom row is what I believe to be a paper collar stud, possibly silver backed with a brass stud. There may be a cap missing for the back: I had to read it backwards but it is stamped "Gold Twist London". The front has some indecipherable text but I'll try to find out what it says. I'm going to be making a display box for these nice people and the size of it will be determined by the amount of stuff I find 🙂 🍀

Today I invited Chase down to go to a new permission that I had doubts about, but I shouldn't have. We met up at a place we hit before, searched it a bit but all I got was an 1898 IHP. We decided to go to the new place. It's around 50 acres with one carved out for a farmhouse, someone lives there. Corn stalks and cover crop, despite the drought it was fairly easy to dig. We walked the field for about 30 minutes or so, and found nothing at all but some small aluminum bits. Then we got closer to the road, and at almost the same time Chase dug an IHP and I got my first button: We heard lots of iron in this spot, so we figured we probably found a hotspot, and it turned out to be pretty good, later we found a second one. Here's my haul, 7 buttons - a big dandy and one tombac, a pipe tamper with the top missing, a rectangular buckle marked "1850", an odd piece of metal that I can't really identify but it's not lead. An old spectacle buckle, a round lead disc with cut marks on it, a lock slide marked D.M. & Co, and 3 copper coins, one large cent, one about the size of a farthing, and the IHP. Sadly the two older coins are toasted, if I can get any details I'll update this post. I also got one piece of cast silver that is hand engraved, concave, and broken: Not sure what this is. But it's cast silver! Here's the trash, not bad, we picked up all aluminum to make sure it wasn't masking anything. I hope Chase will post his finds either here or on his own, it was a surprisingly great day. 🍀

I thought it was going to be a nice day today, sunny and in the 60s with a bit of wind, but not what it ended up being. There was no wind at all when I got there, it was cloudy and kinda cold, in the 40s. My goal was to check out the last spot Chase and I didn't get to, about an 8 acre spot. I found nothing there. ? Nothing. But, in 7 hours and 7 miles of walking, I managed to get a few things, random stuff here and there: 7 more buttons, two of which may not be, the octagon and the misshapen one 3d from the left. A few buckle bits and a whole buckle. Only 4 came from the button hotspot. What really stands out is the smallest thing in the button row, I've found plenty of buttons with no shanks, but never a shank with no button! It was about 4" deep, a solid 51. The Deus hit it like it was on the surface. Also dug a 1945 wheat. I don't get much trash using relic with the 13", and today was no exception. By the end of they day the wind was blowing 20mph with gusts to 35, I really couldn't hear targets through the WSA II headphones, so I called it early.

Yesterday in Rockingham county VA I dug this counter stamped Draped bust large cent. It's marked W.A.Williams 3 times. It's the exact same Mark he used on his silver I'm wondering if he didn't use this Penny to test out his new die before using it on his silver products. Or maybe it was done as a type of advertising. What do you guys think?

It was way too windy to cut my grass yesterday, and I'd only be cutting the grass that grew with the dew, the drought continues. 😵 I only had about 3 hours of light left by the time I got stuff done, and my wife said "well you could go out"... So I did and I'm glad I did. Went to the largest part of this enormous farm down the road, I've found and hit most of the hotspots so only random finds remain, literally half of the 200 acre farm is relatively barren. My first find was a wheat penny as soon as I started, but I knew it would be a while before I found something else, I didn't expect much. Got a nice ball button in a particularly trashy area nearby, and then nothing for a long time crossing the field. I decided to head back via a spot where a few random things surfaced in the past - nothing, nothing, nothing, then bam, got a 95 on the Deus. I said "Say it isn't so" out loud! 🤣 I used to whine and cry that I never found a Barber coin until I did, but 2024 has been The Year of the Barber for me, in the last 3 weeks or so I think I've found around 8 of them, and I think 4 quarters. My thank you for coming token was a flat button nearby, I think a more detailed search of this spot is in order. 🤔 Trash wasn't bad at all, there wasn't much out there. Here's a pic of the back of the coin for the numismatists: 🍀

I wasn't going to post my last two days of hunting, really didn't get out for long and only found a few things, I was in a field near my house that produced my most valuable find - an 1803 Draped Bust Half Dime. I found a bunch of buttons with it, and was wondering if I'd find anything else in that area. I had also found a 1/2 real Cob there on another trip. It's a fairly small field, about a fifth of the whole place, it's way out back and ends in a point on a river. Very valuable land my farmer friends own! First day I was only out there a couple hours, I have a lot going on but managed to get about 3 out there. I got a small handful of trash, a couple of musket balls, a lot of buckshot, and a lot of harmonica bits. Today my trash was similar: I did get a really old doorknob with the iron shank, a tack stud, and a pile of lead again. Here's what I found that was interesting: A solid brass divider tool, a small one probably used for navigation or cartography. I found one like it that was estimated to be from 1650 to 1750. Wow! You can see with the other objects it is small. Got a clad quarter, a nice 1901 IHP, a thimble tip, a really strange object with leather sandwiched in it that is sadly broken, a red cattle tag, and some sort of plug. Also a small button with the shank. I'm thinking there was a mapping expedition here, and the divider was lost. They may have lost some of the buttons as well. I hope to free the device up and polish it a bit if possible, but it may be pretty valuable as is. 🤔

I got the Minelab Manticore in early January or February 2024 I think, (Thanks Gerry from Gerry's Detectors) but it was too frozen here to start using it much until early March when the thaw out started slowly happening. I have just started to scratch the surface for turf hunting with the Manticore. I have had a couple of short gold prospecting hunts with it and no water hunts. I have almost exclusively been using it at public parks with it setup in All Terrain General Multi, with all targets accepted and with sensitivity between 22 and 25 of 35 using the 11" coil. Today I recovered the 67 and 68th (my age is 68) silver coin/ring/relic since my first hunt with the Manticore in early March. To say that I am surprised and amazed with the Manticore would be a vast understatement. I keep detecting logs. In 2022 I recovered 20 silver rings/coins with the Nox 800 and Legend. In 2023 I recovered 32 silver rings/coins with the Legend and Deus 2. This year, I may be able to break 100 with just the Manticore. None of these targets were less than 6" deep. Most were 8"+ and without the very deep Fisher F Pulse, finding them with a less deep pinpointer and just a screwdriver would be really hard. So, this post is not about me. It's all about the Manticore and the F Pulse and the difference they have made at hunted out parks in just 4 months. Found some old tokens and a 1909 S V.D.B. Wheat too.

As @Joe D. wrote, "the third time is the charm!" It was 39 this morning when I got to the beach, but it warmed up fast. I was late for low tide so I was worried that I wouldn't find much, but I started finding old coins and relics right away! As soon as I walked down to "the spot", I dug this 1913 Barber dime. 🥳 It was like that for the next 3 hours or so, I walked to other spots on the beach and found nothing but clad. Here's everything old: 1914 Barber Quarter, Barber dime, 3 Mercury dimes from 1918 to 1941, two Buffalo nickels, and two pre 1960 Jeffersons. 7 wheats, I'm going to tumble them all from my recent visits to get dates. Got what I think might be an old dog tag, it says "TAX" on it and has a stamped serial number on the back. A garter clasp, a Washington DC bus token, a small lock with engraved initials, a key and a small piece of jewelry with a stone. Here's the trash, a good portion of it came from looking elsewhere. 5 more silver coins! So far I've found 10 or so here over the 3 visits.

Made a 4th trip to the beach today, the tide was supposed to be the lowest for a while, and a pretty strong southwest wind. It was 63 when I got there, got cloudy and rained a little, but the sun came out and it went up to 77, so it was a perfect day. I spent most of my time in "the spot", the small area of this beach I've got so much from. Today I started with the 9" coil, and right away dug a Buffalo nickel. After about an hour of using the 9" which I had intended to go in the water with, I realized it was falsing way too much on iron, so I switched to the 11x13" coil and turned up Reactivity. The 9" is great in the water but not so much above the waterline. The 11x13 has unbelievable separation capability, and it did not disappoint. It found this Barber dime in this iron accretion: And this 1893 Barber quarter under this massive ball of iron rust. In both cases I heard the iron and the high tone as it should have been. Wow. I guess I have this detector dialed in! Here's the haul today: Barber quarter, dime, a bunch of small targets that were jewelry, 4 buffalo nickels, one V nickel and 4 wheats. I had to break the iron and mineral ball the dime was in to get it out, I did it very carefully but still have some crud on the front and can't see the date. If anyone knows how to remove the iron crud I would be happy. 🤔 After about 4 hours of searching this spot, I decided to walk the beach at the level of the ring I found which I'll show ya in a bit. I found some modern coins and a few bits of jewelry, but it was a long walk. When I was back near the truck I got my "thank you for coming" prize, just at the waterline: A nice silver ring. The trash was pretty heavy today: One huge antique sinker and bits of all kinds of metal. Got some modern coins: But the best thing all day came from the higher beach near the top of the sluice in the first photo, I got a 47 and dug this: A sadly broken but really old signet ring in 10k. It has to be somewhere around 100 years old. I was thrilled. Never got in the water, didn't need to!

A lot of my farm permissions are starting to open up due to the month long (as of today) drought. The farmers say they've never got their crops in so early, the corn was a loss due to the early year drought but soybeans were right in the pocket for all the rain. Despite the dry, the weather here has been incredible, I'm still trying to finish up beach hunting but after today I may have to spend more time at the beach because digging the ground here is like hammering concrete. Today I invited Chase down to hit some open farms, we ended up going to 3 because the first one I went to before he got there was planted with winter wheat. Always check with the farmer to find out what is there. The 3 we finally visited were only turbo tilled, so maybe the first 2-4" were soft and dusty, but below that dry and hard packed ground. It's going to take a lot to get to where we usually are this year. It was a long day but not unproductive, I managed to get a few things, and a couple of strange things I've not seen before: I ended up with 5 buttons and 5 coins. One button may not be one, it is extremely old, heavy, and has an unusual back: And the front appears to have had some decoration and maybe lettering a couple hundred years ago: If anyone recognizes this as something else I would appreciate knowing, it may be a broach or something. Regardless it is crude and very old. The best button was this basket weave Treble Gilt: I cleaned it up a bit with lemon juice to bring out the gold. I've found a few of these in the past but not with this blackmark: Got a thin flat, a fat flat with the shank still intact, even some thread in it that fell out. Also a button back with stamped lettering that I can't make out. 5 coins, one Buffalo nickel and 4 wheats, the latest is 1951. Here's what I had to dig for all that: The usual stuff. One last thing, if anyone can tell me what this object is that would be cool: At first I thought it was a light bulb socket but it's way older than that, thick heavy brass. It kinda looks like a bottle of some kind. 🤔 It was a great day to be outside. At the end we got a possible 1,000 Acre permission nearby. 🤞

After all your comments and advice, I decided to go back to "the spot" to see what else I could find, today as a water hunter. I brought my water ready D2, my tougher and heavier CooB scoop, and the Tube Tubb today. The water is not all that cold and it went up to almost 80. It wasn't 5 minutes before I found my first coin, and they just kept coming. Today I came home with 38 coins, one more than yesterday, and not one Zincoln. It was fairly evenly split between the old and the new. I finally came to the conclusion that the North wind took 50 to 100 years off this particular spot, and almost all of the finds were coming from about 15 feet past low tide, and 15 feet above it. It seems to me that if a beach gets heavily sanded out, whatever is in the water past the wave action and current gets sanded in. When I went out in the deeper water the targets were very faint or non existent. Got a couple of rings out there, one may be silver but the rest are pretty much junk. Here's the trash today, only a small handful. I dug a lot of copper screws today, a live blank .22 long, and a live .22 short. Dug next to no iron. Got a lot of clad but most of it has been there a long time, a nice tungsten ring, a broken one, and some small bling. 6 copper memorials, and 6 wheats. Here's the fun stuff, 2 old keys, another Barber Dime, 3 IHPs, 4 V nickels and 2 Buffalo nickels. On the right is a piece of typeset that says something about Chicago, a small broken buckle and I think 2 silver items, a ring and a small pendant. Both are brown, so I'll have to find a way to clean them without damage, I might just tumble them along with some of the coins to see what the dates are. One of the V nickels is a 1912. Here's the pendant, almost looks like gold under the brown but there are no hallmarks. I cannot find a similar one: Here is the reverse, it just says "OUT". I was trying to get out of there and go home, but I kept finding coins about every 5 feet. Another great day, and possibly my last beach hunt this year.

Got a strong feeling this morning that I should go to my local big beach. The festivals and big events are over for the year, and finally parking is free 🥳 I really didn't expect much, and for the first two hours that was the case. The tide was very low today, I think that's part of what made me go, the high beach was pretty barren of finds but I noticed the shoreline had quite a few cuts in it. The North wind has been pounding the shoreline for quite a while. Got there around 9AM, it was still 46 degrees but the water is still warm and the sun was up, so I never felt the cold. I searched this beach for 2 hours and got quite a few coins near the edge of the water. My count was 37 coins for the day. I ended up with a small amount of clad, a few old things, a silver earring, and a jeweled cross on a tiny chain. I found it on Amazon for $5.99 🤬 At first I thought it might be gold due to the low ID, but it's not. After 2 hours of finding pretty much the same old same old, I decided to hunt a stretch of beach I call "the spot", it is about 50 yards long. The tide by then was really low, lower than it has been in a while. It was then that I almost felt like I went back in time, I started finding coin after coin that was over 100 years old. 🤯 I couldn't leave that spot despite being tired, and I'm glad I didn't: I got 4 silver coins! 2 Barber Quarters, a Barber dime, and a Mercury dime. Under those are 4 "V" nickels, and a Buffalo nickel. Two Indian heads and 5 wheats. The most interesting thing that occurred today was finding the Merc, it was sitting on top of a huge piece of iron, yet the D2 sniffed it out. 😎 The iron chunk literally fills the frame. Trash was bits of everything, about 2 handfuls of lead, copper screws and bullet shells, and the usual junk.

Beautiful weather here this week, but the ground is drying up so I need to get out as much as possible. No rain in sight for the next 15 days. 😵 I have a permission where I dug a half of a 1607 King James 1 sixpence, and recently got permission to hunt the land across the road as well. Earlier in the week I scouted the new place, and used ONX Hunt to mark a spot in the middle of the field where I detected a possible deep coin. I only had a composite trowel, and after getting down 4 inches I still couldn't hear the target with my MI-6. I marked the spot in ONX and left. The landowner of the new permission mentioned that he might sell some of the land and to check with him after the corn was harvested. I sent him a text in the morning, but didn't immediately hear back from him so I went across the road to my other permission. The corn was cut really short and may have been bush hogged, a very fortunate instance. I really dislike hunting in corn stalks but these were cut right to the ground. In about 4 hours hunting the spot where I found an assortment of extremely old relics and the coin dating to the first explorers here, I did pretty well: A large coat button, a silver wash button, a small decorated cuff button, drawer knob, half of a knee buckle, either a rivet or collar stud, a small triangle that may be a cut coin, and a pewter object that says "Police Whistle". I tried to find a whistle with similar stamping but could not. The really old buttons came from the area where I dug the KJ1 sixpence, so they are probably from that period. The whistle bit came from the edge of the field near the road. I got a text later in the day from the landowner saying it was ok to hunt the field across the road, so I used ONX Hunt to get to the spot I got that coin signal in. I'm pretty impressed with how accurate that app is. I dug down and about 8-12" down was a 1934 wheat penny. That and some other finds came up, nothing impressive except for the last find of the day which gave me hope for this field: An old thin button. The farm is about 40 acres so I'll have a lot of searching to do! Trash was pretty much all firearm related, including a live shotgun shell. Just a few bits of aluminum and steel, you have to dig those buck balls if you want buttons. It was nice to add a few more bits to my KJ1 box.

Took a short 6 day camping trip to a local campground for a Halloween weekend, I've hunted this campground for the last 3 years and found hundreds of coins, even a gold ring. It's a big place with 1100 sites, and only about an hour from my home. I only hunted 3 of the 6 days, about 5 hours a day so in 15 hours I did pretty good, I'm all about getting the most stuff in the least amount of time: 172 coins - $16.15, even two wheat pennies, a 1944 and a 1958. Got a couple of toy cars, the monster truck was a foot deep and the loader is a 70's Matchbox made in England. I put this in jewelry because I got plenty of that, 4 earrings, 3 rings, 3 charms and a big steel pendant. The watch is a child's "Gizmo" watch, I ordered a charger so I could identify the owner. Here's my worst trash haul, often less than the finds, but I removed all the iron from the tot lots in order to pay back the campground and maybe prevent some injuries. It's was an incredible week, mostly warm and totally dry. We gave out candy one day, and had a blast. Shame camping season is over, but relic season will be in full swing soon. Happy Halloween y'all! 🍀 Update: I got a charger for 8 bucks on Amazon, charged it up and got in touch with "Mommy", and it will be on its way to her tomorrow 😎

I'm getting ready for my last camping trip of the year this week, really didn't have time to travel to a permission, but this afternoon I got this really strong feeling that I should hunt a small field behind my house. I'm glad I did. The field is only about and acre or so, I've found an early buckle, some buttons and tombacs here. I really thought today that I would find a coin. If you can you should always follow your hunches, if you get a feeling in the field that you ought to "go over there", DO IT. I have found many great things this way. Today was no exception, and a great feeling. I didn't get much junk: Just a few headstamps and an old copper nail. I think the pull tab is probably from the War of 1812 🙄 The British came up the river behind my house and brought a lot of beer. 🤣 Seriously though, my relic finds were cool: A lead weight or game piece, a lock box keyhole escutcheon, an old brass thimble, and the coin I thought I would find: An 1869 IHP, a semi-key date coin in its own right, only 6 million were minted. It's in pretty good shape, but examining it under my coin microscope revealed another attribute that makes it even more desirable, the "9 over 9" restrike. Here is a pic from the USA coin book: I'm pretty sure of it. 🥳 Follow your hunches! 🍀

Don't know what it is this year, for the second time I've found gold that came with a moral obligation 🤔 Apparently the karma from the last time I found gold and "did the right thing" led me to an even greater test, I hope I passed... This past week I noticed one of my permissions had been harvested of corn, they cut it really short. I've been eager to get out and relic hunt, this particular spot has been hit hard, but I hoped I'd find something and I did. Got out there fairly early, and decided to look for a gold coin that I was originally asked to find when I first got this permission. I poked around for about 45 minutes or so where they told me the coin should be, only hearing and digging aluminum. I wanted to go to other parts of the 67 acre field, so I headed out feeling I had done my due diligence. I've spent hours looking for that coin over the last couple of years. Today I brought my WS6 Master setup with the 9" coil. I figured the 9" would be easier to get around the corn stalks but the battery wore down fast, later I switched to my trusty 13" coil and the RC. Not 5 minutes into my walk across the field I got an upper mid tone, and a solid 79 in all directions. I'd been finding nothing, so I was glad to finally find something. It was more than something: 1886 S $5 gold coin. It also had a gold bezel around it but it was mangled. There was also a chain, I'll have to look for that some more but it's probably part of a tilling machine now. 🙄 The landowner drove up, and joked with me that he now wants half of everything I find, and I said "How about everything I've found today?", and held out the coin. You should have seen his face. I said "But wait, there's more!" and handed him the bent bezel. This coin has been lost for a long time, probably 5-10 years or so. The landowner thought he knew where it was lost, but it wasn't near that today. There is a long story behind all this but I've written enough about it. He did say he felt bad taking it from me, but I said "Honor feels much better than deceit", and I thanked him for all the stuff he did let me have. Nothing I've found was as valuable or desirable as this coin, but I've done well. He also has now allowed me to hunt around the house. 🙂 This coin and another were passed down by the original builder of the farmhouse. I also did good afterward: Mid sized button with shank and no marks, a broken brass object I believe to be a small crotal bell, a suspender clip that is decorated with a fish and a dragonfly, and a large copper or brass strap. Also got a small lock slide. The best objects are the two small buttons: Really old one with decoration; And a most interesting ball button with no base, the shank soldered inside. I figured out why I got so much trash: This might be some good advice to the more inexperienced with the Deus 2. I've been hunting all summer in full tones, if you follow my posts the trash got to be less than the good finds. It didn't start that way, listening to the tonal nuances was the process that got me a successful summer. Now I'm using Relic with pitch tones and I'll have to learn it all over again. 🤔 My point is that bouncing around different programs with different tones will mess you up. Find programs and settings that work, and stick with them. It will get better. I use a modified Beach Sensitive and Relic, that's pretty much it. I might switch between the two to verify a target, but that happens increasingly less. Relic for relics, and Beach for beach. Ok, I have one question for y'all, am I now in the Gold Coin club, or am I disqualified because I "knew" it was there? It was lost the same as any gold coin gets lost... Anyway a great day. Yet again I had to take the moral high ground with an awesome find, and it feels pretty good. 🍀

I almost didn't go on this trip, a potential tropical storm was forecast, but the storm hit far south so it wasn't all that bad, got there safely, and the rain stayed south of us for the most part. It never got really windy, but because of the heavy surf and King Tide, the beach was pretty eroded and in some places very small. The tide only got to low in the afternoon, but it never got all that low and the surf was dangerous. I ended up going out twice later in the day as the beach was really packed by then. I got out early every day, went to different parts of the 11 mile strip, one thing I love about this place is that there are lots of free parking lots, and most of them have either bathrooms or portable facilities and shower stations so I can clean up my gear before going back. Best place to hunt I've ever been. Here's my worst trash day, just an example of what I threw out: The good finds almost always outnumbered the trash. I ended up with a fair amount of bits: Here's all the junk jewelry and odd stuff. The tiny chain is silver. Wish I could have found the rest of it. I dug 121 coins over the 5 days: Nothing spectacular but I'm always shocked at how many dimes I find, the Deus loves them, some were probably near or over a foot deep. I did get a nice silver ring but it was pretty mangled: https://alohajewelryco.com/collections/925-sterling-silver/products/copy-of-925-sterling-silver-6mm-hawaiian-plumeria-flower-scroll-stackable-ring-gold?variant=32542193680484 I straightened it out as best as I could. I did get gold but it was an obligation. I waved my detector over the sand in front of a sign, and got a really loud 96, generally the ID of a toy car, but I dug this small container that contained a ring. It was a nice 10k gold ring, pretty large. There was also a laminated tag with the name of a person, and two years on either side. The container appeared to have sand in it, but I realized immediately it was a funerary urn. 😬 I dug a much deeper hole, put everything back in the container, and re-buried it so that the Deus could not detect it at full power. Luckily no one saw me do it. It's not the strangest thing I've ever found, but certainly the most sad. 😥 Overall not a spectacular hunt but a good one.

Well I didn't do as well as some other person that posted today 😅 but it was another fine day at the beach, I brought the D2 with the 13" for the dry, and hunted until the tide got low. I really didn't expect much, but last week I saw a lot of people come out on Monday, so I thought I'd find something anyway. Did pretty good in the dry, and the last two hours were spent in the water using my second D2 with the 9". I don't have any pics from that because I have to leave a lot of stuff behind in the truck, I can only bring my valet key. In 7 hours out there I managed to get 42 coins, unfortunately nothing older than 1965. This is pretty average for me there. I got two hot wheels (thank God 😏), a little silver key pendant, and the misshapen band in the center is some kind of bracelet or earring dripping with CZ's. The small ring is silver plated and has a couple of stones. I guess someone intended to make earrings out of the shells, they are attached by two stainless keyrings. Oops. My favorite find of the day wasn't stellar, but it is gold plated: A nice ring with CZs that my wife snagged for herself. I found a huge knife in the water along with a few coins but it's been hit a lot lately, probably because I've been posting some pretty good stuff out of there. 🤔 Next week a week long hunt back in the Outer Banks! 😎

I had hoped after Labor Day weekend that my local beach would have a decent amount of drops, it usually does. There was a big craft fair there as well. Chase came down to join me, getting there early is good but someone had already detected it the day before, there are people that leave a noticeable pattern. Sometimes the river is not so great, glad I didn't go up there the next day because it looked like this: 3 foot waves and strong current. No going in there! Got there before 7, beautiful day but windy. The river was pretty choppy, and I wasn't prepared to go in it, so I hunted all the usual spots. There is a section there that produces some old coins at low tide, and Chase did rather well. He might post his own or add it here. I got a couple of old wheats, one without a discernible date and one in great shape, a 1946 D. As usual I ended up with about 40 coins, even a slap in the face 1965 quarter 🤣 Got the usual Hot Wheels and a junk toe ring. My find of the day was a 2002 Euro, Chase got one too. Mine is minted in Italy. I've never found a Euro before, not bad, they're worth US $1.11 right now. They only made about 965 million of them. 🙄 It wasn't a spectacular hunt but it was fun to have a detecting buddy along, I stayed a little longer than he did but left when the beach filled up. The trash did not outnumber the finds so that was good. The season is winding down, got another week long beach trip coming up, I'll be getting ready for that. 🍀

Went to my big beach today, got there early as usual. It was 67 degrees, only warmed up to 83 today but thunderstorms cut me short, I was out there 6 hours. Supposedly there was a lot of activity last weekend, but afternoon severe storms really put a damper on things. I did do well, and as usual got some surprises. Dug a good amount of trash, those old pull tabs come up in the 70s. Fishing tackle, sinkers and some old copper screws. The finds outnumbered the trash however: Got 55 coins today not including the crusty Zincolns I threw out. Even got 4 wheats, the old coins were popping up again. I could only read two dates, 1944 and 1917. Having 100+ year old coins come up is quite a shock on a beach. 🤔 I also got a lot of other stuff, the small medicine bottle and skeleton key were where the old wheats were. I guess an old spot has been uncovered, in previous posts I've gotten old silver as well. The small wave ring might be silver. The flashlight works, has three levels of brightness and is rechargeable. Got my usual Hot Wheel, an old copper bracelet, a couple of earrings. It was an interesting day.

Went up to the beach yesterday to get a trial run of my Tube Tubb rig in, another early start and a long hunt. I had been to the small beach and saw there were no jellyfish, so I figured there wouldn't be any further up the river. Well I was wrong, the water was loaded with them. 😬 Luckily I brought some long quick dry pants and had no problem. Got a nice 93 and thought to myself "well, another quarter, that's cool!" Along with some clad I ended up with this blackened heavy ring: It's around a Size 4, weighs over 6 grams. It cleaned up nicely, another one for my wife. I'll probably take it to a local jeweler for authentication and further cleaning, Chanel rings usually have specific hallmarks but this one only has "925" and some other obliterated mark, it also appears to have been resized. I'm calling it as fake but 6.2 grams of silver for a ring that small is pretty good. The stones appear to be real but low grade diamonds, they are so small they're hard to test. Here's the trash for the day, didn't dig any in the water but sure did on the beach. I wish I had some tiny toy cinder blocks for the truck, the tires were all gone. 🤣 Ended up with 31 more coins, a few older memorials, but the spot where I've been hitting old stuff is pretty cleaned out now. Got another Lord's Prayer coin in the water. I was in the water for about 3 hours and spent the rest on the beach, locals told me not many people had been there as school is back almost everywhere. There was another guy water hunting, he did the other beach but said he got nothing but coins and had to go way out to get them. He's a nice guy and didn't come over to where I was.

Finally got some cooler weather here so I made it a priority to get in the woods for a couple of hours. I really don't get much detecting in over the summer months so this was nice. I made it out to a spot that has given up a lot of colonial coins and relics over the years, and it continues to keep on giving. I didn't realize what I had until I got home and cleaned it up. Looking forward to getting back out again soon.