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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.

Here are a few pictures of some finds for June. I found other loads of junk rings, coins, etc. and other silver not pictured. These are the nicer ones. The solid chain is .925 and weighs 36.8 grams. A heavily worn signet ring, 14k, 6 grams... A tiny 10k with 3 stones, not diamonds and a hefty 11.8 gram platinum. All found in the water at various depths.

3 in the same hole! Who knew treasure hunting could get so... intimate. Joke aside, I'm very happy with these results. Value-wise, just over $1000 AUD in scrap from maybe 4 hours of detecting. Day 1, I met my friend down at one of our good spots. Very cold. 13 degrees in the water at the moment (55F). Spent a few hours in pretty bad visibility water and I managed to score 1 gold 14ct ring as well as a few other odds. Day 2 (a couple days later though), just as cold, but we knew the tides and swell were going to be PERFECT. For comparison, it's never what I would call 'perfect'. It was flat, calm, no wind, no waves, nothing..for the first hour anyway. I haven't seen it so flat since last week, and before that, years. To line up the tides, visibility and weather is very hard at this spot. We ended up getting in the water before daybreak and I was equip with my Blu3 Nomad and only the light from my Manticore. It's the first time I've used it at this spot as the waves are always too big. I ventured out a bit deeper and didn't find a lot, so came back to the shallower end, about 2 meters deep where most people swim. Boom, started getting coins and bangles and other bits and pieces. One thing I noticed when using such a thick dive hood with the nomad is that it's very hard to hear targets even with the "sound boost" feature, so I found myself mostly looking at the screen and kind of switching between the Nomad and my snorkel. After about 20 minutes, got a nice signal and found a cool ring. I can't remember which one came first but I got 3 rings and a coin! 2 were gold and 1 was a cool little silver snake. I cleared that patch and went over to another rocky section and scored another nice 18ct ring as well as more coins. Great fun! One might ask, "aren't you afraid of sharks???". I'd reply, "Nah, never seen any, it'll be fine". Imagine my surprise when friend messaged me the following day with a video of a shark he spotted around the corner, LOL. Not sure what type it is, but he said it looked harmless. Have tons of videos to edit for Youtube but not enough time unfortunately. I'll get around to it eventually.

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.

Here’s a photo of my findings after hunting 4 hours with the AQ and standard coil. All fake. Lots of bottle caps and tent stakes I didn’t feel like keeping. Found in the water, the wet, and extreme dry. 7 other guys detecting on a so so day at 80 degrees

Got out to my big beach today, long hunt. The only other detectorist I saw today was in the water. He checked in with me later kinda disappointed, but he did get one ring. 👍 Nice guy. Got out there early, beautiful morning, weather was great and Debby had just trashed the place. The flood line was higher than I've ever seen it, but it was high tide when I got there so the lower cut wasn't visible. Hung out there 7 hours, talked to people, and just bashed around on the higher beach until the tide got low, then hunted the waters edge. I did pretty good, only got 40 coins today instead of the 60 last week, no silver, but some of my other finds were pretty impressive. The large aluminum token has a gear shape stamped in it, and says "50" on the top and "FIFTY" on the bottom. No clue what it might be for. Got the usual toys and bling, including a pretty nice plated ring. Glad I'm still on my Hot Wheels streak. 🙄 Trash was pretty heavy, lots of lead and some hot rocks that hit in the 80s on the D2. My favorite find of the day was this working, stainless Michael Kors watch for my wife, they sold for around $250. I'd say it paid for my gas and parking 😎

Just got back from a week at Emerald Isle, it was really hot and humid but I managed to get out twice almost every day. I've done much better with the amount of coins and other stuff I've dug there, but not as good as this time with rings. I went out early and again in the early evening most days, it's my wife's annual "birthday week", so I hoped I'd find her something nice. I cover about a mile or two of beach, both the dry and the wet, and one day I attempted a water hunt at low tide in these troughs that appear, they're about 3-4 feet deep and have a current. There were signals but everything turned out to be sinkers that I gave to the fishermen. My first find was a pretty big one, a Diamond stud earring that pegged my diamond tester: It looks to be about 3/4 carat but because the setting is 925 it might be a Moissanite. I'll probably take it to the jeweler for appraisal. Overall I've found way more here, here's a few pics from last year: Got my wife a nice pair of silver earrings. This year, well, meh. Not as many coins and only one Matchbox car 😏 I wonder if things have changed a bit. 🤔 The campground is way more expensive for sure. One day I decided to go to another beach entirely, and did rather well. Here's the jewelry haul, 3 of the rings came from that beach, one a foot deep, and the big bling nameplate was 2' down: The nameplate is kinda bendy so it might be silver backed, it's really heavy but I'll have to test it. It cost me $4 an hour to go to that beach, but the return was worth it: First is a silver Pandora ring. Second is a wave ring, also 925. This one is a cheap ring but it has a nice stone and appears to be rhodium plated, but it has no hallmarks. My wife was pleased that the two silver rings out of 3 fit her, the third is too small. The only other ring barely worth mentioning was this one, it has what might be an opal but it's only silver plated, again no hallmarks. This place is so expensive now and hard to get my monster toy hauler into, so we probably won't go back there. At least I got her two nice finds and a possible diamond for her future use.

This goes back to July 5th. There are so many teething problems to take care of at the house it has been difficult to get out and swing- but that will change, I swear it....So I arrive at this beach early to beat the surfer boys to the free parking spots. This stretch of sand is never crowded; it's more of a wildcard play. I decided to veer left down low at a nice minus tide, which yielded nada for a half mile walk. On the return trip, I went high slope to mid slope (still on the minus tide) when the targets started showing up. Many of the targets were coins, which I thought was a good sign, so I did a tight grid not missing an inch of sand. The "patch" ended being only about 15' x 5' in size, with absolutely nothing showing on either end. One of the last targets dug ended up being the 14K 10 gram white gold band. It's nice to find a heavy bomber now and again. I figure the high tide grabbed stuff off the towel line, dragged it all down and deposited most of the items in the grouping that I came upon. As luck would have it, somebody beat me to this area and gridded a large space not more than 20 feet from where my little patch began. Missed it by that much......my magic wand on this trip was the Axiom with the 11 x 7 DD, salt mode, sensitivity=5, threshold @ -7.... -Jerry

Jun 2 beach hunt with the Manticore and M15 coil. Does anyone know anything about carved Jade? I dug this pendant yesterday. It is hallmarked 14K 585, so I think it has a foreign origin. Google Lens was not much help but did at least show Japanese, Chinese, Burmese and a few other Asian countries as possible origins. What is the carving? It appears to be the same on both sides. I really can't tell if it is floral, animal, mythical, or just a random freestyle carving. I am hoping someone here is knowledgeable in Jade and particularly carved jade and can school me on what the piece is or isn't. Another thing is that the bale is really a clasp and that is probably how it was lost off of the chain. Thanks, Joe

On Monday I found a kids ring, on Tuesday I found a silver bead, today (Thursday) I found a silver wave ring, that's all of note I found

I found with Manticore so far. Of course target surface area played a role too 😁 1.36 gram around 6 to 7 inches down. as deep as full length of that lesche

Our month ends on the 3rd Thursday of the month. This month was very slow until the last 3 nights. It was then that I found gold, silver and junk rings and jewelry from Midnight to 4-5 AM.

We've had a spell of hot weather here on the East Coast, but if you get up early enough it's not bad, and you can get off the beach before it fills up. Hit my local (ha, an hour drive one way) beach yesterday hoping to do a water hunt, as yet the jellyfish have not appeared, or are very few. I got there at 7am and decided to hunt the dry first, there had to be a lot of activity because it's the day after the 4th of July weekend. The river was flat and I had a few hours to low tide. For the dry hunt I used the 13" coil. I can sort of get away with dunking it a little deeper than the 9" or 11", in about 5 inches of water I'll lose the signal. Did pretty good there, all the usual toys and coins. A guy came rushing out on the beach with his detector while I was out there, said something about how much it sucked that I was there, threw his stuff back in the car and went to another place 🤷‍♂️. Cool, all the more for me I guess. 🙄 At about 10 it started to get hot, but a breeze came up, so I got my other D2 with the 9" and antenna, and the new float sifter I wanted to test. I bought this one not even thinking that the mesh was stainless, my bad, as the coins and other stuff come up pretty much the same color as the rocks, so they are hard to see, and you can't pinpoint because stainless. 🤔😏 I'm going to either try and get some plastic mesh for it, or return it and get the fabulous Tube Tubb that costs about twice as much. 🤬 Here's the crap, keeping it real for y'all. I did find a big VW Microbus toy that I gave to a little kid, his parents were thrilled, and I got some space in my bag. I like doing that. It was a great karma day, a woman offered me a cold bottle of water while taking to her about detecting. Came away with enough to justify the $3 an hour parking I guess: A couple of toy cars, the Mercedes was over a foot deep in the wash and kept banging 95+. A few of the coins were deep too, I must not have a lot of minerals or salt in the water at the edge because they were 3 scoops or more to get to them and I had my big stainless scoop this trip. I don't see that shift in ID - ever, particularly with dimes and quarters. Jewelry was sparse but not bad, I scored a 4g silver band, and some unidentified metal ring that my wife likes. It's beat up but should polish nicely. Cool looking but no hallmarks. The earring was disappointing, turned out to be 14k over brass, it has a stone in it but it's probably CZ. It finally rained a bit, so I got a nice rainbow photo, an end to a pretty good day.

I'm posting this in Coins and Relics because all the pieces of jewelry are relics. ? This isn't a beach hunt, I've done much worse there ? What seemed to be a "let's check this place out a little more and go somewhere else" hunt turned out to be a whole day in this little field, I invited Chase down for the day because it was going to be warm and I thought it might be worth the trip for him. It's a small field, only a few acres, totally nondescript. I got there a bit before Chase, walked back and forth along this part of the field, there is another huge farm next door. We think there was a house here, but nothing exists on any Topographic maps. By the end of the day we were sure of it. First find was what may be a gold plated metal ring, no marks inside. Might have been a replacement or bargain wedding band: It only weighs 2.6 grams, but it does ring when dropped. A 91 on the Deus 2. I'll probably take it to my jeweler who has an XRF gun to make sure, because it does weigh more than a similar size 14k band. Next find was a 1944 war nickel: Chase arrived , we walked all over and found some wheats and lots of junk. The place is stupid with crap, aluminum, bits of old brass and tons of iron everywhere. I was running Tekkna, and it did well for me. We didn't find much more for quite a while, we were thinking of leaving, and then I found this mangled silver spoon: Almost 16 grams of coin silver. I then found this trunk plate, a Civil War era plate from a Washington DC trunk maker used until 1880. I joked that I just found the jewelry box plate... ? Who knew I would sorta be right... Chase went off to check out the back of the field, he had been on top of a hill finding nothing but large pieces of aluminum and concertina reeds, and I walked back from where I found the spoon, and got one of my best finds of the day: This massive 8.4g Sterling ring with probably a glass stone, it's purple and seems shattered. I motioned for Chase to come over to this spot, and we just kept finding jewelry. He will probably add his finds later, it was an insane day. ? Very difficult to find stuff in all that iron and trash, we both were using D2s with the 9", anything bigger wouldn't have done as well. Next I dug this Sterling pin: It was taco'ed but I got it straight. Here's the trash, lots of large brass, lead and aluminum. I didn't get much iron at all, Tekkna is great for this kind of challenge. Here's the total haul, the best is yet to come: Obviously finding a really old ring is a thrill but nothing could have prepared me for the last big find: Apparently this is quite rare, researching it only found one other like it. It's a 1904 Republican National Committee badge for the Chicago Convention, where Theodore Roosevelt was selected. The Chairman had this 14k version made for him, but sadly passed away before the Convention: His was 60 some odd grams, my piece is 35: It may at least be plated. It's unbelievable it held up this good for 120 years. ? I haven't had as productive a hunt as this in quite a while, we hope to go back and find more. It's very difficult going.

Turf hunting can be tough, especially when it gets hot and gravity seems to be increasing based on what my knees tell me. My left thumb has developed soreness from digging so many holes. Sounds like I'm getting old! What's the cure? A little gold! On July 1, I went back to the same soccer park that gave up the heavy 14k on June 28. I tried my best to squeeze out another ring from the same area, but it was not meant to be. I went across the parking lot and started swinging around the soccer goal perimeter and then into the goal itself. I was using the 15" coil on the Equinox 800, so the metal goal was messing with my detection ability. I got a signal of around a 12 right in the corner of the back of the goal. Out popped a ring that at first I thought was titanium. Upon closer inspection (thank you to the inventor of the zoom on the camera in a phone), a 14k appeared--my first white gold! I got the same signal immediately after the ring, just about a foot away. That time it was aluminum. 😱 Today I was fishing with my 20ish son, and we were catching nothing. He has more grit for catching nothing, so I said he could keep fishing and I would dig for a bit seeing we were at a park already. 😉 About 5 minutes after letting him be on his own, I dug what I though was a copper ring. Only after seeing the front more closely did I have a hint it was just 10k doing what it does. After rubbing a bit, it showed its true colors. It's strange how I went a whole year without finding gold, and all of a sudden I had three within about a week. I guess that's why we do what we do!

Keeping the summertime rolling, got out early this morning to my small beach. We had some rough storms yesterday so I hoped some stuff got stirred up. Normally I'd chicken out if there are waves, but some light training with 2' waves seemed ok to me because I'm going to a very big beach soon, and may water hunt. I saw a few small jellyfish today so the season is starting here soon. Detecting will be dry only because it's too hot to wear waders. I was wearing the 5mm neoprene socks in my water shoes again, the silt here is much finer, so I wanted to see if they would keep the fine stuff out and they did. 👍 I was only there for about 4 hours, people started showing up before I was done. I grid searched the water between the fingers in the photo, there are 4 similar sections. The water is a little more than waist deep at the end of the fingers. I was using the D2 with the 9" coil and the BH-01 bone phones, there isn't a lot of aluminum there so I didn't mind being forced to full tones. That way I could fully dunk the detector. Ended up with a small amount of trash: Typical beach junk, I try to get the bottle caps out and any sharp junk aluminum. Visitors don't know how good they have it! 😎 Got a few coins out there, at first I thought one of the quarters might be silver but it's a 1979. Oh well. Just at the wash I got a solid 50, and thought "please don't be aluminum!" It wasn't. A recently dropped silver chain (925) with a silver decorated Islamic sword, called a "Zulfiqar" sword. Not sure what the text says. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulfiqar Another good water hunt! 🥳 I'm curious, going to air test each piece and see which dragged the other down. 50 is odd for silver, but the chain could have done that. 🤔

Got out today to a local soccer park and had 45 minutes before the rain ran me off. At about the 30 minute mark, the Equinox 800, running in Park 1 with the 15" coil, hit a variable 22-24 signal. Those in-the-know realize this is not a typical signal. Too high for a zinc penny and too low for a dime. Thought it might be a screw top, but it caused me to have a giddy feeling as I knelt down to locate it with the Garrett carrot. Upon digging around it and flipping the plug, my first thought was that it was a gold- tone stainless ring because I have been disappointed before. That was until I picked it out and realized that it looked more real than not, and the weight was promising. My finger cleared enough mud for my phone camera to see 14K. I put it on my pinky and continued to detect until getting rained out. When I got home, I was able to see the name and date in the inside of the ring. I have done some looking for the owner, but it only has a first name and date. I think a reunion is possible. This week has been productive: my first silver and then gold ring since moving to Minnesota a year ago. The small gold ring in the pics is my own wedding band. The gold is worth about $580-my biggest single gold find by far.

I went back to my big beach yesterday to see if I could turn up any more rings in the water. The tide was going out when I got there, so the water was pretty flat. It was a windy day but very dry. You might see that I was using the BH-01 headphones on the Deus 2. I only used them for a little while because they have a drawback - they only use square audio and don't allow High Square, which for me is a big issue because of the amount of aluminum I can ignore. I ended up switching to the WSA-II headphones, which then limited me to detecting with the remote at the top of the water. Thanks to all the people that recommended stuff to get to keep the sand and rocks out of my footwear, I didn't have much time before this hunt so I managed to get some 5mm neoprene dive socks that I could wear inside some old Columbia water shoes I have. The shoes will let sand in, but the socks didn't allow it to get to my feet. Not exactly the height of fashion, but I just looked like an old geezer with compression socks 🤣 I didn't care, and was able to stay in the water most of the day, until I found a washed out section of the beach that some old finds turned up. One thing I noticed yesterday was that for some reason targets were difficult to retrieve, especially when the waves started later. A few days ago here most of my targets came up within 4 scoops, this time it was taking 20 minutes just to get them sometimes , and sometimes it took so long I gave up. Perhaps you dedicated scoopers can shed some light on this? 🤔 Got a pretty decent haul and something new, and something unexpected, but that is typical for this place, it's always got something odd going on. Got the usual pile o' clad, ended up with 3 old coins too. A wheat penny, a 1945 Mercury dime, and a 1950D 50 Pfennig coin from Germany. The Merc was in pretty good shape but black from years under the sand, I have dug a few Mercury dimes here, some from sand replenishment, and others from the shoreline after storms. The 50P coin came out of the water. I also got two rings, an old beater with a big CZ or rhinestone, and a new one for me, a Black Zirconium ring with a Koa inlay, which was easy to find: https://www.happylaulea.com/products/black-zirconium-ring-with-hawaiian-koa-wood-offset-inlay-6mm-flat-shape-comfort-fitment?_pos=1&_sid=11af8d3d3&_ss=r Not gold or silver, but unique. Never seen one like that before. The metal bird is old but I have no idea what it would have come off of, and the ring with raised bumps is my whatzit for the day. The silver band with the moon and stars might be a bird band. Got next to no trash, when I started using the WSA-II phones I could skip a lot more crap, and yet again I noticed someone has been skipping pull tabs because I dug 7 nickels. A good portion of the clad and nickels came from the shoreline where a lot of erosion occurred. I didn't bring my "flip float", mistake I won't be making again. Here you get a huge pile of stones in every scoop, so you end up having to go to the beach to dump it, making it difficult to find the spot you were in that might have additional targets. Thanks to the socks I was able to stay out there for 7 hours, even though it was hot (91), the wind was off the water and it was very comfortable.

Was out for a couple hours with the Nox 800 in Park 1 with the 15" coil hunting for deeper coins on a local park soccer field and sidelines. We have had plenty of rain to make the ground a bit more willing to give up deep signals. The spoon was the first thing that was found, and it came out of the hole in that condition. The ring was wavering between 27-28 which was a hint as to it being something other than a quarter or dime. The ring does contain what my "Diamond Selector " says are diamonds. Sadly, it looks like it was hit by a lawnmower. The first writing I saw in the inside of the ring was 14k; then the GP showed up before the final 925 was seen. The waterfow band was an interesting find that I believe likely came off a goose...back in the 1940's!

Today I had a feeling I needed to go back to the beach I was hunting on Monday, there were no jellyfish in the river, so I wanted to do a water hunt. Packed up the D2 with the 9" outfitted with the RCDIGS mount and antenna, grabbed my titanium scoop and headed out early, it was 74 in the morning but expected to be 90. There was a coincidental low tide, not the lowest but pretty good. Dressed in quick dry clothes and sandals, I hit the water waist deep. Found a dime, and then got a 99, I've only rarely seen a number that high on the Deus. It took me a while to dig that target, I can't see the coil in this river waist deep, so I had to pinpoint and follow the coil with the scoop. This is what I got: This huge honker of a ring, at first I thought it was a class ring. A bit later after finding some coins in this spot I got a really clean 52, and dug this little guy. I quickly put it in my zipper pocket, these shorts have zip pockets with a mesh back so they don't float. I find the less I carry the better. I even had the Pinpointer attached with a lanyard to my belt, and stuck in the other side pocket. I have a dry bag for my phone and keys I keep chest height. Didn't do too bad! Here's the "trash", I did throw out some wire and an aircraft clamp as well. Got a couple bucks in change, oldest coin 1967, some small bling, a heart shaped silver earring, and a broken chain, maybe plated. Two "train penny" tokens, one with the Lord's Prayer, and one from NC Aquarium. Only got one toy today, this pony monster truck. Got home and identified the gold ring, it's a 14k Simply Vera Vera Wang stackable, with 17 diamonds. They come in 1/4 or 1/2 ct TW, my wife thinks this one is 1/2 ct. So about $750. The crusty, nasty looking huge ring turned out to be this: https://palmbeachjewelry.com/products/mens-2-89-tcw-square-cut-cubic-zirconia-ring-in-925-sterling-silver.html However, it is older and the stones test out as low grade diamonds. It polished up nicely. Hallmarks are "925" and "SETA". Quite the honker, it came in at about 15g. Until next time! 🍀

Finally got a chance to hit my local big beach after a trip to Myrtle Beach and the Outer Banks. My Myrtle Beach post is gone, and I haven't posted my Outer Banks trip. It was fun hitting many beaches in OBX, but not incredibly productive, other than finding one silver ring and a couple dollar coins. It's been a while since I posted anything, but it seems to be all good now. 🙂 Got up at 6am to get there by 8, it's an hour drive. I like getting there early because there is no one there. It's a really stony beach so I have to use my stainless scoop, didn't want to trash the titanium one there. I only hunted for 4 hours, it's getting pretty warm here. My first good target was a dime, about 8"+ down, the D2 really sounds off well on coins down to about a foot, you will get a faint high tone and the same ID as if it was closer. I love that. I'm using a pretty modified Beach Sensitive program. My next target surprised me, it was a mostly high 70s ID with some lower tones, it was in the wash where the river waves come in. If I get any good signal in the water I'll dig it, only skipping iron that sounds off in all directions. It turned out to be a silver bracelet chain, black from a long time in the water. It took 3 scoops to get it and my scoop is big, so it was pretty deep. Later on I was on the high beach, and started getting multiple signals in a small spot. There must have been an earring vendor there over the weekend, I ended up with 10 of them, all different except for a pair still on the card. Not surprising that the vendor may have dropped non matching stuff, but to find a brand new pair on the card was a win for both me and my wife who scoffed them up for 4 July. 🤣 Here's the haul, 26 coins, 11 earrings, all costume variety, a gold plated Bobby pin, and the small silver bracelet. Someone was skipping pull tabs which is why I got so many nickels 🤔 The rose earring came later from another place. I heard Steve H. loud and clear and am reducing resolution on my photos from now on, so sorry for not being able to zoom in much. It was good to put some silver in the bag! Especially a small chain. Here's the trash, pretty horrendous for me but I wasn't about to leave any gold behind. 🤔 Bottle caps were all sight picks, as was the Taylor Swift sticker 😁 Even got an old pocket knife. While not the most productive place for precious metals, this beach always has its surprises.

I took up a ritual as a pure pastime, devoting a few hours to the shoreline. Some time ago I found with great wonder, a small ring in a really forgotten stretch of a beach, where I could barely find iron and a few coins. This morning, it being stormy and so for the rest of the week, I returned a little further than the spot where I was successful. The only promising area with obvious erosion was about 10 square meters. A very strong concentration of clay and black sand was making Ctx sick, so I immediately opened the pattern and changed separation, given the incredible masking I could hear. What happened next, in a dozen coins, is nothing short of a miracle for me. For the first time I found myself looking for a pendant that might belong to the necklace instead of the other way around, and the little ring had opened a sliver of hope amidst very obvious signals, but mixed with really too much iron. I think the necklace gave a minimal signal because of the knot along the links by the way. Nothing else to record for today, but what a day guys!