Us Gold Coins And The Eqx 800

[ColonelDan]

A question on another forum sparked my attention so I pulled out a few of mine to see how they rang up on the Equinox 800.  The coins were laid separately on the ground so this was nothing more than an air test in Field 1.

Coin      Date    VDI
$0.50    1860      3     (California Gold fractional coin)

$2.50    1925     15

$5.00    1881     18

$10.00  1888     21

[Chase Goldman]

Sounds about right and as expected for gold of varying mass.

[Steve Herschbach]

Great info, thanks!

[Chase Goldman]

Dan,

If you wouldn't mind shipping me your coins so I can independently verify your numbers, that would be greatly appreciated.  

[Steve Herschbach]

Having Googled and compiled all the U.S. gold coin responses I could find for the Equinox here is what I came up with:

Coin      Target ID 

$1.00    10  11  12

$2.50    15  16

$5.00    18  19

$10.00   21

$20.00   25  26  27

Minelab Equinox U.S. common coin and gold coin (yellow) target id numbers

[ColonelDan]

Great post Steve!  Thanks.....

[GB_Amateur]

On 10/20/2019 at 7:41 PM, phrunt said:

That's interesting, the British and Australian Gold sovereigns come up the same numbers as the $2.50 and $5 gold coins.

Although the amount of gold was different in the early US gold coinage (up until 1834) the standard became very close to 15 g of gold in the Eagle ($10 gold piece) and proportionally higher/lower for other denominations.  That's a bit under 1/2 ozt per $10 face value.  So if Sovereigns are similar round number fractions of ozt then your observation makes sense.

 

[Finding History]

Thanks Steve, that is great information.   I'm going to start paying a lot more attention to the 10-12 range in particular  on my colonial site that I believe to be a tavern that operated during War of 1812.  Got 3 Spanish silvers out of it so far (4, 1, and 1/2 reales, all 1780-1790 range), and Escudos and 1/2 Escudos do indeed get discovered by metal detectorists from time to time, so although my chances are slim, it's definitely worthwhile to dig.   

Really enjoying my new Nox 800 (had it almost 3 months now and one of my finds was a 1780 1 Real with a hole in it, included in those 3 that I mentioned), thanks to all who gave input about it to help me make an informed choice.  Still using factory presets and mainly Field 2 for now, will get a little more adventurous with tweaking the settings in the near future. 

[Hunterjunk]

Like phrunt i also note with interest the similar numbers of some of your US coins to our British style gold coins . Half Sovereign = 15  .  Full Sovereign = 18 out of ground , but can be a bit flakey in ground with 17's showing at times . And the Guinea = 18 solid in ground and out .

[Cal_Cobra]

The 1856-S $1 U.S. gold coin I was lucky enough to dig earlier this year was a solid 12 from all angles on my EQX800 and it was about 7" deep: