Beach Season Has Begun

[schoolofhardNox]

      Beach hunt # 28 was a challenge. Started out by helping a friend out with his new (used) Equinox 600. We hit a beach and small park area for 2 ½  hours and it wasn’t producing much, so I left there and went to another beach, hoping for some good finds. Waves were pretty aggressive, and the wind kicked up, so it was much harder detecting than the calm times I had the past few weeks. Not much showing up, some technical issues, and just lots of wasted time was the narrative for this hunt. I actually doubted that I would get any silver and wasn’t even considering gold as an option. The layer I was doing was clearly from the 80’s and I just got plain lucky to get the one silver Roosevelt dime. Most of the copper cents were Memorials with just a few wheats. Kind of glad that hunt is over. ? I knew I should have continued hunting the beach that was giving up silver, but I needed to check out a couple of things at the 2 beaches I hit this hunt. I was hoping to get some silvers from the park area with the E Trac, but I am severely out of practice hunting parks, especially with a machine I have not used much for probably 10-15 years. Well, that is over and for sure next week I am going back to the silver beach. Hopefully conditions have not changed much, and I can continue where I left off. Still better to better to be detecting a beach than working. ?

[GB_Amateur]

I've been doing some early year experimenting, too, with older detectors.  I find it enlightening/educational whether I find anything or not.

I just saw the weather report.  I know you're one of the toughest detectorists out there when it comes to fighting bad weather, but it looks like even you will have to take Saturday off.  ?  Sunday and particularly next week look way better.

[F350Platinum]

Nice hunt! The token reminds me of a Trime.  And you still got silver. ?Not a heck of a lot of trash either.

This weekend is going to be rough.

[schoolofhardNox]

19 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I've been doing some early year experimenting, too, with older detectors.  I find it enlightening/educational whether I find anything or not.

I just saw the weather report.  I know you're one of the toughest detectorists out there when it comes to fighting bad weather, but it looks like even you will have to take Saturday off.  ?  Sunday and particularly next week look way better.

The E Trac with the right program and some patience to weed through a trashy park, can get you a lot of deep silvers (and wheats that mimic silvers ?). My best two machines are both old technology. They made them so good that it will take a while before I retire them. The Equinox had the potential to retire the E Trac but the lack of target ID separation makes the E Trac the winner for parks for me. And it will take a LOT of convincing for me to retire the 5000. Some people swear by Tesoro for cellar hole hunting and I believe them but never tried one there. There is a certain comfort in old machines that I miss.  As for the weather, It can rain from Saturday to Wednesday and that would be fine with me ?

18 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Nice hunt! The token reminds me of a Trime.  And you still got silver. ?Not a heck of a lot of trash either.

This weekend is going to be rough.

Thanks. Them trimes are small. I think I  have only found 3 or 4 of them. When I hunted cellar holes a lot, I would find way more half dimes than trimes. That silver saved my butt for sure. Trash was lighter because I got lazy ?

[schoolofhardNox]

Beach hunt # 29 is my last hunt at this beach…. Really, ? I mean it this time. Pretty hard hunt as targets were rarer until I shifted sections… then the iron showed up. The 5000 gets heavy if you don’t break up the swing time with some digging. A couple of times I went almost a half hour without a signal. I’m fairly sure I am done in the sections that were producing a bunch of silver recently. The 14” Coiltek DD anti-interference coil has really started to click with me. Some fine tuning of the GPX and this coil does above what I was expecting, considering the almost nonstop heavy EMI. The surprise of the hunt was finding the Roosevelt and the Washington at 18”. This was in the same area that I pounded, but this time I crept along like a snail and investigated many slight anomalies to the threshold.  A lot of them were EMI related and resulted in no real signal in the hole once opened up. But two were very deep silvers. So that was a real surprise. I managed 5 silvers for the hunt, with 2 Mercury dimes that almost look like dirt coins and not beach finds. I’m thinking they moved some sand around that was way up on the banks of the beach. Never seen such nice clean coins before. It was also nice to see 3 dated Buffalo nickels and an early 1910 wheat cent. All in all, it was a great day hunting. The rain held off until I was almost done, and the temps were pleasant. Come on next week!!!!

[Rick N. MI]

Impressive hunt. 

[GB_Amateur]

50 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

...2 Mercury dimes that almost look like dirt coins and not beach finds.

One of the Buffies looks to be uncorroded as well.  Is that also rare for these saltwater beach locations?

You're a real iron man (no pun intended..., well, maybe a little ) swinging a GPX5000 for 8.5 hours.  I doubt I could make it much over an hour with that beast, and my back would remind me at bedtime.

[schoolofhardNox]

43 minutes ago, Rick N. MI said:

Impressive hunt. 

Thanks Rick. I usually only have one day off to hunt, so I make sure it's a long one. If I had more days, they would surely be shorter in duration ? I do pay the price the next day, but at least one day a week , I actually get some real exercise. The good stuff makes up for some of the digging.

3 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

One of the Buffies looks to be uncorroded as well.  Is that also rare for these saltwater beach locations?

You're a real iron man (no pun intended..., well, maybe a little ) swinging a GPX5000 for 8.5 hours.  I doubt I could make it much over an hour with that beast, and my back would remind me at bedtime.

It's funny, the deep buffalo nickels in certain areas of the beach come up a dark red color that basically rubs off on my pants. It's the greenish color ones that need real cleaning at home. If I find one that is that deep red color, I just clean it there before it oxidizes or reacts with the sunlight and becomes harder to clean. The same thing happens with some copper cents too. You can rub some clean, but they tone a bit by the time you get home. That nickel was bright silver after a beach clean, but toned a bit by the time I took the picture the next day. As for iron man, just one muscle on one arm ?. The rest of the body is screaming at me at the moment. I tell myself that heavy 14" DD balances out the heavy GPX body.  ? Not really, but it keeps me going. By the end of the hunt, parts of the body just go on strike and I say "ok, I'm done" Time to go home. 

[Rick N. MI]

Well just imagine in the future as you get older you'll have a Deus 2 on the beaches. Nice light weight. You won't have to worry about sore muscles then.