December first digs and digs of the month... Pics added! in my last post(s)

Rickc300

Pics to follow sometime later... I got out for a few hours today in order to check my girlfriends Ace 250 that I bought from a forum member here. I hit a local park where I know I can always find some modern clad coinage and maybe a piece of jewelry or two lying around. She has been complaining about the pinpoint mode, she says it is circling a 6 inch circle even when getting a penny reading... Uhmm OK, I turned it on and right away I got a solid quarter signal, I used the pin point mode, stuck my knife in and cherry picked a quarter just under the surface of the grass. Looks OK to me I am thinking! A few steps later I get another quarter signal, says 4-6 inches deep... I pin point, I dig and then dig some more, I have now opened a hole a little over 6 inches across and about a half foot deep and still nothing to show for my trouble. I have sod laying all around me, I keep using the pin point mode, it keeps telling me the coin is in the hole and at 2 inches deep. I start hacking out small rocks, hauling out hand fulls of dirt until I have a hole almost a foot deep. I check again, still 2 inches deep it says! At this point in time I have decided I am going to dig up whatever the heck is making this machine go beep even if I have to dig half way to China to get it! I pin point again, the coin should be right in the middle of this little pit I am digging, Dang it! Hands full off dirt, checking each load with the detector and still nothing to show for my trouble and then I hear that sound that makes me cringe, my digging tool hitting metal! Ouch! Ok I slow my digging, sifting through dirt looking for a coin or artifact until I find the greenish coppery look of a clad quarter. Well, in this case, this was my 7th dateless large cent found in 6 months! I re-checked the hole after my heart settled down and still got a solid reading (I search all metals) and low and behold just to the right of where I found that large cent I found an old tin Pepsi can at about 6 inches in depth!!! Maybe that was the reason for the original signal? I think the large cent was actually tucked under the can and fell into the hole I dug. I have never found ANY coin at a foot deep with any machine let alone a cheapy (but good) Garrett Ace 250. BTW, I tested my gals machine in all of its modes, in jewlery mode I found an Indian cent at 5 inches. All total I dug 1.54 in modern coinage (4 nickels) plus 1 large cent, 1 Indian, 2 wheat pennies a silver war nickel and a little girls sterling silver ring that was clobbered by a lawn mower...

Not a bad afternoon considering I was just checking out my gals machine in an area I really didn't expect to find anything really old. BTW, I had no problems with the machine in pin point except when trying to pin down foil or trash. I think a refresher course in operating the 250 and looking at what the signal is saying was detected will go a long ways in making the hobby more enjoyable for her.

Rick

CROCKofCOINS

Good job on checking out the Ace!

Jerry

mr1931S

As i was reading your story about difficulty pinpointing i had a deja vu moment sweep over me.

My son had a similar experience in an old park we were working...Coke can found at depth.Sounded like a quarter (our experience with Bounty Hunter Landstar is that this machine is deadly on quarters) and he was getting increasingly frustrated as he excavated the earth for the prize.Ground was very hard so probing for the object was not an option.I told him to be careful digging since he would be sick to his stomach after gouging a 1901 S quarter worth a few thou. I put my money where my mouth was and took over digging at one point but he made the actual discovery. The telltale red object was extracted from the ground and he speculated that the ground,in this particular area of the park at least, can't be all that old considering the depth at which he found this Coke can.

Sweeping over the can,while still in the ground, in the all-metal mode the sound was not a good sound to my ears since the sweep was too wide to be a quarter or a larger size coin,for that matter.The value here was in the lesson for my son so finding this Coke can wasn't a waste of time.

Good finds Rick. You must live in the East part of the US with all those Large Cent finds you've made.

ricko

Nice finds.. What condition was the large cent?? Cheers, RickO

JoePA

Nice find on the large cent. Always exciting finding something 200 years old. Without a doubt it was the can giving you the signal at that depth - I've seen that plenty of times myself. A large relatively deep target will register as a smaller shallower target routinely - the rf field disturbance is exactly the same for the machine.

Rickc300

Fianlly got some pics posted! The copper coins have that green color I just love, the V nickel was horribly corroded and a very red color when I dug it, pic taken after cleaning.

dateless LARGE cent

1883 "cents" V nickel

1901 Indian head penny

1974 Canadian cent. I won't show you the other side with the huge gouge I made while digging it out of the ground. I really try to be more careful in digging my finds than this coin shows~

Rick

Rickc300

OOPS, double post