Last finds of 2015

Zot

I realized I'd forgotten to post my last finds of 2015. These are from a bunch of beach hunts in late December:

- About $12 in Euro coins

- Some older Finnish coins, but nothing interesting

- Some pieces of costume jewelry. The ring on the left above the 1 euro coins got me pretty good. Ugh.

- 70 (!) bobby pins. I wonder how many of these I've found in total. Must be a few thousand.



In other news, it looks like I've busted my Minelab Explorer machine. When I took it out late last year, it was completely impossible to set up. The damn thing kept falsing on everything, including roots, rocks and even seemingly nothing.

I tried all sorts of settings, doing obvious fixes such as cleaning everything up to ensure there are no bad connections, etc. No change. Something is broken.

I'll have to open it up and see if I can figure it out and fix it, but I'll also get a new general purpose machine for this year. I've heard good things about the Minelab CTX 3030, so I'll probably go for that one. In addition to its nice features and apparently good performance, I like that it's waterproof.

Hoping for an early spring!

-Z

pcgs69

we'll have to start calling you King of the Bobby Pins! That's probably 2 hours of digging just for them. You got some jewelry too, which is always a nice treat away from the bobby pins, haha.



Regarding your Explorer, I was having some issues with my CTX last year with falsing and chatter. I tried wiping everything down, fully charging the battery, cleaning the connectors to the battery, etc. But that didn't help. So, I did a full computer reset to reset everything back to factory original settings. Of course you lose your custom programs, etc. But it actually worked for me. Worked like a champ after. I only had one custom setting, so it took probably 5 minutes to go back through and get it back to where it was before. After all, metal detectors are computers, and sometimes a reset is what's needed. How often has the old cliché "just restart it" advice worked for your at home desktop or laptop? It's worth a shot. Keep us posted.

pcgs69

Those bobby pins got me thinking... last year I had my PI machine. My jacket zipper was rigged with a paper clip as the handle (maybe that's why people think I need money when I detect, haha).



I was digging something else, and set the detector down and got a blast of a signal, looked over and saw it was a paper clip?? How did that get out here. Checked my jacket and it had fallen off. What a strong signal for suck a crap piece of metal.

Zot

I'll happily accept the king of bobby pins title. Beats Pulltab Prince all day long
I think using a PI machine plays a big role in finding them. The signal is usually quite distinct and sort of a "tentative double hit" (hard to describe , but you know it when you hear it) , but I always dig everything on beaches anyway. You never know.

Thanks for the tip on the reset! There may be something more along these lines that I can try. I'll definitely give it a go.

As for digging "pieces of yourself", that's a good one! I've never done that.

I have, however, tried (and failed) to find something I already had in my possession: a long time ago I dug good sized 1920's coin, which I then inexplicably fumbled and started juggling like it was glowing hot. It bounced off somewhere, and despite trying for quite a while I never found it again.
Had it been a silver coin I'd probably still be out there right now

pocketpiececommems

Did you find all of those bobby pins at night? Do you find US coins mixed in with your finds on occasion? It seems like each different area that you hunts has quirks of it's own. One school playground that I hunt has lots of the metal eraser holders from the ends of pencils. Another I call the nickel field from the amount I find there. I don't recall ever finding a bobby pin??

Zot

Originally posted by: pocketpiececommems
Did you find all of those bobby pins at night? Do you find US coins mixed in with your finds on occasion?

Yes, pretty much. Every beach I go to seems to have bobby pins. When using a PI machine, the number of bobby pins is usually similar to the number of coins.
If I remember correctly, I got 7 bobby pins in a row at one point in this recent pic of finds (i.e. no other targets in between at all, trash or otherwise).
I can't remember if I've ever found one elsewhere (i.e. not on a beach). If I have, it's a rare occasion.

I do find US coins occasionally, but rarely. I've never found a US silver coin.
This is what I have:

- 7 cents (incl. 4 wheat cents: 1916, 1929, 1946 and 1951D)
- 1 nickel (1995)
- 1 dime (1987D)

pcgs69

Have you had to dig deep for some of them?

Zot

Originally posted by: pcgs69
Have you had to dig deep for some of them?

Ho hum! Looks like I'll need to start keeping more detailed records!

I can't remember any extraordinary depths for them beyond maybe 6 inches, but then I also tend to have a much clearer memory of location rather than depth.

This was for the US coins.

For bobby pins (in case you meant those), probably 90% are rather shallow, but most of them are found in dry sand and sometimes things end up deep there - also when freshly dropped. So yes, undoubtedly I've dug some seriously deep bobby pins.

ricko

Bobby pins are more common at beach areas, like pull tabs in parks... the bane of detectorists.

Cheers, RickO

pcgs69

Can you imagine how different detecting would be if there were no pull tabs? And in Zot's case, bobby pins?

Zot

I'd need 3 types of targets to go away before things would change completely:

-Pulltabs
-Beer bottle tops and screwcaps from hard liquor bottles [I'm sure there was 200+ beer bottle tops among these latest finds. Some beaches are just absolutely loaded with them]
-Bobby pins