First finds with new machine
Zot
Posts: 825 ✭✭✭
It’s here! - my new water detecting machine, the Minelab Excalibur II.
Looks and feels great! It has a sturdy feel to it, including the controls. The headphones are comfortable as well.
I ordered it from the UK, and it came with a UK power plug only. I was bit annoyed that they didn’t supply a charger with a couple of slide-on adapters with this fairly high-end product. This was an unusual scenario for me too, and I had to root around to find adapters that allowed me to plug it in.
I looked like a simple machine to use, but first off I wanted to test it on some targets I was expecting (and hoping) to encounter. The top priority was to filter out those annoying iron targets.
I barely needed any discrimination at all for the iron targets to stay silent. The others were happily buzzing away, except the 5 eurocent coin, which started sputtering. This was to be expected, as they’re copper-covered steel. No big loss. I’ll happily leave those for an all-metal guy to find!
My first time was as confusing as always with a new machine.
My old PI machine just says “Nope…….. still nothing……. …. ALARM! DIG HERE! “, while the Excal felt more like “Hm, this might be interesting… it appears the probability of this being an worthwhile digging endeavor is somewhat significant.. however, one might also consider the other possibilities…but on second thought…”.
The PI must be Dutch while the Excal is clearly British.
After a while the machine found something that made it sound like a cat in heat, so I dug that.
It was a small copper coin. Great! If it finds that, it will also find the other stuff I’m after.
After three trips I’m starting to get the hang of it, and the ratio of trash vs good stuff has improved dramatically. With my PI, I was getting 10-20 junk targets per coin.
Now I have these junk targets:
…and these coins:
You may notice that one coin is considerably larger than the others. I very nearly gave up on this target as it refused to emerge, even after many scoops. I was 100% sure it was a big junk target. It couldn’t be a coin or a ring – way too loud for being that deep…
When I saw it in my scoop I almost ended up on my butt out of sheer astonishment. For a second or two I thought I’d found a US silver dollar.
It turned out to be a Finnish coin struck to commemorate 50 years of independence. A strange find, as these didn’t really circulate. It’s a coin in every sense of the word (mint issue, has a face value, etc.), but was made to be a collectible rather than a circulating coin.
I never expected to find one, and almost certainly never will again.
Cleaned up:
Finnish 10 Markkaa, 1967
23.75g, 0.900 Ag
It came from area I’d given up on with the PI (too much trash). Some areas are still hopeless even with discrimination, as they look like someone dumped a truckload of construction materials in there decades ago. I may give those a go some day, just for fun. No detector will be needed for that – just a scoop. There will typically be multiple targets in every scoop.. (I’ve checked, by just taking random scoops)
I got one sterling silver ring as well.
It was originally more colorful. There are some remains of red, green and blue in places. For example, you can see a hint of red in the flower.
Now the Excal has sniffed out silver, in both coin and ring form. Gold is playing hard to get.
Onwards and upwards!
Looks and feels great! It has a sturdy feel to it, including the controls. The headphones are comfortable as well.
I ordered it from the UK, and it came with a UK power plug only. I was bit annoyed that they didn’t supply a charger with a couple of slide-on adapters with this fairly high-end product. This was an unusual scenario for me too, and I had to root around to find adapters that allowed me to plug it in.
I looked like a simple machine to use, but first off I wanted to test it on some targets I was expecting (and hoping) to encounter. The top priority was to filter out those annoying iron targets.
I barely needed any discrimination at all for the iron targets to stay silent. The others were happily buzzing away, except the 5 eurocent coin, which started sputtering. This was to be expected, as they’re copper-covered steel. No big loss. I’ll happily leave those for an all-metal guy to find!
My first time was as confusing as always with a new machine.
My old PI machine just says “Nope…….. still nothing……. …. ALARM! DIG HERE! “, while the Excal felt more like “Hm, this might be interesting… it appears the probability of this being an worthwhile digging endeavor is somewhat significant.. however, one might also consider the other possibilities…but on second thought…”.
The PI must be Dutch while the Excal is clearly British.
After a while the machine found something that made it sound like a cat in heat, so I dug that.
It was a small copper coin. Great! If it finds that, it will also find the other stuff I’m after.
After three trips I’m starting to get the hang of it, and the ratio of trash vs good stuff has improved dramatically. With my PI, I was getting 10-20 junk targets per coin.
Now I have these junk targets:
…and these coins:
You may notice that one coin is considerably larger than the others. I very nearly gave up on this target as it refused to emerge, even after many scoops. I was 100% sure it was a big junk target. It couldn’t be a coin or a ring – way too loud for being that deep…
When I saw it in my scoop I almost ended up on my butt out of sheer astonishment. For a second or two I thought I’d found a US silver dollar.
It turned out to be a Finnish coin struck to commemorate 50 years of independence. A strange find, as these didn’t really circulate. It’s a coin in every sense of the word (mint issue, has a face value, etc.), but was made to be a collectible rather than a circulating coin.
I never expected to find one, and almost certainly never will again.
Cleaned up:
Finnish 10 Markkaa, 1967
23.75g, 0.900 Ag
It came from area I’d given up on with the PI (too much trash). Some areas are still hopeless even with discrimination, as they look like someone dumped a truckload of construction materials in there decades ago. I may give those a go some day, just for fun. No detector will be needed for that – just a scoop. There will typically be multiple targets in every scoop.. (I’ve checked, by just taking random scoops)
I got one sterling silver ring as well.
It was originally more colorful. There are some remains of red, green and blue in places. For example, you can see a hint of red in the flower.
Now the Excal has sniffed out silver, in both coin and ring form. Gold is playing hard to get.
Onwards and upwards!
Minelab: GPX 5000, Excalibur II, Explorer SE. White's: MXT, PI Pro
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