GTI 2500 as a coin shooter

[cwilk]

There have been a few posts recently which have implied, or stated outright, that the 2500 is not a good choice for coin shooting. I had another 100 plus coin day today at an old sight for 2 1/2 hours and a new site for just over an hour. I find that the 2500 is almost always right when identifying modern US coins at less than 6 inches. I dug one iffy dime signal today that turned out to be a smashed shallow can. It imaged as size C but I thought it might be silver so I dug it. That was my only major surprise. I still got a lot of pop tops and pull tabs but I increased my nickel count over yesterday. I had 101 coins and 12 nickels. No photos, sorry. I find the 2500 to be a much better coin shooter than the Ace 250 primarily because I can recover coins much more quickly using the 2500. I am still fond of the Ace 250 as a coin shooter but I am far from proficient with it now as I once was. I am averaging just over 26 coins/hour with my 2500 for 2008. I should hit 6000 coins for 2008 tomorrow if I go out for my normal Saturday hunt.

EU citizen has posted that the 2500 is not a good machine with coins from his home country of Sweden. I have been thinking about this and I can sympathize as I can hardly find a Canadian coin over a nickel with any regularity using my 2500. I never found any at all with my 250 either. If I was John or Joel and I started out hunting for Canadian clad I might be more proficient at it, in fact, I'm sure I would be. I will agree with EU though that Garrett machines, with their notch detecting system, are certainly designed for US hunters.

Personally, I find the 2500 to be a superb coin shooter with very good depth at least for treasure hunters in the USA. I have hunted side by side with Minelab, Bounty Hunter, and Whites detectors. One day all four were in the field. The guy with the cheapie Bounty Hunter found the only gold ring of the day. My 2500 called it a nickel, the Whites called it a ring or a pop top, I don't recall what the Minelab read it as, and the Bounty Hunter called it a pop top. The Whites machine found the only silver of the day, a dime. I found more clad coins than the other three guys combined. I got to try each machine and was able to find coins with all of them. Everybody who tried my machine liked it a lot even though it was the heaviest machine out that day. I was the only guy who did not dig a pop or a beer can too!

I still feel to each his own. My choice is a GTI 2500 and it would take a lot to sway me to another machine. BTW the Minelab was an Explorer SE and it was a real sweet detector and I seriously considered it when buying my "top end" machine last Fall.

My two cents. FWIW.

Chris

Shoot! Forgot to say. I met the caretaker for field 1 and he was a young guy. He said he has seen me around and we had a great chat. He gave me a new site (hunt 2 today) and further told me that everytime they do any serious digging at his field they always find arrow heads. He showed me two he's found there since July 1st. I was shocked. One was complete, one had a big chip. I have still never found one. Maybe I just see rocks where there are arrow heads.

 

[Da Yooper]

I totally agree with you on the 2500 being a coin shooter. I have had great luck using this detector. In the very near future I will be buying a 250 for my son to use, this will be a great detector for him to start with.

 

[cwilk]

When I shorten my 2500 up to the shortest it will go my 11 yo niece can swing it for 1/2 hour. I think she could go longer but she is bored by then. Last weekend she found 5 quarters, 1 dime and 1 penny. I sometimes have to pinpoint for her. She gets in a week what my allowance was for a year when I was her age so $1.36 does not impress her. The jewelry she likes. My other niece goes crazy for buried cars and planes and my sister (her mother) said she takes them into school for show and tell. I promised her the gold coin in bezel some day when I no longer want it. I did not explain to her that that is when I'm dead but she'll figure it out in 30 or 40 years. I love detecting with kids but I wish my girls stayed interested for at least 1 hour.

Chris

 

[liltracs]

Well I say just let them use thier x brand detectors which when compared against the 2500 plainly state their depth cant compare to the 2500. I used a bounty hunter previously which was deadly accurate shooting coins and even relics. A zinc would register 87 a copper cent 90 a dime 95 a quarter 117 and a half 134 every time. Aluminum cans jumped from 35 to 150 so there was no doubt what I was digging. Almost no trash. So what if I cant tell a penny from a dime w/ my 2500. I will see which it is soon enough. Ive seen it detect pennies at 6 inches that the bounty hunter couldnt reach. Ive dug silver dimes at 7 to 8 inches that the bounty hunter couldnt find. Ive owned mine 4 months and my clad total to date with it is $115.27. Found 1 silver ring, 2 plated rings, 1963 Franklin half. 6 mercury dimes. 4 silver Roosevelts, 26 wheat cents. a 1930s crackerjack token plus some neat relics.Im happy.

 

[John-Edmonton]

I have to agree ....plus, the imaging allows you to make fairly accurate decisions for digging coin size objects. I also believe the GTI 1500 is the BEST coin hunter there is. Switching to the GTI 2500 gives you added depth with the true all metal mode. I use it to dig olds deep coins, sometimes even switching to the 121/2" large imaging coil. As far as finding non-US coins.....you have to re-learn where they read on the machine and under what conditions. Canadian coins aren't the easiest to get with the best of the machines, however, I still managed to get the following:

Stats as of 1996- December 2007

Nickels 3,864

Dimes 6,523

Quarters 5,362

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

I sure wish that I could share your enthusiasm for the GTI's Chris, but I'm unable. I took my 1500 out few a few hours yesterday and recovered a bit over $28 at a local school. These are fairly clean sites for junk. 4 of the $2 coins that I recovered read 9 size D. They should have read as 7 size B.( They are about the size of a zinc penny.) They were only an inch down and all flat to the coil. It was only the fact that I was getting shallow hits of a small targets though the audio, that I investigated them. So I don't have much faith in it. I wonder how many good targets I walked over.
Mick Evans.

 

[cwilk]

Very shallow coins, less than one inch and right on the surface, in the US are easy to detect but difficult to pinpoint. My imaging will show them at the proper depth but the size will change very quickly sometimes from size D to A and back again. I got 3 nice new quarters in one spill this morning under some matted down grass. Easy once you figure out what they are.

I really think the problem lies in that these machines are tuned for US coins. Lots of copper, very little nickel. Or lots of silver very little copper. That's dime and above.

I am truly sympathetic with you non-US users. I have found about 30 foreign coins. Most are very jumpy signals except for the older stuff. I can see why a rig with VDI or numerical target ID would be better. One simple thing for you to check is that your detector has the chip Garrett designed for Australia for your mineralization.

That said. I am a clad hog and if I ever found $28.00 in a couple of hours I would be pretty elated. I'll try tomorrow I suppose. I need 83 coins for yet another goal. Then I'm taking the rest of the weekend off. Maybe!

Chris

 

[cwilk]

What a meager little pile you've accumulated. Wink wink.

I found a mess of Canadian nickels last year but not too many in 2008. They used to be almost all nickel in composition but they changed them to almost no nickel and recalled all the older coins if my memory serves.

Here's what you must answer. Why would the 1500 be a better coin shooter than the 2500? Is it the weight? The price? Or is there something different in the electronics? (I'll try to answer the question now. Chris. The 1500 and 2500 are exactly the same machine in discriminate mode. If one was to set out to purchase a detector only for coin shooting, the 1500 is a logical choice because the added features on the 2500 are more for other types of hunting.) If that isn't the right answer I know you'll provide it for me. Or Willy or Terry or any of the other 1500/2500 users out there.

Chris

I never mention treasure talk when I talk about the 2500. I really like it and I always have. It allows me to not look at the screen so often. It slows me down a little which forces me to do a more thorough job. Everybody always asks, "Did your metal detector just talk to you?" The only time I turn it off is when I am super fast coin retrieval mode. Thanks for the response.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah the 2500 is a great coinshoter or anything else shooter. If folks can't find coins with a 2500 then they ain't going to find coins with anything else. Since the Garretts are programmed for American coins only foreign users should expect to make adjustments for their particular type of coins. Just common logic.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

As I said in my other post, Garretts are programmed for American coins only so they ain't going to read the same on foreign coins and foreign users will have to make adjustments in regards to their coins to coincide with the given readings. When I find foreign coins here in Oregon they don't read the same as American coins so I have to adjust my thinking.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah one has to readjusttheir thinking when hunting coins native to their country because they ain't going to read the same as American coins. I've got a jar full of foreign coins and they read all over the place. One needs to check all their different coins with the detector to see where they read, then remember that, write it down on a card, or put some sort of markers on the display.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

The 1500 was specifically designed for coinshooting whereas the other Garretts weren't. I think there is a special little Gremlin inside.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

You've done quite well bud.

Bill

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Thanks for the tip on the shallow coins Chris. The 1500 is fairly new, so it has the chip, but you are right about them jumping around on non US coins. Some lock, but most bounce. Given their regular make, that bounce matches a regular pattern, but I think I'll keep the GTI till I'm ready to trade it for an XLT. It can be a back up to offer a bit of variety, but won't make my prefered detector list.
Mick Evans.

 

[John-Edmonton]

The fact that they 'bounce'" is the key to finding Canadian Coins. I just watch where they bounce, and I can usually guess a dime or a quarter. I have to hunt with zero disc to get them all

 

[John-Edmonton]

The 2500 is the better machine, as the true all metal bangs harder on our dimes and quarters. The quarters in true all metal mode always read as quarters on the GTI 2500 (true all metal mode), but bounce around a bit on the 1500 (zero discriminate).

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

It's more than just the visual information John. I'm not real keen on the audio either. To me, for a high end machine, I find that the audio is very limited. Some folks like the type of audio that it is; I'm just not one of those folk. I like a machine that gives off better audio information (like the Explorer, which will be my main high end machine now). Yes there is some clues in the audio, but a bit too limited for my preference.
Mick Evans.

 

[cwilk]

I would say so as well.

Chris

 

[cwilk]

Thanks for the input. EU citizen I was hoping to hear from you too but I guess you have said what you had to say over the past few days.

I remembered another reason why I chose the 2500 over the 1500. I dislike most devices with flat buttons like those on the 1500 and prefer the style of buttons on the 2500. Minor reason but it went into my thought process.

I am now going to do with my GTI2500 what I should have done a long time ago..........................gonna go out and do some detecting. It's been almost 20 hours after all.

Chris

 

[John-Edmonton]

That's interesting...people around here who like to hunt coins don't like the Mine labs, because they miss all our coins, especially the one and two dollar coins. I know of at least two people who got rid of them because at the end of our hunts, everyone had a nice pouch of coins except Minelabs. But then again, not everyone likes to spend a lot of time hunting modern coins, and our Coinage is different from everyone else's. And don'd forget, your Minelab cost 2 x as much as the GTI 1500.