Mick in Dubbo
New member
Hi all. Happy new year!
It was a good time to dust the 1500 off and take it with me for a trip to Sydney. I haven't been able to hunt down there for quite some considerable time. Hopefully be moving much closer in a few more years but that's a different story.
Given that I've hardly used the 1500 for the best part of a year, I was wondering how rusty I was going to be. given it's easy operating set up, it was very comfortable strait up. Due to family comitments, I was only able to slip out for some early morning hunts, when I wasn't too sleepy to get up.
I've found a few real sweet honey holes over the last 8 years down there. Unfortunately my most favourite site, which is only a 20 minute walk from where I was straying (the in-laws) had been done over pretty good. It usually produces $100+ most times I hunt it, but only produced $9 this time. All the same, it was a secluded spot in which I have great pleasure detecting at all the same. It was a good time to reaquaint with the imaging coil.
The second hunt occured several days later at another site i found about 4 years ago. I was curious as to whether anybody else had cottoned onto it yet, but I was in luck. Yet another very pleasant location, which started off real slow for the first couple of hours, yielding only about $15, but struck it real lucky when I pulled up a 9 gram (about a quarter of an ounce) ring that hit in screw cap range. I think it may be white gold, but open to correction If I'm wrong. After that, the finds came in pretty quick; but had to bail after 4.25 hours despite the still coming targets, to to a family outing that I needed to return for. That hunt netted either $71 or $73 dollars. You can count it for yourself.
The next morning I went again but with no major plans set apart from meeting up with some folks from a model plane club that were suposed to be flying only a few kilometres from the inlaws place. It was a no show but I did manage another $20. Not too shabby for an unp0laned hunt.
The last hunt occured on my last full day in Sydney (New years eve). this time I got on the computer for bit over an hour and located quite a number of potentially juicy spots. I selected the closest one and this time I went armed with the 5x10 DD Scorcher coil. I recon that it must be so called because of it's scorched earth ability!) man that coil is on fire when it comes to IDing coins. I thought it might take some getting used to, but was right at home staight off the bat. The site was a park of about 5 acres. Great I thought. How am I going to find the right part to hunt. After a bit I thinking, I selected a spot and was right on the money (quite literally). despite only being there for just under 2 hours, I recovered just over $40 and snagged my first full silver coin for quite some time! It was a 1936 sixpence. Sadly it it the most bent up silver coin that I've ever recovered and it made photographing it, difficult.
What really struck me about this hunt, was just how easy it was to ID coins by tone. The mid tone (which is where all our modern coins come in at on a GTI) gives a distinct slightly shorter tone on coins. It is especially good at picky out our $1 coins. $1 coins hit in screw cap range and are of a very similar size, which makes IDing from scew caps quite difficult for most detectors. Even the imaging struggles with them, although there is a trick that helps to figure them out. As a result, at the end of this hunt, I noticed a significant increase in my $1 coin finds. A ratio of 1 $1 coin to about 442 coins is normal for both myself and other detectorist, but with the 5x10 coil on, you can see in the photo, it is close to 1 in2!! Now that's a result!
Photo 1) was the $70+ hunt. If you look at the lower right, you'll see a couple of 1 and 2 cent pieces. These are smallish copper coins that have been out of our circulation for about 20 years now.
Photo 2) was the last hunt of 2 hours.
[attachment 253557 xmas20121080.JPG]
Photo 3) is of the bent sixpence. You may also note that a couple of $1 coins behind it are comerorative ones plus one of the 50c pieces in the forground.
Photo 4) show both rings I found on the $70 day. The one in the middle may be white gold. Also of interest is a couple more comermative coins. this time a 50 and a 20c piece. Both are related to Tasmania. The 50 is a 1988 bicentenial coin with from memory, Bass and Flinders on it while the 20c piece has a Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine) (not Tassie Devil) on it. The Tassie tiger became extinct in 1936 while the Tassie Devil is still around. While it's common for our 50c pieces and to a lesser extent our $1 coins to be struck as commemorative coins, this is nopt so for the 20c piece. Oh, BTW the 20 cent piece was struch to comemorate a century since fedetration.(2001).
Photo 5) is of the ring with inscription.
Mick Evans.[attachment 253553 xmas20121072.JPG][attachment 253554 xmas20121082.JPG][attachment 253555 xmas20121086.JPG][attachment 253556 xmas20121077.JPG]
It was a good time to dust the 1500 off and take it with me for a trip to Sydney. I haven't been able to hunt down there for quite some considerable time. Hopefully be moving much closer in a few more years but that's a different story.
Given that I've hardly used the 1500 for the best part of a year, I was wondering how rusty I was going to be. given it's easy operating set up, it was very comfortable strait up. Due to family comitments, I was only able to slip out for some early morning hunts, when I wasn't too sleepy to get up.
I've found a few real sweet honey holes over the last 8 years down there. Unfortunately my most favourite site, which is only a 20 minute walk from where I was straying (the in-laws) had been done over pretty good. It usually produces $100+ most times I hunt it, but only produced $9 this time. All the same, it was a secluded spot in which I have great pleasure detecting at all the same. It was a good time to reaquaint with the imaging coil.The second hunt occured several days later at another site i found about 4 years ago. I was curious as to whether anybody else had cottoned onto it yet, but I was in luck. Yet another very pleasant location, which started off real slow for the first couple of hours, yielding only about $15, but struck it real lucky when I pulled up a 9 gram (about a quarter of an ounce) ring that hit in screw cap range. I think it may be white gold, but open to correction If I'm wrong. After that, the finds came in pretty quick; but had to bail after 4.25 hours despite the still coming targets, to to a family outing that I needed to return for. That hunt netted either $71 or $73 dollars. You can count it for yourself.
The next morning I went again but with no major plans set apart from meeting up with some folks from a model plane club that were suposed to be flying only a few kilometres from the inlaws place. It was a no show but I did manage another $20. Not too shabby for an unp0laned hunt.
The last hunt occured on my last full day in Sydney (New years eve). this time I got on the computer for bit over an hour and located quite a number of potentially juicy spots. I selected the closest one and this time I went armed with the 5x10 DD Scorcher coil. I recon that it must be so called because of it's scorched earth ability!) man that coil is on fire when it comes to IDing coins. I thought it might take some getting used to, but was right at home staight off the bat. The site was a park of about 5 acres. Great I thought. How am I going to find the right part to hunt. After a bit I thinking, I selected a spot and was right on the money (quite literally). despite only being there for just under 2 hours, I recovered just over $40 and snagged my first full silver coin for quite some time! It was a 1936 sixpence. Sadly it it the most bent up silver coin that I've ever recovered and it made photographing it, difficult.
What really struck me about this hunt, was just how easy it was to ID coins by tone. The mid tone (which is where all our modern coins come in at on a GTI) gives a distinct slightly shorter tone on coins. It is especially good at picky out our $1 coins. $1 coins hit in screw cap range and are of a very similar size, which makes IDing from scew caps quite difficult for most detectors. Even the imaging struggles with them, although there is a trick that helps to figure them out. As a result, at the end of this hunt, I noticed a significant increase in my $1 coin finds. A ratio of 1 $1 coin to about 442 coins is normal for both myself and other detectorist, but with the 5x10 coil on, you can see in the photo, it is close to 1 in2!! Now that's a result!
Photo 1) was the $70+ hunt. If you look at the lower right, you'll see a couple of 1 and 2 cent pieces. These are smallish copper coins that have been out of our circulation for about 20 years now.
Photo 2) was the last hunt of 2 hours.
[attachment 253557 xmas20121080.JPG]
Photo 3) is of the bent sixpence. You may also note that a couple of $1 coins behind it are comerorative ones plus one of the 50c pieces in the forground.
Photo 4) show both rings I found on the $70 day. The one in the middle may be white gold. Also of interest is a couple more comermative coins. this time a 50 and a 20c piece. Both are related to Tasmania. The 50 is a 1988 bicentenial coin with from memory, Bass and Flinders on it while the 20c piece has a Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine) (not Tassie Devil) on it. The Tassie tiger became extinct in 1936 while the Tassie Devil is still around. While it's common for our 50c pieces and to a lesser extent our $1 coins to be struck as commemorative coins, this is nopt so for the 20c piece. Oh, BTW the 20 cent piece was struch to comemorate a century since fedetration.(2001).
Photo 5) is of the ring with inscription.
Mick Evans.[attachment 253553 xmas20121072.JPG][attachment 253554 xmas20121082.JPG][attachment 253555 xmas20121086.JPG][attachment 253556 xmas20121077.JPG]