5 nights at the beach yields 11 gold pieces; 1221 coins

[SoCARalph]

Last month spent 5 nights in the wet sand/surf at a southern California beach digging like crazy. Dug eight 14kt rings; (one with 30 diamonds and another that is a snake ring); a 14kt gold cross and two 14kt gold rope bracelets. The bracelets both hit good with a VDI of 1; The rings hit from 3 to 17. There were too many coins in the way and I was getting tired digging them (one night yielded 474 coins). Starting digging the gold range targets after a while. After the 5 nights the beach sanded back in and nothing more until another storm cuts the beach. Another bonus was that there was little trash - no bottlecaps, 1 pull tab and no foil. Ran the Equinox in factory default beach 2 and it worked great in and out of the surf - sure do love this machine. Swung from 2 to 7 hours each night.

Total finds:

1 dollar coin
1 half dollar
292 Quarters
368 Dimes
208 Nickels
351 Pennies

1221 total coins worth $125.21

8 14kt gold rings
2 14kt gold bracelets
1 14kt gold cross
11 other rings (silver, stainless steel, tungsten carbine)
6 misc pieces of jewlery

22 sinkers
22 keys
8 fishing lures
2 spoons
bunch of brass screws and other scrap brass

 

[Mark kus]

Very nice haul impressive why I love hunting the beaches!

 

[Ted S]

Wow! What an amazing hunt! Congrats!

 

[laplander]

Ralph your a digging Machine Smart move to focus on the goodies with those conditions/timeframe, that shift on the fly paid off bigtime!
Jeff

 

[BigTony]

Congratulations! You were very smart to dig as much as you did.
After digging that much I would need a good nights dleep

 

[tvr]

One heck of a week. Congrats.

I'm guessing that some combination of no beach replenishment, that it may not get detected a lot and favorable sand movement combined to leave you a lot of targets to find.

 

[okara gold]

What great finds! Nice going!

 

[u2robert]

Ralphie Killed it OUTSTANDING

 

[wpaxt]

Thanks for sharing your finds and congratulations.

I tried to send you a private message through the forum but it said you aren't set up to receive PM's. If you get that fixed let me know.

Bill (S. CA)

 

[bklein]

Same here.
Would like to compare machine behavior if in south county.

 

[UtahRich]

Impressive - nice bunch of finds. time to catch up on some rest.


Rich -

 

[Pondmn]

Dont see how you held up that works out to digging a target less than every two minutes for thirtyfive hours over five days............

 

[JASON CHINA]

Which version do you use? 1.5? Or 1.75?

 

[SoCARalph]

Mostly sand movement. There were 4 metal detectorists working the same stretch of beach. On the last day it was nearly all sanded back in. Just need to find the few days a year where the vault opens to reveal what's hidden too deep normally to reach.

 

[SoCARalph]

To answer other questions: I updated the firmware when it was first available to do so but don't know the version number. I didn't notice much difference with the upgrade.

Most of the time detecting was spent in a very small area that was very thick with targets. I would many times get two or more coins in each scoop and probably only worked a small area of beach at a time (like 10 x 30 ft square). A few years ago working a nearby beach, I detected both low tides (before work for 2 hours and after work for 5 hours) and found 854 coins that day which is the most I found. That was a much deeper cut and turned up many old coins and old jewelry. This last one was all modern coins and gold! I usually use a log handled scoop but when there are this many coins and they are shallow, I switch to a short handled stainless wire mesh scoop. Many times the waves would wash the sand away and you could eyeball several coins just lying on the surface.

 

[TinCanBeach]

Will you please stay home! Lol!