Before you guys dump 50 gallon trash cans on me, please hear me out. And just one preface, but an important one to please keep in mind: I have never ONCE sold a coin I've found in the practice of MDing. Just want to put that out there so you know I'm not just trying to maximize my coin intake. I get all the silver coinage I need from roll hunting and two family members running separate coin shops.
I keep bouncing back and forth between keeping my Garrett AT Pro, and ditching it for a White's. I had my wife bury 7 different silver coins along with a bunch of metal trash in the back yard and I found every single one of the coins (and of course the trash) with the AT. But when I go hunting with my MD club buddies who all carry White's, they run circles around my finds (Me: "Hey cool, a gold eagle button", Them: "Hey cool, $50,000 worth of coins and jewelry"). A friend of mine purposely followed a path I just went over as a joke saying, "I bet I find a button!". Well, he didn't find a button. He found a seated dime!!!. What the heck? And every single person I hunt with and/or know from our area club uses a White's as well. Why am I finding silver coins at home, buried 6 inches and deeper (and I did not watch where she buried them) yet missing the hot ticket items out in the field?
And this is the same field that I'm literally finding miniscule junk like....A STAPLE!! (Not a joke. I found one single, unused, severely rusted staple at about 4"). Buddy says to me, "If you're finding stuff as small as staples, you should be finding the coins and relics too". This is coming from the same guy who, when they emptied our city lake this spring, found over 300 silver and gold rings in......wait for it.......ONE DAY!!! Oh, and a nickel-plated derringer too.....sigh. He's coming up on 40 years of metal detecting, so needless to say I respect what he says about the staple comment.
And as far as the coil cord issue: I've tried every configuration conceivable. From plain old winding all the way up, to straight up the pipe with Velcro straps. I find zero change in performance.
But....why no coins? I can go to every single kiddie park in town and I swear, if there was enough of it I'd be a millionaire off the clad I've found. But....not one silver coin since I've purchased the unit. On the jewelry side, I've found four 14k gold items and countless .925 silver stuff. But....no silver coins. I've been a coin collector since I could use the potty all by myself (which I think was sometime last fall
). 100% honesty, I would trade every single piece of jewelry (well, maybe not the ring I sold for $700) for their weight in silver/rare coins.
I've heard soooooo much trash talking about quite honestly the entire line of Garrett machines (minus the pinpointer...which is priceless...to me at least). But then I watch 50 videos of fellas using an AT Pro and finding heaps of silver change. What gives?
I know the first thing a lot of guys are going to be inclined to say is "operator error" or "Garretts are useless" but I know my machine, and I've seen some spectacular finds with all different Garrett machines. I'm a 100% disabled veteran and since I don't work, have nothing else to do with my time but hunt.
I don't mean to mislead anyone by posting this, and I guess I should make a few clear points here: No, I'm not out there trying to use my machine as a weed eater. My coil swinging motto is "slow, smooth, and steady", and I pay close attention to making sure my swings overlap each other. No, I don't only hunt kiddie parks (as you see in this post, we were hunting an abandoned civil war maneuvering grounds). Yes, I do my research. I put six months of research into this specific location, including matching up old pictures to the existing tree lines, hills, etc, and paid plenty of visits to it before I even took my machine out there.
Add to my dilema: Were headed to the "family land" for two weeks for Thanksgiving. This land is completely virgin to MDing and I'm being completely honest here when I say (its not important to me that you believe me or not) that my wife's grandfather is a direct blood line relative of the James Boys' grandfather. This is well documented within the family. There are four areas on the family land of specific interest to me: the foundation/filled cellar of a shack that Frank would stay in while visiting, an area that both Frank and Jesse frequented (what I'm told) often while "passing through", the "James Graveyard" (that's the real name, and lots of James headstones from the 1800s, a few early 1900s), and more currently, the house where the "crazy uncle" lived (come on, every family's got one...the "crazy uncle" no one wants to talk to at family reunions...). He didn't trust banks, and buried every cent he had in his back yard (these "yards" are rather large fields...not your average fenced in city yard)....only to wind up offing himself and not telling anyone where he left his life savings.
SO...as you can see, I am faced with (what I consider to be) a rather time sensitive dilemma, in need of serious, tempered, non-biased, superior knowledge here. Keep the Garrett and bank on the silver coins found in the back yard? Or purchase and learn as much as I can about a White's (and what model in a ~$800-$900 budget?) before we leave? What to do...what to do....
Penny for your thoughts?
Fuz
I keep bouncing back and forth between keeping my Garrett AT Pro, and ditching it for a White's. I had my wife bury 7 different silver coins along with a bunch of metal trash in the back yard and I found every single one of the coins (and of course the trash) with the AT. But when I go hunting with my MD club buddies who all carry White's, they run circles around my finds (Me: "Hey cool, a gold eagle button", Them: "Hey cool, $50,000 worth of coins and jewelry"). A friend of mine purposely followed a path I just went over as a joke saying, "I bet I find a button!". Well, he didn't find a button. He found a seated dime!!!. What the heck? And every single person I hunt with and/or know from our area club uses a White's as well. Why am I finding silver coins at home, buried 6 inches and deeper (and I did not watch where she buried them) yet missing the hot ticket items out in the field?
And this is the same field that I'm literally finding miniscule junk like....A STAPLE!! (Not a joke. I found one single, unused, severely rusted staple at about 4"). Buddy says to me, "If you're finding stuff as small as staples, you should be finding the coins and relics too". This is coming from the same guy who, when they emptied our city lake this spring, found over 300 silver and gold rings in......wait for it.......ONE DAY!!! Oh, and a nickel-plated derringer too.....sigh. He's coming up on 40 years of metal detecting, so needless to say I respect what he says about the staple comment.
And as far as the coil cord issue: I've tried every configuration conceivable. From plain old winding all the way up, to straight up the pipe with Velcro straps. I find zero change in performance.
But....why no coins? I can go to every single kiddie park in town and I swear, if there was enough of it I'd be a millionaire off the clad I've found. But....not one silver coin since I've purchased the unit. On the jewelry side, I've found four 14k gold items and countless .925 silver stuff. But....no silver coins. I've been a coin collector since I could use the potty all by myself (which I think was sometime last fall
). 100% honesty, I would trade every single piece of jewelry (well, maybe not the ring I sold for $700) for their weight in silver/rare coins.I've heard soooooo much trash talking about quite honestly the entire line of Garrett machines (minus the pinpointer...which is priceless...to me at least). But then I watch 50 videos of fellas using an AT Pro and finding heaps of silver change. What gives?
I know the first thing a lot of guys are going to be inclined to say is "operator error" or "Garretts are useless" but I know my machine, and I've seen some spectacular finds with all different Garrett machines. I'm a 100% disabled veteran and since I don't work, have nothing else to do with my time but hunt.
I don't mean to mislead anyone by posting this, and I guess I should make a few clear points here: No, I'm not out there trying to use my machine as a weed eater. My coil swinging motto is "slow, smooth, and steady", and I pay close attention to making sure my swings overlap each other. No, I don't only hunt kiddie parks (as you see in this post, we were hunting an abandoned civil war maneuvering grounds). Yes, I do my research. I put six months of research into this specific location, including matching up old pictures to the existing tree lines, hills, etc, and paid plenty of visits to it before I even took my machine out there.
Add to my dilema: Were headed to the "family land" for two weeks for Thanksgiving. This land is completely virgin to MDing and I'm being completely honest here when I say (its not important to me that you believe me or not) that my wife's grandfather is a direct blood line relative of the James Boys' grandfather. This is well documented within the family. There are four areas on the family land of specific interest to me: the foundation/filled cellar of a shack that Frank would stay in while visiting, an area that both Frank and Jesse frequented (what I'm told) often while "passing through", the "James Graveyard" (that's the real name, and lots of James headstones from the 1800s, a few early 1900s), and more currently, the house where the "crazy uncle" lived (come on, every family's got one...the "crazy uncle" no one wants to talk to at family reunions...). He didn't trust banks, and buried every cent he had in his back yard (these "yards" are rather large fields...not your average fenced in city yard)....only to wind up offing himself and not telling anyone where he left his life savings.
SO...as you can see, I am faced with (what I consider to be) a rather time sensitive dilemma, in need of serious, tempered, non-biased, superior knowledge here. Keep the Garrett and bank on the silver coins found in the back yard? Or purchase and learn as much as I can about a White's (and what model in a ~$800-$900 budget?) before we leave? What to do...what to do....
Penny for your thoughts?
Fuz
