I bought a new Excalibur towards the end of last year with the hope that I would be able to do a bit of summer surf detecting. The best laid plans etc. etc..and July came round and I still hadn't used the machine.
Howver, a few weeks ago I was able to make the trip to the east coast of NSW for a long weekend. Headed off the first morning about 4.30 am....it was still dark, as it is winter here.
When I got to the beach I could see that it was washed out and looked nothing like I had ever seen it look before. The level of the sand was about 3' lower than I was used to seeing.
There were piles of rocks of all sizes in certain parts of the beach. I got there not long after the tide started going out.
No ssoner had I started swinging the coil than I started getting signals. Each time I would scoop, the scoop would be half full of gravel as well as sand, so I had to search for the target in the scoop as well as on the beach.
Over the next 2 and a half hours I found 83 coins. 64 of them were pre-decimal coins which haven't been in use since the end of 1968, with the introduction of decimal currency in 1966.
Most the the coins were silver and as you can seen in the photo, are pretty knocked around. Some of them were broken, and the threepences on the right hand side are generally in a pretty sorry state.
I couldn't understand why the Excal kept giving high tone signals on 5c pieces (remember it was dark for most of my hunt), and it wasnit until I got back to the camping ground that I realised that most of the coins I found were silver or copper. I haven't included anything but the silver in the photo.
It is the largest number of pre decimal coins I have ever found in one hunt....but here's the anomoly! All the silver coins date between 1946 and 1962, a period during which the silver content of our coinage had been reduced from 92.5% to 50%. It has taken me about 3 weeks to get them as clean as they are, and some of them are so brittle that I was afraid of breaking them if I tried to get them any cleaner.
I was stoked finding so many coins, but am wondering why no earlier dates...I know I would not have been the first detectorist there after the washout (it happened about 2 weeks before I arrived), and the beach was starting to repair itself. No jewellery or recent coins.. Even the decimal coins I found had been there for ages. Thanks for looking. Sapper.
Howver, a few weeks ago I was able to make the trip to the east coast of NSW for a long weekend. Headed off the first morning about 4.30 am....it was still dark, as it is winter here.
When I got to the beach I could see that it was washed out and looked nothing like I had ever seen it look before. The level of the sand was about 3' lower than I was used to seeing.
There were piles of rocks of all sizes in certain parts of the beach. I got there not long after the tide started going out.
No ssoner had I started swinging the coil than I started getting signals. Each time I would scoop, the scoop would be half full of gravel as well as sand, so I had to search for the target in the scoop as well as on the beach.
Over the next 2 and a half hours I found 83 coins. 64 of them were pre-decimal coins which haven't been in use since the end of 1968, with the introduction of decimal currency in 1966.
Most the the coins were silver and as you can seen in the photo, are pretty knocked around. Some of them were broken, and the threepences on the right hand side are generally in a pretty sorry state.
I couldn't understand why the Excal kept giving high tone signals on 5c pieces (remember it was dark for most of my hunt), and it wasnit until I got back to the camping ground that I realised that most of the coins I found were silver or copper. I haven't included anything but the silver in the photo.
It is the largest number of pre decimal coins I have ever found in one hunt....but here's the anomoly! All the silver coins date between 1946 and 1962, a period during which the silver content of our coinage had been reduced from 92.5% to 50%. It has taken me about 3 weeks to get them as clean as they are, and some of them are so brittle that I was afraid of breaking them if I tried to get them any cleaner.
I was stoked finding so many coins, but am wondering why no earlier dates...I know I would not have been the first detectorist there after the washout (it happened about 2 weeks before I arrived), and the beach was starting to repair itself. No jewellery or recent coins.. Even the decimal coins I found had been there for ages. Thanks for looking. Sapper.
as to the lack of older coins the beach probably had a bigger cut around 1945 or so & the oldies will be farther down.