Keeshond John
New member
Decided to take my new Coinmaster to the local town beach today and ended up staying in the gravel parking lot. Why? I turned the Coinmaster on and immediately hit a quarter next to my car. Then another one.
The parking lot is several acres in size and made up of mostly course gravel and sand. Best part was the fact it was not frozen. The sun beating on it all day along with some salt content has left it workable.
I had intended to try the dry beach but could not get away from the parking lot - one hit after another. Funny, I'd never really thought of searching the lot before and judging by the number of coins I picked up in one tiny area nobody else seems to either. In just one hour and 15 minutes I lifted 46 coins, a steel golf green repair tool, 2 small silver rings, a brass locket with the gold plating destroyed, a set of keys and small folding knife that was in very good shape. The knife was a Cold Steel number with a synthetic handle and stainless 3 inch blade in fine shape. Coins were all modern clad as follows: 13 quarters, 15 dimes, 9 nickels, and 19 pennies. Most of the pennies were rotten zinc. I actually had so many coin hits that I was restricting myself to the shallow signals because I only had a short bit of time. I did better just taking the shallow stuff and moving on. Had I more time, I'd have dug everything.
Thoughts on the Coinmaster: This inexpensive detector is most certainly not a toy. I've been 11 years out of the coinshooting business and in the past owned a Classics 3, a low-end Fisher (good machine) and a White's Surfmaster PI. The Surfmaster is the most expensive machine I'd ever owned. I never could afford to spend the kind of money a person can in this sport. But I did learn those earlier machines and did very well with them.
Now I have to say that the modern Coinmaster at 180 bucks is the full equal to all the above machines as long as you stay out of the salt water. You can't expect it to work in the salt but you have to see it to believe how well it works on dry sand. I was easily taking coins at 4-5 inches of hard packed gravel in the parking lot, and leaving other stuff deeper. I did dig for one dime at a full 7 inches in this hard pack. I stopped after this one deep dig because it was costing me too much time and I was having no problem locating targets nearer the surface. Later I buried a dime in the loose, dry sand of the beach down to 8" and the Coinmaster sounded on it at its highest level of discrimination. Sensitivity was at its highest for this test and the machine was unbelievably stable. I still can't believe I could run a VHF machine on a dry salt beach at its highest sensitivity and not have issues.
The first level of discrimination on the Coinmaster is very effective in knocking out iron. This is how I ran the machine for the most part but did try all the settings. You can use all the discrimination the machine can deliver and have a very, very good coin-only machine that seems to loose virtually no depth. As mentioned before, I detected a dime at 8 inches set like this (full disc.) but with the sensitivity all the way up. You will miss all gold but if coins are what you're after, and you don't want to hear a whisper from anything else, this is the way to go. I prefer much less discrimination for the hope of a gold ring, but the option is there for pure modern coin coinshooting at good depth with little fuss.
Overall I have to say this little bugger is an amazing value and far exceeds my expectations. Not only does the depth meter work very well in telling whether the item is shallow or deep, but the target ID is very good on coins. It has trouble with pull tabs like most machines but it knows a penny from a nickel from a quarter almost every time. The best thing I learned is you can run this machine on the dry beach at low discrimination and high sensitivity and have a virtually dead set of headphones until you actually hit some kind of metal. No chatter, no popping and jumping around. It's been a while since I've used a metal detector and I can see they have improved a good deal. This little machine should be great on small gold items in the dry beach sand this summer.
Don't be put off by the low price. If you have a good machine you like now, get one of these for backup. Or try one for dry sand beaches only. It will stun you.
The parking lot is several acres in size and made up of mostly course gravel and sand. Best part was the fact it was not frozen. The sun beating on it all day along with some salt content has left it workable.
I had intended to try the dry beach but could not get away from the parking lot - one hit after another. Funny, I'd never really thought of searching the lot before and judging by the number of coins I picked up in one tiny area nobody else seems to either. In just one hour and 15 minutes I lifted 46 coins, a steel golf green repair tool, 2 small silver rings, a brass locket with the gold plating destroyed, a set of keys and small folding knife that was in very good shape. The knife was a Cold Steel number with a synthetic handle and stainless 3 inch blade in fine shape. Coins were all modern clad as follows: 13 quarters, 15 dimes, 9 nickels, and 19 pennies. Most of the pennies were rotten zinc. I actually had so many coin hits that I was restricting myself to the shallow signals because I only had a short bit of time. I did better just taking the shallow stuff and moving on. Had I more time, I'd have dug everything.
Thoughts on the Coinmaster: This inexpensive detector is most certainly not a toy. I've been 11 years out of the coinshooting business and in the past owned a Classics 3, a low-end Fisher (good machine) and a White's Surfmaster PI. The Surfmaster is the most expensive machine I'd ever owned. I never could afford to spend the kind of money a person can in this sport. But I did learn those earlier machines and did very well with them.
Now I have to say that the modern Coinmaster at 180 bucks is the full equal to all the above machines as long as you stay out of the salt water. You can't expect it to work in the salt but you have to see it to believe how well it works on dry sand. I was easily taking coins at 4-5 inches of hard packed gravel in the parking lot, and leaving other stuff deeper. I did dig for one dime at a full 7 inches in this hard pack. I stopped after this one deep dig because it was costing me too much time and I was having no problem locating targets nearer the surface. Later I buried a dime in the loose, dry sand of the beach down to 8" and the Coinmaster sounded on it at its highest level of discrimination. Sensitivity was at its highest for this test and the machine was unbelievably stable. I still can't believe I could run a VHF machine on a dry salt beach at its highest sensitivity and not have issues.
The first level of discrimination on the Coinmaster is very effective in knocking out iron. This is how I ran the machine for the most part but did try all the settings. You can use all the discrimination the machine can deliver and have a very, very good coin-only machine that seems to loose virtually no depth. As mentioned before, I detected a dime at 8 inches set like this (full disc.) but with the sensitivity all the way up. You will miss all gold but if coins are what you're after, and you don't want to hear a whisper from anything else, this is the way to go. I prefer much less discrimination for the hope of a gold ring, but the option is there for pure modern coin coinshooting at good depth with little fuss.
Overall I have to say this little bugger is an amazing value and far exceeds my expectations. Not only does the depth meter work very well in telling whether the item is shallow or deep, but the target ID is very good on coins. It has trouble with pull tabs like most machines but it knows a penny from a nickel from a quarter almost every time. The best thing I learned is you can run this machine on the dry beach at low discrimination and high sensitivity and have a virtually dead set of headphones until you actually hit some kind of metal. No chatter, no popping and jumping around. It's been a while since I've used a metal detector and I can see they have improved a good deal. This little machine should be great on small gold items in the dry beach sand this summer.
Don't be put off by the low price. If you have a good machine you like now, get one of these for backup. Or try one for dry sand beaches only. It will stun you.
-)
