the disappearing find

[topknocker]

i know it's been said here many times before about disappearing finds. my son got a good hit on his gti, even a good image at coin size. we dug a good 5in plug out and he still had a good hit in the hole, even better now. dug about five scoops out of the hole and no more hit. check the dirt and nothing! check all around the hole and still nothing! even after having a good hit and a image. i told him if i had a dollar for every disappearing find i could buy me a couple of real nice detectors.

 

[khouse]

Sometimes switching to all metal mode will make the target re appear. I have a lot of 22 caliber casings do this. Usually the electronic pinpointer will find it. Some other times it's just rusty soil from a disintegrated piece of iron.

 

[Neil in West Jersey]

I have this with buckshot. Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint as well.

 

[GaryL]

And sometimes when checking the plug, or hand full of dirt the coin or item gets slung off to one side and disappears. Always check good around the plug area when it disappeared like you state. It reads as you might have lost it a few inches off to one side of your plug.

HH

GaryL ....

 

[tab-nabit]

Has happened to me for sure - had a few that flipped at least a few feet away or so - especially when the tip of the digging tool gets caught on a rock or a root, then the tip cuts loose and catapults the targets.
Worse part is if it catapults a slug of dirt into the eyes and mouth. Makes a crunchy tasting teary eye dig -

 

[Uncle Willy]

Sounds like a rust pocket.. I'll tell you about a quirk with GTI's that you can check out if you're hunting in grass. If you get a disappearing target or one you can't find even though you are still getting a signal, check in the grass a few inches off to the side of your hole. The GTI will pick up coins off the edge of the coil but sound like the target is right under the coil, even in pinpoint. I've had this happen two or three times. One time it was three quarters laying at the base of the grass off to the side of my hole.

Bill

 

[topknocker]

thanks bill, we'll look a little harder when that happens again.

 

[Rob M]

22. casings would do this to me, and after removing plug and changing position of casing it would disc. out. I am sure this woud be the case for many objects.

 

[lordmarcovan]

Sadly, this is an all-too-common occurrence for all of us (well, at least me, anyway), regardless of the type of detector used.

Sometimes I get it from a rusty iron target that has formed the "halo effect" in the soil over the years, making it beep up into the coin range, but when you dig, you break the "halo", and then the machine realizes it's just iron, and no longer wants to detect it.

I've even had it happen with some Wheat and Indian cents. One time the signal disappeared on me and I finally gave up in disgust. As I was backfilling the hole, I accidentally discovered the target, lying right there on top of the ground, where I had brought it up. It was an 1871 Indian cent.

A lot of times it's just what I call "phantoms". Who knows.

One thing I noticed with my old GTA-500 and GTAx-550 is that iron targets would often give two cursor blips on the screen- anytime I saw a blip up near dollar range AND another down low, near the iron range, I knew it was iron. I have not noticed this as much with my GTI-2500 but it has done it a few times. I generally avoid signals that bounce between the two extremes. I will dig some bouncing signals, but only if the bounce is within a fairly narrow range- not all over the meter.

I have an innate mistrust of a "dollar signal". Before I dig it, I will come at it from all directions, trying to get it to also ring in the iron range, which it usually will. The imaging feature of the GTI-2500 is nice, because now I can distinguish the hot "dollar" signals from cans, due to their size. I haven't dug a silver dollar yet, in 20-odd years of detecting, but I wonder how many times I have swept the coil over one and ignored it because I am so mistrustful of the "dollar" ID. Hmm.

Of course, sometimes one just gets those weirdo phantom signals that are clear as a bell and repeatable, until you dig, then they vanish.

Maybe it's dirt gremlins or prankish poltergeists or somethin'.