Fortunehunter
New member
Well, when its gold Australian $1 and $2 coins it looks pretty good sitting on the table in front of you and not bad for a few days detecting.
Been on a dream holiday for the past 2 months travelling from bottom of Australia right to the very top, which for most of you non Aussie's out there is called Cape York, its that big pointy bit when you look at a map of Australia. Cape York Peninsula is a 4WD and camping must do for the more adventurous being about a 1000km drive along dirt roads and tracks through largely uninhabited wildness.
Anyway to cut a long story short I had to do a 3000km drive home on my own as the wife and kids took the easy way out and flew back. So with the missus out of the way
and the sight seeing finished I pulled the Etrac out of its hiding place and fired her up. For a start I didn't have much time to spare as I had to cover a lot of km's so just a few minutes of detecting time here and there brought up the odd coin. After I had travelled about two thirds of the way home I decided enough was enough and it was time to slow down and get serious with the Etrac.
So with each town I came to and after a couple of hours driving I would pick a likely looking location where there might be a few dollars lying about. As I was only interested in finding the gold coins I set the discrimination to the maximum leaving only a large block around 12 38 on the screen clear. With this much discrimination its important to note that you must slow your swing right down otherwise you will pass right over a coin and the Etrac can miss it completely.
The first location I hit netted me around $25 with $10 coming from around a newly planted tree. Yep, in the freshly dug dirt about 2 foot square where a tree had been planted I pull out four $2 coins and two $1 coins. Funny thing is that's about the ratio I always end up with, you get twice as many $2 coins as you do $1. That's the great thing about our coinage in that the person who designed our gold coins decided in their wisdom to make the two dollar coin half the size of the one dollar coin. The end result is that people loose twice as many two dollar coins because they are harder to see once dropped. I have a sneaky suspicion the person who designed the coins must have owned a metal detector.
Next morning I got up early and headed for a local sports ground where a grassed area between a couple of buildings turn up about another $25 in a hour. Hitting the road again, around mid afternoon I came into a large town and pulled over for a break and once more got the Etrac out. Within seconds I had my first gold one and then they just kept coming, the place was just littered with them, I reckon about 90% of the signals I got were gold coins. What was going to be a 30 minute stop turned into a two hour treasure hunt. A family who was sitting at a picnic table nearby had been watching me for about an hour when curiosity got the better of the lady and she came over to ask what I was searching for. When I said coins, she looked rather startled and said "WHAT, just coins". Then she asked was I finding many. You should have seen the look on her face when I pulled out a great hand full of $1 and $2 coins (about $50 worth), with mouth wide open she said, "WOW, YOUR FINDING A FORTUNE".
This same lady pointed me in the direction of another likely hot spot but with limited time left in the day I didn't find much. BUT, I did find something completely unexpected in a 1915 One Australian Penny which came in spot on 12 38 so was very surprised when it came out of the ground. Now as I was only searching for modern coins I hadn't been too worried about scratching any of them and as it was most had come out of the ground without a mark on them. Well as luck would have it my digging tool stuck straight across this penny and left a nice shiny scratch on it,
which hopefully won't be to bad once the coin is cleaned up. I say hopefully because after checking out the rarity of this penny I find that one in perfect condition can be worth several thousand dollars and even in average condition can be worth hundreds. Just my luck!
So on it went each town I came to I would pull over at a likely location and see what it had to offer and the end result so far is $199 in gold coins. Don't you just hate that just one dollar short of a round 200, anyway hope to rectify that tomorrow as it is my last day on the road so no doubt will pick up a few more goldies along the way.
Hope I haven't bored you all to tears with this story, but at least it has filled in an evening for me sitting here in my camper trailer.
Fortunehunter.
Been on a dream holiday for the past 2 months travelling from bottom of Australia right to the very top, which for most of you non Aussie's out there is called Cape York, its that big pointy bit when you look at a map of Australia. Cape York Peninsula is a 4WD and camping must do for the more adventurous being about a 1000km drive along dirt roads and tracks through largely uninhabited wildness.
Anyway to cut a long story short I had to do a 3000km drive home on my own as the wife and kids took the easy way out and flew back. So with the missus out of the way
and the sight seeing finished I pulled the Etrac out of its hiding place and fired her up. For a start I didn't have much time to spare as I had to cover a lot of km's so just a few minutes of detecting time here and there brought up the odd coin. After I had travelled about two thirds of the way home I decided enough was enough and it was time to slow down and get serious with the Etrac. So with each town I came to and after a couple of hours driving I would pick a likely looking location where there might be a few dollars lying about. As I was only interested in finding the gold coins I set the discrimination to the maximum leaving only a large block around 12 38 on the screen clear. With this much discrimination its important to note that you must slow your swing right down otherwise you will pass right over a coin and the Etrac can miss it completely.
The first location I hit netted me around $25 with $10 coming from around a newly planted tree. Yep, in the freshly dug dirt about 2 foot square where a tree had been planted I pull out four $2 coins and two $1 coins. Funny thing is that's about the ratio I always end up with, you get twice as many $2 coins as you do $1. That's the great thing about our coinage in that the person who designed our gold coins decided in their wisdom to make the two dollar coin half the size of the one dollar coin. The end result is that people loose twice as many two dollar coins because they are harder to see once dropped. I have a sneaky suspicion the person who designed the coins must have owned a metal detector.
Next morning I got up early and headed for a local sports ground where a grassed area between a couple of buildings turn up about another $25 in a hour. Hitting the road again, around mid afternoon I came into a large town and pulled over for a break and once more got the Etrac out. Within seconds I had my first gold one and then they just kept coming, the place was just littered with them, I reckon about 90% of the signals I got were gold coins. What was going to be a 30 minute stop turned into a two hour treasure hunt. A family who was sitting at a picnic table nearby had been watching me for about an hour when curiosity got the better of the lady and she came over to ask what I was searching for. When I said coins, she looked rather startled and said "WHAT, just coins". Then she asked was I finding many. You should have seen the look on her face when I pulled out a great hand full of $1 and $2 coins (about $50 worth), with mouth wide open she said, "WOW, YOUR FINDING A FORTUNE".
This same lady pointed me in the direction of another likely hot spot but with limited time left in the day I didn't find much. BUT, I did find something completely unexpected in a 1915 One Australian Penny which came in spot on 12 38 so was very surprised when it came out of the ground. Now as I was only searching for modern coins I hadn't been too worried about scratching any of them and as it was most had come out of the ground without a mark on them. Well as luck would have it my digging tool stuck straight across this penny and left a nice shiny scratch on it,
which hopefully won't be to bad once the coin is cleaned up. I say hopefully because after checking out the rarity of this penny I find that one in perfect condition can be worth several thousand dollars and even in average condition can be worth hundreds. Just my luck!So on it went each town I came to I would pull over at a likely location and see what it had to offer and the end result so far is $199 in gold coins. Don't you just hate that just one dollar short of a round 200, anyway hope to rectify that tomorrow as it is my last day on the road so no doubt will pick up a few more goldies along the way.
Hope I haven't bored you all to tears with this story, but at least it has filled in an evening for me sitting here in my camper trailer.
Fortunehunter.
