Tesoro Tejon - night detect!

I couldn't get out of my shed quick enough tonight to give the Tejon a good workout. It was bit of a lucky dip, trying a couple of your average junk laden parks that I had a quick detect at previously, but walked away after being fed up with crap finds and lots of iron falsing.

It was a bit of a learning exercise becoming reacquainted with a Tesoro again, manual ground balancing, thumbing the discrimination control, single tones, and all that sort of stuff. I dug lots of junk, mainly brass, copper, lead and aluminium, but still managed to find some good targets amongst them. Probably the biggest issue I had was getting used to trying to pinpoint with a concentric coil again, methinks that won't last long before a DD finds its way back onto the Tejon, much like I did on the Vaquero (NEL Sharpshooter).

With the battery box mounted on the rear under the arm cuff, the detector is very well balanced and extremely light considering it runs off 8 x AA batteries. Also liking the toggle switch under the control box for selecting pinpoint mode, and also for accessing the second discriminator control, something I'll have a play with at a later date.

Anyway, aside from the junk and decimal coinage, other finds included - a silver plated spoon, Lonestar Spudmatic gun (made in UK, half of), old copper button, a badge of some sort, a very large cartridge (flare gun?), and my first silver and pre-dec on the Tejon, a 1952 ramshead shilling.

Unfortunately, the shilling looks to have had a fight with a lawnmower, with clipped end and gouge on the face, still a nice coin though - been a long time since my last shilling

So far, so good, just need to re-learn those trademark Tesoro tones again, and get some more detecting time under my belt, but overall, pretty happy with my purchase thus far.

Bit of coinage mate, nice rams head
Good one
EM

Tonight felt a bit more like a relic hunt than anything, lots of junk plus odds and ends, but at least a couple of pre-decs made themselves available. A 1922 half penny which has seen better days, and a 1963 sixpence in lovely condition. Did a fair bit of tripping around to a couple of different spots, two were miserable, and the last eventually gave up a few coins.

The Tejon operated very competantly in one bad emi spot that usually drives the Explorer nuts. I used both machines tonight and the Explorer was responsible for probably 80% of the junk finds, whereas the Tejon seems to give good solid coin tones vs more scratchy tones of irregularly shaped junk targets. The sixpence was literally sitting on the surface, which was a bit of a surprise, unlike the half penny which required a decent dig to locate it.

I need to find a good spot that I can regularly hit without going too far from home, seems to be no easy feat these days with so many people owning detectors.

Wow that six pence is in really good nik

Guns, spoons, money and detectors, this thread has em all,.... nice,...very nice 1963 sixpence GP.
Pitty the 1952 shilling didn't pop up unscathed for you(at least it's not new damage,..ay).

silver said:

Guns, spoons, money and detectors, this thread has em all,.... nice,...very nice 1963 sixpence GP.
Pitty the 1952 shilling didn't pop up unscathed for you(at least it's not new damage,..ay).

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Yes, the Lesche behaved this time thankfully, besides, I thought the battle damaged gives the shilling has a bit of character.

Wow that 6p is in great shape. Great year too

Thought I was going to another one of those frustrating nights where nothing of interest was going to show up, even the decimal coins were hiding somewhere. Add to that hordes of blood sucking mozzies that nearly carried me away into the night, spent more time slapping and scratching myself than actual detecting. :lol:

Anyway, after searching around on google maps on my phone, I found a spot that I hadn't visited before, so I proceded to ground balance the Tejon and headed off into the darkness. A couple of goldies came up first, followed by a dog tag, brass feather earing, shotgun shell, .303 shell, and not much else. Thinking it should be good for some pre-decs due to the age of the area, a few more good targets started to come up, but only turned out to be some BB's - still getting used to tones of deeper targets on this detector. After a while the mozzies got the better of me, so I wandered back to the car via some older trees, and bang, a screamer - had to be a big coin (wishful thinking). Turns out I was right, a 1961 Florin.

Despite a bit of corrosion with some copper starting to bleed through (40% copper, 50% silver), still a very nice coin to add to the album.







Pacman 2c coin!

Good finds mate. I loved those spud guns when I was a kid, actually, I think id still love them if I had one now :lol:

Jon said:

Good finds mate. I loved those spud guns when I was a kid, actually, I think id still love them if I had one now :lol:

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I've still got one, although the Made in China version - was an impulse buy to relive a bit of childhood fun. Bought some caps for it too, and let it rip inside the house, I don't think my dogs liked it too much, was a lot louder than I remember.

Love the florin, virtually the same condition as the 1963 sixpence.
Good work mate.
Jaros

After spending most of the week heading all over town, I was thinking once again maybe I should just concentrate on areas close to home. I had a detect around the perimeter of a local oval, and since they had recently cut the grass, I also investigated a nearby old 1800's house site that was previously impossible to detect due to seriously high grass.

Not wanting to spend all night detecting lower face value coins around the oval, I wacked the discrimination up just above pull tab, and gridded up where most people sit on the grass. Had a couple of junk targets come up, but this Tesoro just loves goldies, ringing up clear as a bell just about every time, resulting in $19.01 in about half an hour.

Satisfied that I had pulled out as many goldies as I could from that spot, I hopped up to the old house site, and pretty much the first decent signal was a lovely 1886 penny in real nice condition. Had all sorts after that, door knobs, shotgun shells, and a variety of lead, copper and brass, but no more coins for now.

I tried detecting this site previously with the Explorer, and it was near on impossible to distinguish targets from the abundant iron and prolific junk targets, even with the small coil, so I thought the Tejon handled itself exceptionally well. As with the Vaquero, the discrimination on the Tejon looks to be very capable in high junk areas, along with good recovery time, and lots of info from the response over targets.

Nice copper GP - I don't usually get excited over copper but that coin is a beauty!

Thanks Paul, it is probably the best condition british penny I have come across so far. Need to go back for a more detailed look, as there has to be more coins around this site. Pity the ground was damned hard, digging with the lesche was quite a chore (cmon rain).

How deep was it? I agree that finding a coin that old puts the place on "possible honey hole" status... where there is one there is more - very exciting to discover a new location close to home with quality finds! I am in a bit of a lull at the moment with the beaches so sandy it is hard to find anything let alone worthwhile targets. As this is the end of my first year of detecting I didn't know what to expect at the beginning of summer at the beach but so far it's been a bust. I have been enjoying putting the feet up and reading about all the recent members finds though!

MMMmmmmmmm MMMMMmmmmmmmm GP, the old girl came up exceptionally well for being underground so long,....I'm with Paul on the excitement level.

silver said:

MMMmmmmmmm MMMMMmmmmmmmm GP, the old girl came up exceptionally well for being underground so long,....I'm with Paul on the excitement level.

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Ye ill follow suit ,.. Love the Brittania coins .. Great looking coin

Agree... That's a great find. I'm yet to find a pre 1900 coin. 1917 shilling is my oldest so far.

Paulmarr said:

How deep was it? I agree that finding a coin that old puts the place on "possible honey hole" status... where there is one there is more - very exciting to discover a new location close to home with quality finds! I am in a bit of a lull at the moment with the beaches so sandy it is hard to find anything let alone worthwhile targets. As this is the end of my first year of detecting I didn't know what to expect at the beginning of summer at the beach but so far it's been a bust. I have been enjoying putting the feet up and reading about all the recent members finds though!

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Probably only about 4-5", though it is hard to know the original state of the site, and how much ground had been cleared after the demolition. You never know, some coins may have been scraped up when everything was dozed.

The beach has been a let down so far for me, the better periods should around or after the holiday season, as it was earlier this year. Hopefully by then some of this excess of sand will be long gone, with the gutters and rocks reappearing.

Looks like the tesoro is starting to grow back on you, next you need a genuine DD for it as it doesn't change the discrimination like the aftermarket coils do