A Few Of Guessologists Finds

[Guessologist]

No iron bias continues to pay dividends, I happened onto a messy and jumpy but screaming once locked on 20-30 target at a spot about 50m from where that penny came from. It must have been heavily masked, I've been over this spot so many times now! Found a coin about 5 inches down, here it is in situ:

It was definitely a half penny by size, too crusted to see good details but it was thick copper placing it pre-1860 and thus making it my oldest half penny (the bronze 1862 in a post above is my previous oldest 1/2d). I could see the line of the back of the head and figured it would be a William IV and thus 1830s. Cleaned it up this morning and got a surprise:

1806! That's my oldest English coin by several years. There's something weird about this particular house site, the coins I'm finding at depth here are all old so far (1806 1/2d, 184x(1?) penny, 1816 shilling), I haven't recovered any typical 1850s-60s date coinage that I see at all the other ones. I don't mind at all though!

 

[Jaros]

Are you going to try and clean them up? Maybe left better alone.

 

[Guessologist]

That's clean for me. I just go over all my coins with 0000 steel wool these days which tends to preserve the patina well unless it has a tendency to want to flake, in which case I'll make a call to either cut my losses or strip it back to bare metal. Usually those are just roo pennies so no big whoop. On coins this elderly I figure the crust is half the coin at this point, don't want to bugger it up too much.

 

[Goldpick]

Congrats on the KG3, I think you always get a surprise when running back over old ground with minimal discrimination and filtering - you do tend to hear a lot more detail in the responses whilst also minimising masking. :Y:

 

[Guessologist]

I decided to run with that idea and pull the GMT out of premature retirement to give this spot a quick going over... it's definitely something going back to a machine that's just iron/not iron, pretty relaxing. I dug everything in 40 mins that I couldn't push into giving an iron grunt:

The button was iron masked, it was sitting under a bent nail that I'm reasonably sure was giving me a false target. Still, the GMT managed quite a few previously missed non-iron targets which I thought was pretty impressive. I guess the nox 800 in gold mode would have had a similar stab at things.

 

[Guessologist]

Called this as a doorknob or piece of copper pipe before I dug it, up around 33-36:

Not a bad upgrade to my first Diamond Jubilee medallion a few months ago! Plenty of gilding left and some really severe die cracks on this side

 

[Sandta]

WOW :8
Thats a ripper find :Y:

 

[Jaros]

Bloody ripper!! erfect:

 

[Guessologist]

Cheers, it's got my favourite patina type on it, dark green with that sort of seafoam-green speckling. Quite a difference to the other one (the biggest die crack is juuust still visible on the munted copy):

The courthouse still looks much the same too:

 

[Guessologist]

Medallions keep coming in sets for me:

This ones from a junky site that I just haven't been able to date properly - no coins yet! Rang up a good 24, had it pinned as a penny.

 

[Goldpick]

So much history in your part of the world, a pair of cracker finds! :Y:

 

[Guessologist]

Back up at the old's for Grand Final weekend and ended up detecting through the match, using the new firmware and a different approach of running very low sensitivity. In the rock-hard mallee soil, I've found that I'm rarely detecting any objects past a couple of inches - I think that's the floor for the 600 here rather than just the distribution of objects since it's all pretty heavily tilled and turned over. If it's punching any lower then the numbers are getting heavily driven towards iron, so why not optimise the machine for shallow targets? I turned the detector down to as low as 5, seemed to be best at about 8-10 and started to pick out some really obvious shallow targets that have been passed over before:

Bullet hole isn't a bad match for the .303s that turn up here:

Applied the same concept to the in-laws place and 1c pieces literally flew out of the ground, picked up 10 in an hour and I've done that place to death before.

I'd say that the new firmware is a winner in that good deep targets (when I'm running a more normal sensitivity like 20-23) seem far more stable at least for me, only tried F2-2 (middle setting) for now. Only dug one falsing nail in many many targets so I'd say that's improved, a rusting bottle cap rings up at 6-8 now which is a number I wouldn't dig on a normal day so it's doing what it says on the tin. Just need an aluminium bottle cap rejection mode now!

 

[golddiggerart]

How do you upgrade the 600?

 

[golddiggerart]

Nevermind I just found it :Y:

 

[Guessologist]

A few coins from my usual sites over the last week using a combination of very low sensitivity settings on the 600 coupled with the new FE2 settings. It's a strategy that is definitely pulling out many new near surface non-ferrous targets from the trash. The sixpence was an arsey find, I was out of time on an unsuccessful hunt, so I bumped the FE2 up from 0 to the max of 3 on the 600 and started briskly walking back across the site swinging the detector (with the 6 inch coil on) fairly wildly being in a hurry. Super bad technique with massive lift at each end of the swing and falsing the whole time on my steel caps, anyway it slammed on the sixpence with a loud 27 at the end of a swing, no idea how I've missed it in the past! A bit more of a snuffle around in the immediate area turned up the half penny and button.

I'd probably be embarrassed to see what someone who knew what they were doing would dig up detecting on some of the sites I frequent!

 

[silver]

Well if I'm ever your way with an ace up my sleve
ower: :Y:

 

[Sandta]

Well if I'm ever your way with an ace up my sleve
ower: :Y:

..... or in your travel bag

 

[Guessologist]

Results of a lunchtime hunt at my loamy site that's been good for tokens, first with the new firmware and new targets jumped out no problem:

Cat brooch is a ripper, can't find it exactly on the net but did find an almost identical hollow-eyed design with two cats playing on an english antique site that reckons they are circa 1890. I remember it came up as a soft 15 on the nox. Anyone know what the object at bottom right is? The two nubs are spring-loaded and the text is something like ?OLA PATTERN LONDON.

The half penny was a bit sneaky, it was a 21-24 signal that went to iron tones on a walk around. Dug down a foot in the loam to find it back in the side of the hole on edge at about 6 inches.

 

[MegsyB007]

Great finds for a lunchtime swing!

Love the pussy cat!

No idea what that thing is on the right - weird!

Cheers,
Megsy

 

[MegsyB007]

Then again, I wonder if it might be a panel from a mourning brooch or locket
They put some hair of their lost loved one behind the panel and clipped it in to the main body of it?

Just a thought...

Cheers,
Megsy