Depth of coins.

Hi all. I went for abit of a swing in a local area which has abit of history. I did pretty well with pre-decimal coins dating back to an English sixpence date 1834 at a depth of about 25cm. The next find was a two dollar dated 1994 coin at roughly the same depth less than a meter away. This was not the only 'goldie' I found at that depth. You would think with 160 years difference (give or take) the goldies wouldn't be at that depth. Unless someone was palcing them there- hardly! Your comments are welcome!

Hi Scoopa,
It depends where you are detecting, if on a beach tidal action will move the coins about, If there is some bed rock they will concentrate there.
On a surf beach they tend to concentrate in a "run" down a long beach before they are sucked into the gutters.
If you are finding pre-decimals you are doing pretty good!
Hope this helps. Have fun

G'day Scoopa....happens down here a bit too in some of the older parks. If the pre dec was lost on original ground it may have sunk only a few cm if the ground was clayey. The 20year old mod coin may have sunk only a couple of cm in the same kind of soil. Often these kinds of soils didn't let the coins sink too far... Some of these clayey areas use to be top dressed to accommodate turf and the like, and generally 10 to 15 cm was a common amount of dressing. Could explain your area. :/ An old race course I once detected had a lot of deep targets also, and I later found out it was ploughed for lucerne...which also explained the several bent coins i got from that area...Cheers Wal.

An area I went to before the big wet (a sports ground) was riddled with ant holes, big buggars about the size of a 10c piece and of unknown depth. There was a family get together happening at the time and one bloke came over for a yak and told me another detectorist who was there a couple of weeks before and like me was finding nothing but pull tabs and junk so this detectorist theory was that the coins have dropped down the ant holes to who know how far. I found a dog spike down about 10". This bloke also knew the history of the grounds and told me were to try, the grass was long but no ant holes and bingo, i started turning up coins. Mick

Thanks for the replies. It appears that there a many conditions that influence the depth a coin will be found at. On a recent beach hunt I worked an area were a dune had been cut by the high storm tides. At the high section of the beach I was locating a lot of 1 and 5 cent pieces and the closer I got to the water I located more 20 50 & $1 coins. I think this has to do with the weight and density of the coins and specific gravity.

Troubling the coin shooters here but how important is depth? Mostly I'm asking due to the fact I'm thinking of going down the etrac/3030 path just wondering how important and helpful is getting the last couple of inches with a closer ID going to be vs the outlay. I have to admit I get some pretty good depth in the right conditions but feel I might be aided by the touting of the ability of the minelabs to go deeper in mineralization and better ID. Will have a hire for a closer look but a day or so won't really be definitive enough. I intend to keep my existing machine for the first 5 or so inches happy with its performance in that zone to get good targets and discriminate, it's the iffy signals that occur past this I'm thinking of addressing.

Where are you exactly detecting?

Parks or gold fields?

I went down the Explorer route for that exact reason, the very useful iron/conductivity ID's, and to get an edge depth wise over my other detectors. My budget was limited, so Etrac was out of the question, and the ctx was definitely a no go, and even if I could have afforded those two detectors, I would still find it hard to justify the purchase price in the first place. I also wanted an FBS detector for effective beach/wet sand detctecting

I wanted to be able still detect in purely all-metal mode for deeper targets, but have the flexibility of using various features and settings to aid target identification. As per the Etrac, you can use either the smartfind screen or the digital ID numbers to check the physical properties of the target, and the depth meter should help indicate the age of the item (assuming older items will sit deeper than the more modern junk). The bonus is that you get all this info without having to resort to using any discrimination, hence no nulling and p less masking of targets.

Whilst I love using the G2 in trashy ground with its effective discrimination and ultra fast recovery times, it is ultimately limited in depth, and running in all-metal is not doable due to the sensitivity/high kHz picking up too many unwanted targets. That is when I usually grab the Explorer to search for the deeper targets.

I'm sure either the Etrac or CTX should fulfill that role quite well, it's really down to budget, or whether you feel waterproofing, gps, and some other improved/added features are worth paying a premium for over the Etrac. Also keep in mind that the Etrac has more coil options over the CTX.

Hi Goldtarget,

I found that for coin shooting parks, old historic buildings etc, a good discrimination setup is the key, and not so much the depth.

Most of my coin finds have not been beyond 6", but these areas are usually high trash area's and this will be your main enemy.

Bottle tops and ring pulls mainly, as they can never be discriminated out on a ferrous scale so you have to go on tone alone.....sort of like lead bullets in the gold fields!

A machine with a digitally numbered chart reading for your targets helps, and as Goldpick says, versatility in coil options.

Regards

Most coins are only 6" to 8" deep unless soil has been
Added to the surface.

A good machine that i used was a tesoro vaquero though
Limited for features I found So much with it because your
digging a fair bit. I then Tested a few different machines
including the v3i.

My conclusion is simple. If you want to find the goodies
Stop relying on the id because its not accurate and can
Not tell you the difference between aluminium screw caps
And our $1 or $2 coins in most cases and bits of canslaw.

Then i am sure targets id different at different depths.

I had 2 opportunities to purchase a ctx3030 at $1500 and
Gave it a miss on both occassions.

Discrimination is dead and buried as a tool. Your relying
On a detector to tell you whats good and whats bad. How
Do you know its accurate? How do you know what your
Not missing out?

Its not the depth you need to worry about. Its the iron in
The ground and you need to be able to hear it like the
g2.

My biggest annoyance has been iron and i know in the
Past i have left targets in the ground which were mixed
In with iron that have "disappeared".

I have taken a different approach and taken on board the
Experience gained by others as well and I have opted for
the Deus for this reason.

The Deus on limited setting is very fast but if you encounter
A coin in a hole with iron in it you will hear both first go but
then if the Target "disappears" just crank up the reactivity
Setting which separates both targets.

Great replies. I travel around alot and when time is limited in a new spot I can get in and cherry pick the top but feeling need the depth for the places closer to me where I feel like I'm exhausting the top and digging for mixed results the deeper less defined ones. In time I'll hunt these further out areas deeper. Perhaps a new machine might replace the old one after enough hours but I'll keep the old one to make the new one cheaper in the short term. Parks mostly wolf, but high gb and mineralization figures. GP great to hear this is more or less my thinking and potentially reaffirms that these type of machines will do what I'm looking for.

Goldtarget what machine are you using?

F75 running 10x5 and 5 DD round

Goldtarget said:

F75 running 10x5 and 5 DD round

Click to expand...

Well the 10x5 is like a 6.5" - 7" round coil.

Get yourself a larger coil like a 10" or 12" round dd.

The f75 is a good deep seeking machine. The coil
Is what stops it.

Fisher are introducing more new machines.

I own the fisher cz3d old serial 1021 tuned by tom to
Ping a dime at 11.9". It can ping deep but not on
High mineralised ground.

I did consider this but the question for me was less about depth more about the difficulty I would have using it. I suspect the balance would be far less effective and become tiresome, I already get annoyed at changing the above two coils back and forth, emi interference would increase, pinpointing harder (esp at depth) and the long term effect of changing coils on the coil connector when swapping so frequently. The elliptical is great for longer grass due to its shallow side but a larger round would be cumbersome trying to sweep. I have given it alot of thought if I could get another machine and coil for say up to $800 I would give that a go but I don't see it happening.

Not sure for $800 your gonna find a machine that runs
Deeper than a F75.

I am going to test the Deus in the goldfields and if this
Is successful i am going to sell most machines i own
And just hunt with the Deus. It is so light i no longer
Use a pin pointer. The only thing i will do though is get
The 11" coil which is nearly the same weight as the 9".

The advantage you have with the Deus is i can switch
It to a lower frequency setting that punches silver coins
deeper. You could sell the f75 and add some money on
Top but what will you then buy?

I'll keep the one I have mate is been too good to me in so many ways to part with it I'm not jedi good on it but we have a definite understanding. If something in the same range (Fisher/teknetics) came up with the 15 I would take it, but after a dead end today on a t2 I think I'll go down the Minelab path. Hope that makes sense.

A bit confused with your reply.

Whats your main issue?

What has disappointed you?

What is your objective?

Main issue depth, this preboost machine struggles to id past a certain depth, it will pick up a target but the tonnes and id will slide down the scale. It will go reasonably deep (and at times accurately) but I'm looking for a more consistent and reliable set of information to establish what is below the coil. This occurs in both amm and discrimination.

My disappointment is digging haloed targets and deep holes without truly knowing what is there, and pin pointing can be difficult. 90% of the signals and targets it will locate and id are fine in the upper reaches, looking for an edge at depth. Emi can be an issue at times to.

I'm after a complimentary machine that goes a bit deeper with accuracy. I'm sure if I can tick that box I will hunt the top with the old one and then go deeper on the marked iffy signals and see if there's anything else. I really feel I'm scratching the surface albeit effectively. Hope that clears it up mate.

What I was meaning above is if I could have a larger coil coupled permanently to a seperate machine (the same as now or similar) then it would be the path I would go down, say 15 inch round etc. I would not want to pay more than say $800 to do it otherwise an upgrade is a better option. I think the etrac or similar will be a good fit with the Fisher. Still having a few capabilities (not least the fact it has an astounding ability to nail $2 coins consistently among high trash) I would use it regularly, I hear often that we can only use one at a time but it's a bit like golf, no one Club can do it all, nor can one player, but I couldn't part with my 6 iron in the Fisher for the driver of an etrac style platform.

Well firstly your using a small coil so you can not expect much from that.

Secondly no machine will tell you 100% what is in the hole. No matter how fancy the screens are. This is from
someone having tested a whites v3i.

Sure if theres silver the machine will tell you that but what about a similar sized target with similar conductivity?

Then as targets get deeper iron target will sound off like a good one. The Deus is good with this in reference to
iron.

I believe Fisher make a 15" coil for the F75.
I have sent you a PM.