A Few Of Guessologists Finds

Had the opportunity to detect a defunct rec reserve (1920's earliest - 1960's peak - 2000's last real use) near the inlaws' place over Christmas, which appears to have never seen a detector. Some wee nearly came out when this popped out of the ground:





Unfortunately not a real one! The alloy gave a high ID like silver so I knew something was up before I saw the broken loop. Probably the closest I'll get to a sov for a long time...

My first commonwealth shilling. One threepence is a 1920, the other is so thin the date is unrecoverable but it's a veiled Victoria on the back so we're in the 1890s. I dug a couple of wheat threepences too but I've misplaced them. I realised quite late that there's almost no bottle caps or aluminium there so there's going to be a few ~14 ID's that I've left behind that will be threeps.



Plenty of pennies, there's two 1912's, 1921, 1951 and 1953, top right was my only find from my old's place this time and is a 1942. It's interesting since it has retained quite a lot of its original patina, it's been buried in loose sand protected from most moisture under a peppercorn tree for probably the best part of its 80 year age.

Guessologist looks like you've found one of those rare spots to dig. Good stuff.

A nice heart flutter.. Some good finds finds mate. :Y:

Nice finds Guessologist!

Good finds Guessologist! Even the non-Sov is a good find and talking piece.

Awesome shilling and florin, the big commonwealth silvers are hard to come by and always bring a smile to my face

I'm actually tempted to mix things up a bit and offload the Equinox and get a cheaper machine like a Vanquish or even a Simplex for something different, as my usual sites are starting to get a bit sparse and my enthusiasm in the heat is starting to waver a little. Let them rest for a little while and let the targets grow back maybe? I actually went back to my Go Find over the last week to see if I could stomach going back to it, and it's driven me nuts with continual falsing on the iron rich ground, any flat tin and bumping literally any vegetation at all. Did find a couple of valid targets that the Nox hadn't clued me in on though so it wasn't all bad.

Pulled the nox back out today with the 6" coil and hit up the site where I found my first rising sun badge and did OK. Was not expecting a snake buckle to show up here:



Well at least I guess they are snakes, it's either that worn or that crudely made that there's no trace of actual design left! Still really cool.

Also 1914 and 1925 half pennies


Then again if I have some more hunts soon like this one maybe I will hang on to it!

Nice find on the snake buckle, probably just worn if anything. Why the change of heart on detectors, just keen to try something else for a change despite maybe having lesser performance (thinking recovery speed)? :Y:

Yeah, changing up detectors seems to have the greatest effect at rejuvenating sites for me, I'm sure there's plenty of targets left where I'm already hunting that just need something a little different to get them to shine. That said the 600 has been brilliant...

Finally honed in on the rubble of another site that I knew had to be there for ages but just couldn't get a handle on. The area of interest is pretty small but so far rich, here's the result of about half an hour's searching:



1877 and 1873 pennies, all the coins so far have come out of a half meter radius, almost like a spill in the rubble...





Silver, a cufflink (James Aitken & Sons, Birmingham, 1911 hallmarks) and a threepence groat! First one I've found, thought it was a threepence, in the same hole as the 1873 penny. It wasn't until I got it home and cleaned it a little that I saw the Britannia on it. Hard to read the date on it at the moment but it kind of looks like 1843.



Some buttons, the old reliable BEST RING EDGE and something a little different, part of a gilded spring loaded button stamped with "W.E. WILEY & SON", not much info on this one but roughly 1870s-80s from what's out there.

Neat cufflink and groat, your coppers also clean nicely in your part of the world. :Y:

Yeah the coppers are funny, anecdotally I'd say that the order of best preservation around here (taking into account how long they have been in the ground) goes something like: Bronze Victorian post 1860 > Copper pre 1860 > Silver > Copper Roo era > Copper Federation era. There must be a difference in quality between the more recent coppers and the really old ones, I reckon they tend to be in a better state as a rule despite being in the ground for much longer I don't think I have a Commonwealth penny that isn't blistered.

The groat turned out to be a 1842, overlaid images of both the 1842 and 43 over my coin and what's left of the last digit is fat in parts where the 3 should be skinny. It'd be fun to see if I could find evidence of it being the 2>1 overdate but I can't find a picture of one! I've hammered the site since the find, I can't get any more targets to pop even with F2 at 0, it might be done...

I was thinking the same as Goldpick - your coppers are in much better condition than mine. I think mine are affected by sandy soil. Fantastic finds with the groat and cufflink.

The worst coppers here come from seasonally waterlogged drainage lines with a lot of vegetable matter that will be producing humic acid. I guess the tradeoff is depth here, the soil is ridiculously mineralised so very few of my finds (outside of the rarer loamy sites) are coming from much deeper than 2-3 inches. Iron-rich buckshot gravel everywhere!

Diamond Jubilee medallion number 4....





Got this one in a bricky pile of dirt near an old mine that someone else had had a good go at before. Tough to miss this signal (up around 30-32)! They must have made eleventy billion of these medallions. At least this one is a generic design that I haven't found before, the other 3 were localised to the shire. The off-center hole gives it a bit of character...

As usual, the medallion finds come in clusters, this one was a surface find. This is reasonably typical soil I'm detecting in too, the Nox realistically doesn't punch down more than a couple of centimeters in all that mineralisation:



A super shagged King George V coronation medallion. It was heads-up on the ground, I first saw the crown and thought it was just a penny until I felt the top loop:





Here's what it's meant to look like:

Guessologist said:

I guess the tradeoff is depth here, the soil is ridiculously mineralised so very few of my finds (outside of the rarer loamy sites) are coming from much deeper than 2-3 inches

Click to expand...

Have you tried beach mode on the Nox? I played around with it the other day in some highly mineralised Queensland dirt, and was very surprised at the results, ran heaps quieter and I reckon depth increased by maybe 50%.

Enjoying your thread and the treasures your finding :Y: .

just laying on the top nice

ChrisD said:

Have you tried beach mode on the Nox?

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I actually gave it a spin earlier in the week to try and spark up an old site and surprisingly it wasn't very stable for me. That said, it did grab a few valid targets that I'd missed before so it wasn't a total writeoff.

I've just realised that I haven't been running in F2 for the last two weeks, I did a reset and have been so used to leaving it in F2 that I never bothered reading the icon properly until today. Must go back to the groat site with F2-0....

Few more goodies from the last site, this first one has me stumped as to what it's off. This guy was definitely a personality in 1880-90s Bright but can't find anything on him manufacturing any tools:


Busted keg tap:


Some kind of decoration off some horse tack:


Gilt buckle missing it's centerpiece:


The rest: