2018 - Year Of The Equinox!

[Steve Herschbach]

Happy New Year!

This is a follow up of my previous post about finding a couple Mercury dimes in a row with the Equinox. There is important information there about ground conditions and so if you have not read it already now would be a good time.

I was stuck in a race against time because I got a final hardware/pre-production version of Equinox just before freeze-up hit here in Reno. Prior to that I spent very little time having fun detecting - it was all development type work. Once I got the "close to final version" of the hardware I suddenly realized if I wanted to go detecting with Equinox I had better get with the program before the ground froze. With time running out what you are looking at is the results of less than a dozen outings to local parks, maybe 3-4 hours at a time average. The ground actually froze a few weeks ago and so I saved this post just to have something to show during a period of time that I figured I would be out of action.

I am not trying to prove anything per se here, but what I saw convinced me Equinox has that little bit something extra I have been looking for in a coin detector. It is not purely a depth thing but a combination of depth and speed that seems to pull silver out of places where I had not been having much luck for three years with quite a few VLF detectors. Anyway, I figure everyone is starved for somebody to post something of a positive nature and this is my New Year's gift to you all. Click for larger version.

I wish now I had kept the trash to show because I was cherry picking targets, and that being the case there was very little trash dug for this pile of coins. Way more coins than trash. I mostly just targeted the copper penny/silver range to maximize my time but did go after some nickel signals. As far as I know the target id numbers are locked in now, so I will mention a couple. Nickels hit hard at 16 and for copper/silver I was digging anything that gave me a 28 or higher. Corroded copper, Indian Head pennies, and zinc pennies will generally hit lower than that in the 24 - 27 range but like I say I was cherry picking. (Jan 2018 edit: the numbers have changed - nickels now at 13 and copper pennies/dimes at 25 and higher.)

So we have a large pile of recent vintage coins. Junk jewelry and keys in upper right.

There are 52 "Wheatback" pennies or wheaties as people call them. We all love wheaties, not because they are worth much these days since so many are in poor condition, but because if you are finding wheatback pennies then silver can't be far away. The oldest coins in this batch are in there though - 1911, 1913, and 1918 pennies. My favorite was a 1930 penny found at less than 2 inches next to a picnic table where each swing revealed a couple dozen targets. Literally a carpet of trash. There is stuff hiding in trash and not all that deep at times. A nice little squeak revealed this particular penny in the midst of the dense trash.

The silver though is what grabbed my attention. One of the first places I went was smack in the middle of a picnic table type location that by all rights should have been hunted clean of silver ages ago, and I kind of thought it was using the machines I tried there before. So when a 1936 Quarter popped out almost immediately I was surprised. Every outing I was digging quite a few wheatback pennies, and on nearly every outing a silver coin or two showed up. The 1916 S Barber dime also showed up early, only the second one I have ever dug, so I was pretty thrilled with that. It also was a learning experience because I also found a 1916 S Mercury dime. Until now I had no idea both series were minted in 1916.

The one that really blew me away was the 1945 S Walking Liberty Half Dollar in excellent condition. Again, right in the middle of a picnic area. I got a nice high tone and not all that deep up comes a round lump of clay with a white ring showing around the edge. I thought it was a bottle cap, and so gave the lump a twist and the half dollar popped out. The coin is really in great shape and much to my annoyance I seem to have put a small scrape in the middle of the coin when I twisted the lump of dirt off. Just a great coin though with halves being a rare find these days.

What puzzled me is why it was there less than 8" deep in a location that has no doubt seen hundreds of detectors if not more over the last few decades. I hit that immediate spot hard of course, and it developed that there must have been an old pipe there that had corroded away to nothing. There was a linear zone that wanted to produce quite a few high tone ferrous wrap signals, which tend to hit around 39 very consistently, well above the 28 - 36 range where copper and silver normally hits. I suspect others have detected that half dollar before but wrote it off as a false signal or maybe it was just ferrous masking. Whatever it was, Equinox found it easily. That is what is weird about this machine. I will be shocked if people do not end up making similar reports where you are just shaking your head and thinking "but that coin should not have been there"!

Obviously I found a few more Mercury dimes and some Roosevelt silvers. There is a 1942 P "War Nickel" from when they made nickels with a high silver content since nickel was a strategic metal during WW2. And a 1920 Buffalo nickel. They both hit hard at 16, which is surprising given the difference in composition. Some nickels hit at 15 or 17 but the vast majority are real tight at 16. Equinox is going to be a cherry pickers dream. (Jan 2018 edit: the numbers have changed - nickels now at 13 and copper pennies/dimes at 25 and higher.)

Anyway, there it is for whatever it is worth. No doubt a few people are thinking "big deal" and that would not surprise me. The only reason I am impressed is the number of hours I have spent with quite a few of the latest and greatest in these same locations, and nothing like this was happening. The main thing I want to communicate is I was not doing anything special, like chasing lots of iffy signals. These with few exceptions were all nice solid, clean signals. Obviously pushing the edge of what the machine will do in this ground, but good signals nonetheless.

Anyone that detects a lot gets quite familiar with their ground and what detectors can do in that ground. We all miss targets, and nearly any ground will give up some good targets to a determined detectorist. The thing is I was no less determined with those other detector models. I only look to prove things to myself, and this little bit of detecting over a couple week span is what convinced me that there is more going on with Equinox than meets the eye. I really am looking forward to others getting these detectors and reporting in because if they give Equinox a chance, I am convinced others are going to have similar experiences. Just remember that Equinox can't make coins appear where none are left to be found. If they are there however, Equinox is going to be the machine I grab from now on to find them. When a detector puts silver in my pocket as easily as happened with me and Equinox, I can't help liking the machine!

This post has been promoted to an article

[Dan(NM)]

Thanks  for the info Steve, excellent write up!!  I have 4 spots that I'm convinced are "worked out" I have been hitting these places hard for the last 3 years with the Etrac and CTX, with every size coil(Etrac) and from every direction until finally they've played out. I'm betting the Equinox is exactly what the doctor ordered as all of them are polluted with iron and trash. I'm banking on the speed and the flexibility of the use of tones to bring to light a few more quality finds.  I'm getting both coils if they are available at the time of the shipment of the Nox. I'm thinking even with the big coil, the recovery speed might offset the size of the coil in relation to masking(hoping) I'm very much looking forward to putting the Nox to the test in these spots, if it does what I'm hoping, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't, it'll be the perfect clean up machine for the CTX.

[Northeast]

Very nice work Steve, thanks.

I'm really looking forward to what people experience with the Exuinox on quartz piles, gold fields, trashy goldfield camp sites - hopefully JP can soon  share some experiences.

Near the keys in the photo - could almost be a Bitcoin

Shame about the frozen ground - maybe you need an Oz trip

[Skate]

My goal this year is to find a gold coin as well so the $64,000 question is what is a gold coin going to ring up on the Equinox? 

[goldrat]

Thanks for a great report Steve , Iv'e taken all the info in that your forum has released  preparing for the opportunity to have a crack in the Golden Triangle in AUS . This may sound silly but I haven't been impatient for the release and I'm not fussed when it happens . In the mean time I take note of all the old miners camps I come across when detecting with my SDC . I'm always dreaming of a gold coin find in our historic goldfields . Maybe in 2018 I will tick that most wanted box . I love finding gold with the SDC but with a coin your mind drifts into thoughts of who had it , how and what circumstances was it lost . That's enough for me , wishing all members a safe, healthy New Year and lot's of great finds in 2018 . 

Cheers

goldrat

 

[Redneck]

  Wow, that's a pile of goods for only 30-40 hours, and in pounded out sites.  How many silvers did you find  in 2017 with all your other detectors?  Thanks for the info Steve.  

[Randy Dee]

Thanks Steve for that excellent report and very pleased to see your returns from extremely productive sessions.

I have in my mind one of my permissions where the Equinox is going to have a field day, it is the site of an annual four day music festival where I have hit it late in the summer for 4 or 5 sessions each year and producing over £100 a session and over the past 4 years I have used the CTX3030 with a program which I concocted using a total blacked out screen and then only accepted the UK £1 & £2 coins because this site is covered in ring pulls, silver paper and tiny bits of pie case foil  and crown caps and another thing which I didn't want to find is the UK copper and clad coins as it takes 100 kneeling and digging times to get the equivalent to a £1 coin.

The only drawback to using the CTX with this massive amount of discrimination is the total loss of any detection depth I could only find signals to no greater depth than a couple of inches and I can see the Equinox hammering this site.

 

[Mark Gillespie]

With all that said I now realize why you were selling all those machines back in the fall.

 

[bado1]

Excellent write up, Steve. Thank you!

Are you able to elaborate on which modes you used during these hunts? Thanks!

Dean