A Treasure Coast Beach Yesterday Morning.I think that shows the way it is. Conditions are not good. The seas have decreased a bit.
You might look near the water line.
One of my best finds came when conditions were poor. It wasn't what I was hunting, or what I expected to find, but nonetheless, it was a good find.
Don't forget that my beach conditions rating is based upon the probability of finding old shipwreck treasure coins. That is what a lot of people on the Treasure Coast are most interested in and that is what a lot of people travel to the Treasure Coast to find. But like anywhere else, that isn't all there is to be found on the Treasure Coast.
Conditions might be poor for finding treasure coins, but you still might run across something else - maybe something unexpected and good. You never know when that might happen.
Metal detecting can be a game of patience. I don't know what percentage of people stick with detecting year after year. I think that more than half of the people that try detecting don't stick with it long enough to really get good at it. I think that a lot of people drop out after a year or so. I'll have to do some sort of poll on that sometime.
People don't tend to remember how long it took Mel Fisher to hit the big one. And the price.
I think most people would have given up.
You have to be optimistic. Without that, it can be hard to stick it out through the slow spells. And there will be slow spells, but if you do stick with it, there will also be times when you are on a hot streak. And there will be surprises.
But if you give up too soon, you'll never know.
I've been talking about an experiment I did. I always recommend experimenting with your detector's settings and listening to the signals caused by different objects. You can get pretty good at identifying objects from the signal even in pin-point mode.
The experiment that I did recently was to show the different signals from foreign coins at different levels of discrimination.
I used the same small foreign coins that I showed a couple of days ago.
For convenient reference, here they are again.
Starting with the top row going left to right, first is the penny, and then a 1 Kopek from the CCCP. Next is a 10 Ore, from Sweden. Then a 1 Pfennig from Germany. And 5 French centimes.
In the other row is 25 centimes from Costa Rica, 5 ore from Denmark, 10 pesos from Columbia, and 10 centavos from Argentina.
In the following videos the sequence of coins from left to right is the same. The rows however were exchanged.
I left the detector in Auto Sensitivity, put it in discriminate mode, and for the first part of the experiment put the discrimination at level 1 (the lowest).
With the coins spread out on a large wooden table, I swept the coil across each of the coins in order, listening to the signal.
Here is that part of the experiment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD0hoapvY2c&feature=BFa&list=UU40rmid7y8dybrNwqTt_ZUg&lf=plcp
Did you notice that the pfennig did not give a signal?
Did you notice other changes in the signal such as the lower tone on the Kopek (the small coin right beside the penny)as compared to the penny?
The pfennig is far from the smallest coin, but the composition is different. The pfennig is composed partly of steel.
If you look at this particular pfennig closely you can even see some rust on it.
Next I increased the discrimination level to 7. Now watch what happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgisPdtu_D0&feature=BFa&list=UU40rmid7y8dybrNwqTt_ZUg&lf=plcp
Did you notice the weaker signals on some coins. The 10 ore, immediately left of the pfennig, was nearly discriminated out with the higher level of discrimination. And this is at near 0 depth.
Again, I recommend playing with your detector to master it.
Use a variety of types of targets, but be sure to test your detector and various settings on the types of targets you most want to find.
I hope you got something out of this. It took me a while to get the video right.
As Yogi Berra might have said, it's deja vu all over again. A bill was recently introduced to change the composition of US pennies from zinc to steel. As you probably know, that was done back in 1943 for the war effort.
If they are then made more like the pfennig, that could mean that you'll be detecting fewer of them.
In the past nickles were the US coin most likely to be missed, especially with the type of discrimintion used on some detectors.
And if you didn't need one more reason to cut down on discrimination, Kovels Komments says, Iron is selling extremely well today. Doorstops, bookends, doorknockers, pans, tools, and even furniture are among the most sought-after iron collectibles.
You can see that if you visit antique stores.
Don't forget to participate in the poll on the main page of the blog.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
