godisnum1
Silver Member
- May 7, 2005
- 3,652
- 381
- Detector(s) used
- Nokta Legend Pro Pack, Nokta Legend WHP w/ LG24 coil, Nokta Pulse Dive Pinpointer, White's IDX Pro (x2), Vibraprobe 570
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I joined T-Net many years ago when I first got into Treasure Hunting & Metal Detecting... and though I've found some cool old relics in the past, I haven't found anything that I think would be good enough to post up here... until this past weekend.
I made a post a little while ago, asking if anyone was going to Florida Hunt 7, but sadly, received no responses.
We actually had several hundred people in attendence this year... along with reps from KellyCo, Fisher/Teknetics/Bounty Hunter, Tarsacci, Garrett, Minelab, Nokta Makro, Butch with American Digger Magazine, K.G. & Ringy from the TV show "Diggers", and even Michael Bennett (NuggetNoggin).
Our hunt took place on over 600 acres of land and was in support of Soldiers Freedom Outdoors, which is a non-profit organization and serves our active military and veterans with eco-therapy (nature therapy) through equine therapy with a large amount of horses and other animals, hunting, trail riding, fishing and kayaking & canoing on their lake. They invest so much into our military veterans and our group was able (through raffles, give-aways, donations, etc.) raise about $24,000 for the SFO organization to continue on their great work!
In the process, everyone in attendence gathered for a Meet & Greet at a local restaurant in Gainesville (to give them our business & support) on Friday evening, then took to metal detecting on the property of SFO on Saturday & Sunday.
This was by far the largest metal detecting gathering & hunt in our State of Florida, ever! We had attendees coming from many other states, the furthest being Washington State... and Nokta Makro actually flew one of their reps in from Turkey to be in attendence and rep their brand at FH7.
On Saturday, I got out there with a new friend & camping buddy and we got to detecting on the North end of the property. We ended up finding lots of shotgun shells (late 1800's to early 1900's), bullets, a few modern coins, and I found an old rusty iron meat hook looking piece, which was interesting. We hunted until about 3pm before heading back for our raffle & giveaways.
On Sunday, I decided to try a different spot. Within the first few minutes, I found some modern trash, but then found an older shotgun shell. Since I'm still learning my new Anfibio Multi detector, I dropped an old 1940's Mercury dime on the ground that I found at a park back home once, just to see what silver rang up as and sounded like on this machine. It was in the 80's and had a good, solid repeatable high tone. I kinda laughed and said, "Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard to notice." I made my way around some big oak trees and over to a spot that I thought might look promising. I started picking up a LOT of iron signals. At first, I pretty much just dismissed them and kept moving. But then I swung my coil from left to right and had a split second high tone sound and then immediately a low iron sound again. When I swept from right to left, all I heard was mainly a low iron tone and BARELY a blip of a high tone. But I remembered watching a guy on YouTube go over signals with my machine and the AT Pro and he explained that if you barely hear that high tone against a low tone, to pay close attention and work it from different angles. So I did just that. I circled around this spot, trying to get that high tone to show up again, until I got to JUST the right spot where I could get that solid high tone to repeat consistently without the iron signal interfering. I got excited because it was in the exact same range as my other silver coin and sounded exactly the same!
So I quickly started digging with my new mini-Lesche digger and got down to about 6 inches, but the signal was still in the hole. I dug again down to about 8 or 9 inches and swept it again and it was now not showing in the hole, but in the pile of dirt. I got down on the ground with my pinpointer and swept it to find out where it was at, then kinda pushed the dirt around once or twice until I saw a round, silver edge sitting in the dirt. My heart started racing, because I believed that I may have FINALLY found my first 1800's coin ever! Up until now, the oldest coin I've found was that little 1940's dime, so I've been hoping to cross over into the 1800's for a long time! I picked the coin up out of the dirt and saw a head looking back at me. But for a second, I was confused because I didn't see the words "Liberty", the date, or "United States" anywhere on it, nor did I recognize the person's head. I then saw words around the edges, but couldn't make it out either? I flipped it over, hoping the other side might tell me more... that's when I saw the VERY familiar Spanish Crest staring me in the face!!! I thought it was a joke or not real for a split second, but then looked at how deep my hole was and it started sinking in quick!
I tried not to scream or freak out, but I hollered at my buddy who was about 100 yards off to come over. He could tell I had something good, so he pulled out his phone and started recording as he got closer. You see, I just got a brand new GoPro Hero 9 (my first camera) and a ton of accessories last year and wore it on Saturday to record my finds... but since I didn't find much, I left it in the car on Sunday. But thankfully my buddy had my back.
As I put the coin in his hand, several other detecting guys came over (a couple saw me digging) to see what I found. One of them had K.G. on the phone and told him what I just dug up as well. None of us could believe it! They were asking me what kind of Reale it was, what the date was, but I couldn't answer any of it because I didn't know what to look for (and I was still in shock). I just got a book for Christmas that identifies Spanish Reales, but I didn't have it with me. One of the guys started looking at it and says that it's a 2 Reale. Another guy used his camera and took a photo of the bottom of the front, then blew it up on his phone and said that it's 1783, and that the 8 had a slight mis-strike at the upper, left.
I was (and still am) pretty much over the moon about this coin! I ended up digging a bunch of the low iron tones I had ignored, then realizing that it was ALL very old square nails. After digging close to a dozen, I switched back to searching for other good tones. And since I seemed to have another different signal from the same hole, I got my larger Lesche digger and took it down to 3 feet. The only thing I found was a couple tiny pieces of pottery, which seemed to be period as well... before I realized that my hole, and the smaller ones from the nails, were beginning to look like a large 6ft grave. That's not a good look, so I gave up on those, covered it all back up, then searched a 30ft radius in that area for the next 6 or 7 hours. I only got one other good signal (again, amidst iron signals) next to a tree, but could not get through the roots within an hour or two (finding more nails), so I finally gave up as the sun was starting to set and I had to drive 2-1/2 hours back home.
Overall, this was the best and most memorable trip of my life! And by far, the best Florida Hunt I've been to (out of 4)! I can't wait to see what lies ahead for Florida Hunt 8 next year!!! [emoji1431]
Bran <><
I made a post a little while ago, asking if anyone was going to Florida Hunt 7, but sadly, received no responses.
We actually had several hundred people in attendence this year... along with reps from KellyCo, Fisher/Teknetics/Bounty Hunter, Tarsacci, Garrett, Minelab, Nokta Makro, Butch with American Digger Magazine, K.G. & Ringy from the TV show "Diggers", and even Michael Bennett (NuggetNoggin).
Our hunt took place on over 600 acres of land and was in support of Soldiers Freedom Outdoors, which is a non-profit organization and serves our active military and veterans with eco-therapy (nature therapy) through equine therapy with a large amount of horses and other animals, hunting, trail riding, fishing and kayaking & canoing on their lake. They invest so much into our military veterans and our group was able (through raffles, give-aways, donations, etc.) raise about $24,000 for the SFO organization to continue on their great work!
In the process, everyone in attendence gathered for a Meet & Greet at a local restaurant in Gainesville (to give them our business & support) on Friday evening, then took to metal detecting on the property of SFO on Saturday & Sunday.
This was by far the largest metal detecting gathering & hunt in our State of Florida, ever! We had attendees coming from many other states, the furthest being Washington State... and Nokta Makro actually flew one of their reps in from Turkey to be in attendence and rep their brand at FH7.
On Saturday, I got out there with a new friend & camping buddy and we got to detecting on the North end of the property. We ended up finding lots of shotgun shells (late 1800's to early 1900's), bullets, a few modern coins, and I found an old rusty iron meat hook looking piece, which was interesting. We hunted until about 3pm before heading back for our raffle & giveaways.
On Sunday, I decided to try a different spot. Within the first few minutes, I found some modern trash, but then found an older shotgun shell. Since I'm still learning my new Anfibio Multi detector, I dropped an old 1940's Mercury dime on the ground that I found at a park back home once, just to see what silver rang up as and sounded like on this machine. It was in the 80's and had a good, solid repeatable high tone. I kinda laughed and said, "Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard to notice." I made my way around some big oak trees and over to a spot that I thought might look promising. I started picking up a LOT of iron signals. At first, I pretty much just dismissed them and kept moving. But then I swung my coil from left to right and had a split second high tone sound and then immediately a low iron sound again. When I swept from right to left, all I heard was mainly a low iron tone and BARELY a blip of a high tone. But I remembered watching a guy on YouTube go over signals with my machine and the AT Pro and he explained that if you barely hear that high tone against a low tone, to pay close attention and work it from different angles. So I did just that. I circled around this spot, trying to get that high tone to show up again, until I got to JUST the right spot where I could get that solid high tone to repeat consistently without the iron signal interfering. I got excited because it was in the exact same range as my other silver coin and sounded exactly the same!
So I quickly started digging with my new mini-Lesche digger and got down to about 6 inches, but the signal was still in the hole. I dug again down to about 8 or 9 inches and swept it again and it was now not showing in the hole, but in the pile of dirt. I got down on the ground with my pinpointer and swept it to find out where it was at, then kinda pushed the dirt around once or twice until I saw a round, silver edge sitting in the dirt. My heart started racing, because I believed that I may have FINALLY found my first 1800's coin ever! Up until now, the oldest coin I've found was that little 1940's dime, so I've been hoping to cross over into the 1800's for a long time! I picked the coin up out of the dirt and saw a head looking back at me. But for a second, I was confused because I didn't see the words "Liberty", the date, or "United States" anywhere on it, nor did I recognize the person's head. I then saw words around the edges, but couldn't make it out either? I flipped it over, hoping the other side might tell me more... that's when I saw the VERY familiar Spanish Crest staring me in the face!!! I thought it was a joke or not real for a split second, but then looked at how deep my hole was and it started sinking in quick!
I tried not to scream or freak out, but I hollered at my buddy who was about 100 yards off to come over. He could tell I had something good, so he pulled out his phone and started recording as he got closer. You see, I just got a brand new GoPro Hero 9 (my first camera) and a ton of accessories last year and wore it on Saturday to record my finds... but since I didn't find much, I left it in the car on Sunday. But thankfully my buddy had my back.
As I put the coin in his hand, several other detecting guys came over (a couple saw me digging) to see what I found. One of them had K.G. on the phone and told him what I just dug up as well. None of us could believe it! They were asking me what kind of Reale it was, what the date was, but I couldn't answer any of it because I didn't know what to look for (and I was still in shock). I just got a book for Christmas that identifies Spanish Reales, but I didn't have it with me. One of the guys started looking at it and says that it's a 2 Reale. Another guy used his camera and took a photo of the bottom of the front, then blew it up on his phone and said that it's 1783, and that the 8 had a slight mis-strike at the upper, left.
I was (and still am) pretty much over the moon about this coin! I ended up digging a bunch of the low iron tones I had ignored, then realizing that it was ALL very old square nails. After digging close to a dozen, I switched back to searching for other good tones. And since I seemed to have another different signal from the same hole, I got my larger Lesche digger and took it down to 3 feet. The only thing I found was a couple tiny pieces of pottery, which seemed to be period as well... before I realized that my hole, and the smaller ones from the nails, were beginning to look like a large 6ft grave. That's not a good look, so I gave up on those, covered it all back up, then searched a 30ft radius in that area for the next 6 or 7 hours. I only got one other good signal (again, amidst iron signals) next to a tree, but could not get through the roots within an hour or two (finding more nails), so I finally gave up as the sun was starting to set and I had to drive 2-1/2 hours back home.
Overall, this was the best and most memorable trip of my life! And by far, the best Florida Hunt I've been to (out of 4)! I can't wait to see what lies ahead for Florida Hunt 8 next year!!! [emoji1431]
Bran <><
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