Yep!
I love what I find every season...it's all good, but I set a ridiculous goal every year just to have something to shoot for.
You know what they say...
"Shoot for the moon...fall among the stars".
This year the goal is a gold coin.
Farfetched, but we will see.
By last March in 2013, with much warmer weather and less snow than this year, I had already found 3 gold targets.
That is when I just decided to go for 12 pieces of gold before New Years Day.
Crazy goal, I only hunt in the dirt and never found more than 6 before in my best year, but a goal is a goal and it kept me motivated and on point.
As the months went on it actually dawned on me this is doable and possible, but number 12 was the toughest.
That salesman's sample low karat gold class ring I can't count because it is less than 10k and that was a heart breaker at almost #12.
Marked 14k but it doesn't test right at even 10k.
Not plated like many of these sample rings usually are, but low karat and I think it is 6 or 8K at the most and in Germany 8k is popular, in most of the rest of the world it is not so it doesn't count.
2 days later just before the bad weather set in I found that 14k white and yellow gold beauty.
Still have to test it further because it actually might be 18k and platinum instead.
Somebody told me they found a ring that a friend lost that looked exactly like mine, odd shape and all.
18k and platinum on that one so I have hope.
The girl that tested it was not in sight when she did and might have only tested to 14k, or it came in higher and didn't want me to know.
She was very anxious to buy it off me on the spot for $80...I said thanks but no thanks.
Hitting that unbelievable goal was my greatest accomplishment ever in this hobby...I don't expect that to happen again and I am not even going to try.
I might have found 13 pieces of gold, actually.
In October, on the day I found number 10 in a park near a tot lot I also found this old earring that I need to test.
When is the last time you saw one of these screw on pin back types?
It was pretty deep, came up clean as heck and the rocks are fake but it might be gold.
We will see.
By the way...
Every one of those 13 pieces were found withe F2 and sniper coil except for August which was in a wide open huge area but still sniffed out by my Vaq when I was just messing around with a new sniper coil, December's was found with the new F70 on only my second or third hunt, and the rolled gold pocket watch, (which is 100 times thicker gold than just plated so it counts), was with the F2 but I had the 10" concentric coil mounted which I rarely used.
I think at the least it is rolled gold...I can't unscrew the thing to get the back off to check the date on the movement and and look for a mark, but it is too pretty to take a hammer to it to get it open.
That signal was in an area I hunted plenty of times before, and this was huge...a classic full can signal all the way.
I think I got this signal many times before but passed it by on several previous hunts because I just knew it was a can, but this hunt I dug it just to get it out of the way and see if it was masking something...big surprise.
The January ring is the nicest I have ever found to this point.
2 different jewelers said these diamonds were all pretty good quality and this was a $1299 in any jewelry store in the land if new.
They both said I can easily sell it for about $600-$700 used as a fair price for both parties.
When I dug it I saw those round diamonds easily...when I took it home and cleaned it I discovered those square pieces dividing them were not gold and part of the ring design but diamond baggets instead.
Another surprise...and I love surprises.
Add em up, even at melt I think I paid for my $200 F2 pretty easily.
People still sometimes say they think the F2 is "only" a beginners detector.
I still laugh.