M6 Whites and gold coins question ??

tanz 82

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Mar 16, 2012
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M6 White's and gold coins question ??

How would I set up to find gold coins with my M6 ? would I have to set the discriminator down to gold setting ? I usually run at coin only ,but I have a virgin spot and from research I have compiled the land owner had money. Especially since I've already found quite a bit of silver in a 3 hour hunt ! Now I want to find out if I'm going over gold coins without even having it register on the m6. the only problem with this spot there's a lot of farm trash so I don't want to be digging all day???
 

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As funny as this may sound I mean it in all seriousness the most important thing you will need to do is swing your coil over a gold coin and dig it.
Turn your discriminator down to 0 and learn to tell the difference in sounds. this is just my opinion but I think people will get way better at fishing good targets out of a sea of iron and other junk if they use their ears never even bother to look at the screen
 

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It wasn't a coin but I did manage to find gold today in a spot that's completely littered with broken iron bits and nails among other things
 

do you have an M6 ? and if so what setting were you on ??
 

I was using my Garrett AT Pro.
When I say littered with iron I mean littered!
I turn my discriminator down to zero when its like that. A lot of good targets especially ones that read in the lower end like gold get masked by iron.. Sometimes you only here a little chirp that suggests there might be a better target in with the growling sound of iron when that happens go over that spot from several different directions a lot of times you can isolate the good target and dig.
You're looking for a nice smooth steady tone you won't get that from rusty bits of iron.. Except sometimes the very large old ones that read like a giant aluminum cans or something but it's pretty easy to figure it's not a gold coin
 

Gold coins, digging Gold coins..

How would I set up to find gold coins with my M6 ? would I have to set the discriminator down to gold setting ? I usually run at coin only ,but I have a virgin spot and from research I have compiled the land owner had money. Especially since I've already found quite a bit of silver in a 3 hour hunt ! Now I want to find out if I'm going over gold coins without even having it register on the m6. the only problem with this spot there's a lot of farm trash so I don't want to be digging all day???

If your discriminating anything but the Iron, then you will probably miss at least the small gold coins.
a $1 us gold coin will probably read at about 10 to 15 on a Whites digital scale. with larger coins reading a little higher the bigger they are. But in 30 years of metal detecting I've never dug a gold coin in the US, and Ive dug a lot of old stuff.

Something to keep in mind when hunting is the fact that people lost what they had in their pockets.. Most normal people did not carry gold coins with them on a day to day basis, just when
they needed to buy something expensive, or if they were showing off.
Silver coins on the other hand, were day to day pocket change and there is a reason we find a lot
of them.... Remember.. the bigger the coin the less of a reason to have one in your pocket to lose...

A gold dollar might have been a weeks wage,

The same concept goes for "Silver Dollars" I ask.. who among us has dug a true silver dollar ?
I never have, dug a lot of half dollars, but no silver dollars...
same reasoning here... Silver dollars are huge coins... why carry them around.. and if they are
dropped its very likely someone will see it sitting in the grass and pick it up before it gets buried.

That's not to say, people don't dig them, its just extremely rare..
Just don't get disappointed if you dig everything for a month and don't get a gold coin..
99% of today's hunter will never find one.. except in jewelry.
 

A $2.50 reads about where round tabs read. A $5 reads about where those beefier thicker square tabs read (or put another way: where a very corroded zinc would fall at). A $10. will read at about where an IH hits . A $20 reads about penny /dime hits at.
 

In other words, I'd dig everything +5 and up.
 

If your discriminating anything but the Iron, then you will probably miss at least the small gold coins. a $1 us gold coin will probably read at about 10 to 15 on a Whites digital scale. with larger coins reading a little higher the bigger they are. But in 30 years of metal detecting I've never dug a gold coin in the US, and Ive dug a lot of old stuff. Something to keep in mind when hunting is the fact that people lost what they had in their pockets.. Most normal people did not carry gold coins with them on a day to day basis, just when they needed to buy something expensive, or if they were showing off. Silver coins on the other hand, were day to day pocket change and there is a reason we find a lot of them.... Remember.. the bigger the coin the less of a reason to have one in your pocket to lose... A gold dollar might have been a weeks wage, The same concept goes for "Silver Dollars" I ask.. who among us has dug a true silver dollar ? I never have, dug a lot of half dollars, but no silver dollars... same reasoning here... Silver dollars are huge coins... why carry them around.. and if they are dropped its very likely someone will see it sitting in the grass and pick it up before it gets buried. That's not to say, people don't dig them, its just extremely rare.. Just don't get disappointed if you dig everything for a month and don't get a gold coin.. 99% of today's hunter will never find one.. except in jewelry.

I was told by an older "salty" hunter that some sawmill workers were paid in gold coins during the 1800's. It made me think about the ghost town I hunt that was built around a sawmill a little differently. Problem is a lot of the area is littered with modern pull tabs and beaver tails that I've dug so many of in one day I couldn't stand to dig another.
 

Pick an area where the workers were likely to have gathered and clean out a 10X10 area of all sounds. That will give you a good indication whether the site is worth "mining". I'd be willing to dig a hell of lot of tabs if a gold coin was at the end of that rainbow!:occasion14:
 

If you can run your detector over an actual gold coin look and listen. Try different settings, and remember what it sounds like and readings. It can read slightly different in the ground. Best test with the real deal.
Small Gold rings read, 10-14 on my M6 with no sound and reading foil, when I discriminate out trash.
 

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