I am an enthusiastic Minelab customer and have great fun flipping lost coins out of the ground all over the country. I started off in 1988 with my first detector a GT 16000, and was prospecting for gold till 1990 with good success. I stopped detecting until my retirement in 2000 - as I am an active person and could not sit at home doing nothing, I had to look for something to do.
On my beach walk one day I saw an old friend of mine detecting there with a SD2100, and he told me that he had been doing it for a few years, very successfully. He also told me he had great fun, because you always met new people, and that there was plenty of goodies to dig out. After that day, I went home and prepared my GT 16000 to go to the beach the next morning. This is what started it all, and I never looked back, as it gives me great enjoyment and satisfaction.
Later on I purchased a GP extreme, and worked with it in the gold fields for a few years as well as on the beaches. Then in 2003 I sold both the GP extreme and GT 16000 and upgraded to the GP 3000 and the Explorer II, became a member of the Minelab Adventure Club, and am still finding plenty of gold with the GP 3000. As the beach became a bit depleted of finds, I thought if people were losing coins on the beach, then they must also lose coins in parks - and how true it was! I tried park detecting and coins where everywhere! It was heaven to detect with the Explorer II, finding lots and lots of coins, jewellery and all sorts of other items. From there on, detecting parks became almost a full time job, I went every day and found more and more coins, and I soon developed a very good skill of flipping them out with a screwdriver, great fun! Detecting as I do is enjoyable and good fun, I love it, and it gives me something to do whilst keeping me young and fit. Over the years, wherever I go, I have built up a very good relationship with the Park Rangers. There is no hassle because I do not do any damage to the lawn in the park and close all the little holes. I tell them that I’m only taking my (Dog) detector for a walk and on the way picking up a few coins; we have a good yarn and I’m on my way. In 2006 I upgraded to the Explorer SE, and then in October 2008 I again upgraded to the all new E-TRAC. I have found both to be good machines, but what a fantastic detector the E-TRAC is - Minelab you did a fantastic job, and I hope you keep going like this. The Factory settings are fantastic; it is a pleasure to detect in the Coins or Hi-Trash mode because it sorts through the trash easily, and you know exactly when a real target is there. The new coil and the pinpoint function both make it so easy and accurate to locate a target, whether it is on the beach or more importantly on the lawn.