This past Tuesday I invited Mark and Dave from our club to hunt a very well pounded fairgrounds field with me. I have had permission to hunt this field for at least 25 years and have been hunting it that long. The last couple of times we have hunted it we found no coins at all but in the past it produced quite a few older seated Liberty and even Bust silver along with lots of Indian cents and shield nickels. Today however it is very hard to find a signal that reads nickel or better and if you do it’s usually a small lead bullet. So yesterday when I got to the field I opened up the discrimination on my Equinox 800 to accept all signals 8 and above thinking I might pick out a nickel three cent piece we missed. After an hour and a half of false choppy nail hits and small pieces of lead bullets I got an 11 hit that sounded pretty good but not great. I was thinking that it could be a Shield Nickel on edge a few inches deep maybe. I dug a 4” hole with my digger and was still getting the signal in the hole. I went in with the pinpointer and it was in the side of the hole so I dug there and this time it came out in a small clod of dirt. I found the clod it was in with the pinpointer. It wasn’t a really strong signal so I figured I had a piece of trash. So I picked up the clod and crushed it a little and this tiny coin fell in to my palm! At first I thought it was a half dime but when I looked closer I could see the gold color and the reeded edge!! I was thinking maybe it was a fractional gold coin, not sure. The dirt was stuck good to both sides. So I started a happy dance and called Mark over to check it out. Unbelievably it was an 1849 (L) P ONE DOLLAR GOLD PIECE! My first gold coin in 45 years of detecting! I’m sure I have walked over this one many times as well as have several other hunters over the years. We all had our discrimination set too high for it I’m sure. This turned out to be the only old coin any of us found this time. Unfortunately it was used as a jewelry piece and had a stick pin or maybe a money clip soldered to the date side. Luckily we can still see the date and where the mintmark would have been to ID it. It’s in AU condition except for that and to me it’s priceless! We are thinking there was a local jeweler or jewelers who hit all of the small fairs in the area who made jewelry on the spot for sale at the fair. My buddy Larry’s father in law and another friend John both found 2 1/2 gold coins in a field not too far away that were both jewelry pieces and Austin found a one dollar gold last October in another field not too far away. Austin’s was undamaged. There was also a fractional gold coin found in the field where Austin found his. The Minelab Equinox 800 is an awesome machine! It’s so lightweight and hits small target so hard I think that is why I found it. If the machine was heavier I probably wouldn’t have lasted long enough to find it. And if it wasn’t such a strong hit I might have not heard it or ignored it. I have used an eTrac and an XS in the field in the past along with a couple of other brands early on. I can’t wait to get back to that field to see if there is one more gold coin hiding out there! Keep hunting those worked out spots (with the Minelab Equinox 800!) and find your gold coin!!
Keith - North America
