Layer upon layer
Have you ever wondered when you are consistently digging coins at a certain depth, maybe that’s the limit of your detector’s ability, or is that as far as the coins have been able to go? The answer to this is yes and yes in some cases you are definitely hitting every target, but other times you are at your detectors full depth and there are coins below. Sometimes after I have been over and over an area until it stops producing, I have sat back and imagined if there is another level of coins lying just out of reach, maybe even just millimetres away.
One day I was fortunate enough to be at an oval while they were removing about 4” of grass and top soil from the goal squares to replace the surface and I was allowed to run my detector over it. Previously there had been quite a few coins found here, but it had stopped producing targets, so it was time to find out if there were more coins below or was that it.
After the fifth coin had been retrieved I was convinced that there was definitely a layer of coins just out of reach, this spot produced equally as many quality pre decimal coins that had previously been dug here all over again. So armed with that somewhat frustrating knowledge I have been looking for ways of either gaining more depth or hopefully Minelab would come up with a super detector that would do the job.
Bigger is better
I have always used coils no bigger than 11 inches because I hadn’t heard many stories of people who were having that much more success and getting that much more depth. The opportunity arose for me to try the new 17-inch CTX 17 Smart Coil paired up with the CTX 3030 to see if it could punch through the soil and give me more depth and the ability to go to the next level.
Over 90% of the coins from the oval mentioned above were pre 1945 with some mid to late 1800's silvers scattered amongst them, it is definitely one spot that I detect with great expectation. The first coin was a 1905 Britannia penny from about 9 inches down which was a great start, then only moving about a meter a higher signal this time suggesting to me that it could be deep silver. At around 10 inches my pinpointer was signalling that the target was close. I removed about another inch of dirt to reveal a nice 1921 three pence. It was certainly feeling like one of those special days when my next coin was a 1911 penny also from around 10 inches. Three coins and all over 9 inches deep in an area I have been over heaps, this was amazing.
The unexpected
At this point the excitement was starting to kick in when after getting off to a great start I realised that the CTX 3030 target trace feature was about to show why it is so good. I was getting a strange signal, but the on screen information was indicating that there was a good target as well as a piece of iron. Again at great depth around 10” I pulled a 1940 florin, but the interesting thing was the piece of copper wire that was in the same hole underneath the coin.
When I ran the coil over the hole I could hear the iron clearly and the on screen information was now bouncing around at the bottom right of the screen without the target trace indicating that there was a good target. Excellent! The target trace feature is going to prove invaluable for sniffing out those hard targets that are often masked by iron.
It was a great little hunt with the 17-inch monster CTX 17 coil that yielded 10 coins and with the 9 pre decimals coming from over 9” deep, absolutely amazing depth and clarity.
Mark Williams
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