A Few Of Guessologists Finds

Prospecting Australia

Help Support Prospecting Australia:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Came up a little better, won't go to hard on it. Maker is Albert Parent & Co, Paris and seems to vaguely date to the inter-war period. The shank was still there when I found it, but crumbled as I began to clean. Anyway, I'd say that's Peak Button for me, going to be tough to top that one...

Capture2.JPG

Capture.JPG
 
Having good fun with the 11" running the iron filter all the way down at 1, coming to the realisation that quite a lot of good targets in my soil are being pushed down into the iron range at any setting much higher. Proof is in the pudding with these:

Found the recieving half of the buckle the brass plate from last page came from, the side the brass attached to must be still in there somewhere...
Capture.JPG

Two gilded junk rings and part of a silver cufflink from a little patch that I've been trying to crack for a while now, with a glass button by-catch. Pulled a couple of Paris buckles and such out of this dirt pile before but nothing unusual until now.
Capture2.JPG
1910 sixpence from a hammered ruin site that hasn't given me a coin for a few months. This was a cool tone, one of those muted, mellow ones that you can call as a deep coin before you dig. It was in a bushy area with some sticks keeping the coil off the ground, having the iron filter mostly off must have let it slurp in the faint signal.
Capture3.JPG
 
Decided to walk a couple of hundred metres of dirt road that I thought I'd covered fairly well in the past, apparently with some pretty tame settings. All reasonably easy targets, I've run out of 0000 steel wool so the coppers might stay scruffy for a while. The date on the right penny is 1900, veiled Victoria on the other side.
Screenshot 2022-12-05 214252.png
 
Few and far between in my particular area, but turned up my third Chinese coin. Funnily enough, they have all been Kangxi Tongbao's so far, 1661-1722. Came in right about 34-35, have my highest tone break set at 35 which is low enough to make my most desired targets pop, but I think I'm going to drop it to 32 or so after listening to this one. That was my biggest problem with my Equinox 600, I began to mostly hunt by ear, dig everything high tone and anything that really stood out in the lower tones, but couldn't lower the tone breaks once I'd cherry picked all the high ID's to liven things up again....

Capture.JPG
 
Capture.JPG

Can't complain too much with the results, but I think I've found the floor of how low I can drop the tone breaks, my steel caps are causing falsing into my top break now... Compensated with nudging the bias up a bit but not the compromise I want to make yet. Could slap the 6" back on now to give me a little more headroom...
 
Found a second buggy nameplate, I reckon I've ignored this signal before as it gave a long VB can signal, but this time I must have swung over the short axis which gave a sharp 50ish dig me...

Capture.JPG

Only a few hits on this business on Trove, seems to have been active in the 1890s.

And for something really different, a 1954 Austrian 2 groschen. It's aluminium alloy and in terrible shape:

Capture.JPG
Capture2.JPG

Thought it was an aluminium token of some sort when I dug it as it was near where I got the Palmolive soap token.
 
Just cleaned up the results from about 40 minutes on an old house site on family property over Christmas. This particular spot has given up about 40 coins in total since I've been detecting it but only really get a couple of hours a year to hit it, first time with the Legend which really kicked some butt. It's kind of a fun site, a sweet signal has about 50% chance of being a screw top, 25% chance of being a coin, 25% other so not a bad hit rate.

1879 penny was a bit of a spin out, the area was only properly settled in the latter half of the 1890s with the advent of pumped irrigation. It's my oldest coin from the district now by a whole 10 years...

Capture.JPG
 
Old was the theme today, two pin fire shotgun brass, a brooch/badge that can take a centrepiece like some of the cricket buckles, anchor button, couple of lamp bits and finally another token! No way that I haven't swung over the token multiple times with other detectors. Only about 3 inches down in mild ground and not masked. All I can figure is that it was likely on edge and with whatever previous settings it's pushed the ID down below whatever 'dig me' number I was working with at the time. Rang up as a booming 49-50 on the Legend, 6" coil, M1, IF 1.
Capture.JPG

It's the first upset coin I've ever found, the 'vines' side doesn't align with the Stokes side as per the photos below.

Capture1.JPG
Capture2.JPG
 
Few more goodies from near this spot, first run with the 1.10b firmware. Not using any of the new features yet as they mostly seem to be about adding filtering back (happy to be corrected), probably will get mileage out of the ground suppression at some point though.Capture.JPG

The "P" button is really nice, and London & American still operate in Melbourne today, the button is probably 1880s from the coins I've found nearby.
 
More of a PSA than exciting finds, but M3 on the Legend is turning out to be a really powerful mode for flogged spots. 20 minutes on an old spot gave me an 1863 penny and a Paris buckle, haven't pulled anything of any interest out of there for a couple of years now and the last coin was an 1806 half penny back about 3 years ago with the Equinox. Jumpy high numbers with no Ferro-check bar on both, stabilising a fair bit with a couple of inches of dirt off the top. Both targets didn't seem to be iron masked particularly, and were in areas I've hit with basically every detector I've owned to date.Screenshot 2023-01-19 155345.png
Screenshot 2023-01-19 155404.png

I know M3 is meant for saturated soils but it's working wonders for lifting iffy targets out of the iron ID range in my mineralised dirt. Wouldn't use it for general hunting though as it carries on with falsing a fair bit and hates my steel caps. I've not really worked out M2 for my purposes yet, doesn't seem to get along with my ground as well as M1.
 
Had to run a long range errand which passed by a an old site which I made 20 minutes for (its a little bit like "flowing beer" if you like stupid riddles). Got straight on the Very Old with a gilded button and a musket round.
Capture2.JPG

And to finish up a tone that I was hoping to be a nice big florin or early penny, but nearly as interesting a pretty old bike wrench. Bit of googling suggests that it's probably '70s.
Capture.JPG
 
Mystery silver coin! Fully worn of all detail so plenty of age on it, thought it might have been a groat but here it is on the right next to the one I have - too small so thats out:
01.JPG

Smaller than a threepence, so now we are in interesting territory. The diameter is bang on 14mm, so too big for my next choice of a silver twopence, unless you go all the way back to George III between 1763-1800:
02.JPG

Every twopence since then, circulating or Maundy was 13.4mm diameter as far as I can figure out. Any other ideas or did I just find a ridiculously old coin?
 
Given the wear, it's obviously very old indeed, but I think you need to look further afield than British currency. With the shortage of ANY coins during early colonial times, European or Asian origin may be just as likely.
 
Top