Cutting through trash targets at the beach

Over the weekend I had a chance to search the yard of the second oldest house in Lauderdale by the sea, the house was built in 1924 by the same guy who built the fishing pier. 

I met the owner of the house on Friday afternoon and I had a quick search of the property using my Minelab CTX 3030 and an 11 inch search coil.  The large vacant lot next to the beach was very trashy, with plenty of bottle caps and ring pulls visible on the surface. 

I decided to put a smaller search coil on my CTX 3030 the following morning when I would methodically search the yard 

Straight away the smaller 10 X 5 search coil made a difference, with target separation and target recovery speed.  

I recovered about a dozen coins from the 1930s and a really nice old english silver shilling, the young queen Victoria head dates the silver coin to the mid 1800s. 

The owner was thrilled when I placed the old silver coin in his hand, along with the rest of the coins. 

Most of the old coins came out of one area of the yard, so the next day I went even smaller with my choice of  search coil.

On Sunday morning I pulled several more 1930s coins from the same area using the 6-inch CTX 3030 smart coil. 

Early this morning before work, I snagged a couple more old coins after raking the sandy soil near the sidewalk. 

My searches with the 11 and 17 inch size search coils were really tough in this trashy yard, but it was worth a try in less trashy areas of the yard. 

After reading todays blog I hope you can understand why I love small search coils on trashy beach sites.

This yard close to the beach with sandy soil, reminded me of many trashy beach sites that I recover gold at. 

It goes to show how target separation and recovery speed make a difference, and how your choice of search coil to suit the site is so important. 

Large search coils work best on beaches with less trash,  small search coils work best on beaches with large amounts of trash. 

This also highlights one of advantages of using a metal detector like the CTX 3030 when searching trashy tourist beaches, you can change search coils. 

In my opinion, the hardest jewelry to find is the shallow jewelry on trashy tourist beaches.  

Bottle caps and corroding iron, can keep coins and jewelry hidden really well at the beach.  

I rely on that trash to hide jewelry and coins at many of my favorite jewelry hunting sites, until I can get a chance to go to the beach with my metal detector.