These two platinum and gold diamond rings appraised for a cool $23.000.00 and they were found using the same metal detector but in two very different areas of the beach.
I do things differently to the main beach and water hunting advice passed around on internet metal detecting forums, you can probably see that the jewelry I pull off the beach and out of the water on a regular basis.
I doubt you would see many detecting forum experts telling you to go jewelry hunting at high tide, or go water hunting at beaches that see few people swimming, but that is exactly why these two chunks of ice are now resting in a safety deposit box at the bank.
The platinum Tiffany ring with 1.5 carat diamond was found last year at a small beach entrance that water hunters would barely notice on their way to hunt with the detecting crowds at a popular tourist beach.
It was found using a waterproof pulse induction metal detector with an eight inch mono search coil, designed more for hunting for small gold nuggets than gold jewelry, but it detects plenty of small pieces of gold jewelry too.
Finding platinum jewelry using a pulse induction metal detector with an 8-inch mono search coil at a quiet out of the way beach, would be considered water hunting blasphemy on the detecting forums. The 14K gold ring with 2 carat iceberg was found earlier this summer in the high tide line at high tide using the same Minelab SDC 2300 pulse induction metal detector, another case of beach hunting blasphemy.
Two very different jewelry hunting strategies that went against the usual beach and water hunting grain, but worked like a charm.
When I go beach or water hunting, I go out of my way to try different things and hopefully recover something good.
I never go to the beach and do the same thing every time I go metal detecting, there are just too many variables to search the same way at every beach.
In my opinion, it is better to go beach hunting where ever and when ever, as nothing is ever predictable trying to detect a gold ring or a coin in a wide open sandy space.
Setting yourself apart from the beach hunting crowd is a great way to insure you do not endure slumps or long droughts between finds at the beach.
The more rigid you stick to the same "Ground hog day " style beach or water hunting plan, the longer you will go between finds.
This past weekend I ran across an area in the water that held a lot of green encrusted coins.
Anytime you start recovering "Greenies" you have a good chance of recovering silver coins or gold jewelry.
Saturday morning was no exception, after scooping up a handful of encrusted coins and fishing weights I pulled up an encrusted 10K gold ring.
The hard packed sand that held the coins, fishing weights and rings could not be seen in the water, it was covered over with approximately six inches of sand.
The darker and deeper water was the only visible clue from the lower beach, the trough was created by a combination of wind and waves opposite an area with older condos.
Many Florida beach and water hunters ignore beaches with high rise condos, in favor of tourist areas where other beach and water hunters flock to.
I like the sight of gold jewelry too much to just search the same sites over and over again.
The trough or trench, was about 10 ft wide by 100 feet long and the hard bottom under the fluffy sand contained more coins and jewelry than pull tabs, bottle caps and other lightweight trash. I recovered two other gold rings, five silver rings, three junk rings and very little trash in 2.5 hours.
There were actually three excellent jewelry hunting signs at the water hunting site on Saturday morning.
A narrow strip of darker water running paralel to shore, lead fishing weights and green coins.
Any one of those gold signs can help you be successful, all three signs scream do not walk area from the area.
I swung by the same site on the way to work this morning, just like that the site was sanded in.
You often only have a small window of opportunity between tides to make the most of a good water hunting situation.
I hammered the site in my allotted metal detecting time and came away with some goodies.
Early Saturday morning I hit a south Florida beach that has several bars and restaurants opposite the beach.
It is a beach that has been very good to me through the years and Saturday morning was no exception.
By the condition of the flat gold necklace and the location it was found, I would say it was probably lost after the bars had closed.
The gold necklace was an easy surface find and I saw part of it on top of the dry sand when I turned my headlamp on to scoop the target.
On a heavily hunted beach, this is the type of area that is best covered quickly before the competition shows up.
My favorite way of covering a stretch of tourist beach quickly is by using the target depth indicator on my metal detector.
I discriminate by depth, stopping to scoop targets that my target depth readout indicate are six inches deep or shallower.
My reasoning is that on heavily hunted beaches there are probably no deep targets, so why not concentrate on recovering good shallow targets.
For beach hunters who are obsessed with target depth, there are often just as many deep junk targets as shallow junk targets on a tourist beach.
Using the target depth indicator to cover ground faster, is the opposite to what many people do when searching parks for old silver coins, ignoring shallow targets and only digging deep target.
I have done quite well before sunrise in the dry sand this year, searching for fresh dropped jewelry on tourist beaches.
Mainly because I make the most of my limited beach hunting time, by concentrating my time and effort searching for shallow targets.
I am not a box hunter, I mix things up and try different search techniques to suit the beach conditions.
Many beach hunters, use the same search technique and search the same way every time they go to the beach.
Change is good for a beach or water hunter, it leads to unpredictable finds at the beach.
While covering areas quickly is not one of my favorite beach hunting tips, it can be a very effective jewelry hunting technique in the right situation.
Opposite beach bars and nightclubs, it helps to know what you are looking for and how deep those intended targets are likely to be.
Or you could stop and scoop every target on popular beaches and hope no other beach hunter puts their search coil over jewelry before you do.
Recently I have had several beach and shallow water hunters contact me for advice, wanting to know why they have no problem finding coins but struggle to detect jewelry.
They point to their equipment and ask if changing metal detectors or search coils will make a difference.
Before changing metal detectors or search coils, I advise a change of search technique or timing if you struggle to detect jewelry.
Coins being flat discs are easier to detect at the beach than jewelry, which is often made of several different alloys and comes in all shapes and sizes.
There are also many more coins lost at the beach than pieces of jewelry lost at the beach.
On beaches in less populated areas, the gap between lost coins and jewelry may be even wider.
Sometimes jewelry is just not there to find, and no metal detector or search coil will make a difference.
At tourist beaches you should not have a problem finding jewelry, no matter how heavily hunted the beach is, or what metal detector and search coil you use.
If you are struggling to detect jewelry at a tourist beach, you need to look into your metal detecting technique first, or the times you go metal detecting.
In my opinion, technique and timing are the big two solutions to balancing out the jewelry to coins ratio.
Where there are coins, you can find jewelry if you slow down and methodically search the area.
A level search coil swept slowly just on or slightly above the sand will detect jewelry, especially if you overlap the area you just swept over by half.
Over lapping search coil sweeps, automatically forces you to slow down which improves your jewelry hunting chances.
As far as timing, the best time to go beach or water hunting is anytime you feel like it.
Far too many beach and water hunters tilt the coin / jewelry scale towards the side of coins by spending too much time clock watching.
For example, waiting until low tide, only jewelry hunting on certain days, or waiting for more favorable beach conditions.
Try to think of your metal detector as just a tool or machine to find jewelry at the beach.
Like any tool or machine you want to become an expert at using, you have to use it appropriately and often to become an expert.
When I am on a job painting my customers say I make it look easy, when I am at a beach doing the hobby I love, my competition say I own a jewelry store.
Is it my paint brushes, rollers, metal detectors and search coils making it look easy, or the crafts of using those tools?
Your probably always going to find more coins than jewelry at the beach, but you will find jewelry with good timing and search techniques.
With tropical storm Erika making its way to Florida, my inbox has been full of messages from people asking for post storm beach hunting tips, so heres a few tips.
When beaches are safe to search with a metal detector after a major storm has eroded beaches, you can find anything almost anywhere on the beach.
You may also find almost anything anywhere on the beach for several days after a major storm has blown through an area.
Patience can be a virtue if you wait for the wind and waves to erode the beaches, instead of hammering a beach during and straight after a storm.
I remember a few years ago hitting a Treasure Coast beach with a six feet cut running for a couple of miles.
Walking off that shipwreck beach I could not believe I had to go home empty handed, especially as I had the beach all to myself for about four hours.
I returned to the exact same beach three days later to see if anything had washed back in with the returning sand.
Three silver Spanish reales were my reward for trying again, this is a prefect example of why you do not always have to be the first person at an eroded beach to recover good stuff.
After patience comes equipment choice, always use a good metal detector you have experience with and confidence in its abilities to detect what you are looking for.
Dont bring a gun to a knife fight, on a beach with several feet of sand removed from it, try not to worry about deep targets.
Im my opinion, a VLF metal detector with a little discrimination is the best tool for searching eroded beaches with plenty of relatively shallow targets.
Go for the easy targets within reach using a good VLF metal detector as most beaches are very trashy after being eroded by a storm.
A pulse induction metal detector is a better choice of equipment for covering areas that have obviously been heavily hunted by other people metal detecting.
You have the advantage of target depth, after all the easier to detect targets are recovered on an eroded stretch of beach by people using VLF metal detectors.
An often over looked factor is fatigue, try to use lightweight or balanced treasure hunting gear, so you can stay out on the beach longer instead of nursing a sore metal detector arm at home.
Also rely on your own beach hunting intuition or instincts, instead of second hand and dated beach reports, make your own headlines instead of hearing about what other people have found.
Beach erosion is when your knowledge of local beaches becomes a huge advantage.
You can pick and plan the sites you are going to search after a storm, I often think about places I have found lots of great stuff and the conditions needed to open them up.
For a beach hunter there is not greater thrill than searching an eroded stretch of beach and filling your finds pouch.
After you have searched an eroded beach, you will be more prepared to know what to do when it happens again.
Metal detecting in south Florida it is tempting to get in the water every time you go to the beach during the summer months
From what I have seen on the beach web cams and driving along the beach road, I think everyone has the same idea.
It is not unusual to see a water hunter every 1/4 mile or less at popular south Florida tourist beaches.
So what does that mean, more competition, over hunted beaches, less finds, or an opportunity to find something good?
To a hardcore beach and water hunter like myself, the last part of the question applies, its a great opportunity to find something good.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if everyone is searching inside the water, you have a really good chance of finding something good outside of the water.
My strategy for metal detecting this past weekend was simple, search the place that gave me the best chance of finding something good.
I set my alarm and hit the beach in the middle of the night, searching stretches of the beach that I assumed had been ignored by the small army of water hunters at my local beaches.
A busy beach entrance was my first search area, I chose to search around the entrance and work my way down towards the wet sand.
Mid beach using a modified CTX 3030 Beach Mode I recovered a nice heavy platinum and diamond band, I did not need to turn my flashlight on to know the heavy band in my hand was platinum.
As people sat on the lower beach to wait for the sunrise, I recovered three pieces of 10K gold jewelry in the wet sand.
I also saw people entering the water with metal detectors to water hunt at first light, but I never saw another beach hunter before leaving.
This really is the point of todays blog, setting yourself apart from other people metal detecting at the beach.
What can you do differently to put what ever it is you are searching for in your finds pouch.
At this heavily water hunted place, it was just as simple as searching for and detecting the platinum and gold jewelry that other people assumed was not on the beach.
I actually went home early, I had planned to water hunt after sunrise but I did not want to make the same mistake as everyone else.
Doing the opposite to the metal detecting crowd has paid dividends to me through the years.
Beach hunting outside the box has often put me in position to recover great finds.
When is the last time you did the opposite to everyone else at the beach?
Yesterday I hit a beach for an hour that I had watched all week, from an apartment I was working in that over looked the beach.
I knew I had an opportunity to metal detect on Friday so I took along my Minelab Excalibur.
I figured that if I had seen at least twenty people a day in the water opposite a beach walk over, that added up to a lot of people in one week who could potentially lose jewelry.
An extra bonus was that I never saw anyone metal detecting on the beach or in the water, quite a rare thing for south Florida.
My second signal after entering the water was a gold ring, unfortunately it was the only piece of gold I found on my lunch break but I am not complaining.
Heres the connection to the title of todays blog, the faint signal from the gold ring completely vanished after the second attempt at scooping it.
I know I heard it, it was there after the first attempt at scooping it , but it was completely gone after the second attempt to scoop it.
From experience I knew the target was probably gold and probably deep, so I took another couple of scoops of sand from the area and the target reappeared loud and clear.
I have been using the Minelab Excalibur for years, along with the Sovereign it is one of my all time favorite metal detectors for beach and water hunting.
The round gold target was easy to pick out from the Excalibur audio, and I was not about to give up on a promising sounding target.
There are several things that could cause a beach or water hunter to walk away from a good target, a target on edge, a small target falling through a scoop basket, multiple targets in the same area, or a ferrous object partially masking a non ferrous target.
These examples all plant the dreaded " I'll just walk away and carry on detecting" seed.
Previously good signals can disappear using a little discrimination, but I would rather stop, scoop and put a crusty bottle cap in my finds pouch than walk away from a gold ring.
Never walk away from a target you clearly heard but you cannot detect after disturbing the area with your digging tool, this also applies to land hunting too.
Another thing to take into consideration is the size of your search coil, especially if you have have taken a few scoops of sand out of a target area.
If a target has sunk or been pushed deeper into the sand, your search coil size may prevent you from detecting the target if you are sweeping your search coil across the area.
Try moving your search coil inside the depression and around the slope, instead of across the top of the area.
One final thing about disappearing signals, never assume you are trying to detect a single target.
You may have ferrous and non ferrous targets in the area, causing a smaller but more valuable target to suddenly disappear.
Remove any large ferrous (iron) objects away from an area you believe you heard a good signal.
You may also think you have an elusive target in your hand after a troublesome recovery, but always recheck the hole just in case that coin or fishing weight was masking a piece of gold jewelry.
