I am newbie at metaldetecting, I have "Quickdraw 2" from Bounty Hunter. Is it any good? I recently moved to Washington DC area, is it legal to metaldetect in most parks or rivebanks? What do u usually find in average day with average luck?
Vlad You can find coins with just about any detector,, the differences show up in how many pull tabs you will dig based on the discrimination of your particular machine,, All areas have there own rules locally that cover where metal detecting can be done legally,, I suggest that you check with your local authorities unless someone who lives in your same area can answer. an average day is a lot of looking and a little finding, Best way to be successful is to do a lot of research before hand, find out where the old buildings were , carnival sites are good looking, old school playgrounds are also a good place, keep in mind that historical sites are taboo,, fair grounds are good if you can go in and look. just about any place where people gather can be productive,, even hiking trails have produced silver coins for me in this area, camp grounds that have been around for awhile can produce older silver coins ,, I do not limit my search areas to places for coins, I also look for military items as the calvary was in this area for quite some time, Ive found uniform buttons , belt buckles and spurs , shell casings as well as live shells , old mess kit implements, and such things, but everyone has there own vision when they go out for a day of metal detecting. Good hunting !!
In the DC area, you must be very careful to check with the local juridictions. Virginia is very particular about what areas you can enter due to the civil war and other history related events. The shore of the Potomac is fair game as it belongs to Maryland. Be sure to check with any property owners though.
[ That's right you can hunt with any detector. Here is my own experience. I started with some local Russian very simple machine and managed to find some interesting coins of big size. The point is that the cheap machine use only one frequency during work. It means that on mineralized ground it makes many noises and it's really hard to detect. Also you cannot search deep in ground, it is almost impossible to detect a coin standing on the edge and very small coins of 0.5 grammes and less. My choice is Minelab Explorer. In my country it is prohibited to use detectors in historical places and in cities. But we have many places for fun like dead villages, rivers and places of battlefields. This is really amusing. Speaking about cities they are too dirty for searching. Too many cans, cigarette packs, etc. The best thing in my country is that we don't have much private property and it is really easy to find a convenient place. There is no average luck at all. Everything depends upon place where you go and your objectives. Sometimes you need several days to find out the place of ruined settlement. Once I found only 1 16th century coin (0.5 grammes) and a couple of copper rings (15-19 centuries). Wise people use special sticks. You put it into ground in a place where you managed to find something. Later you can see the shape of ex-settlement with the help of the sticks. Here is the picture of 2 weeks ago luck. 460 copper coins in a jar. 17-19 centures. Good luck. Welcome to Russia
I am dying from envy, Coopra! 17th centuary russian copper coins-- can u give any scans? I have never seen them. What are they? I thought it was Peter 1 who started minting them, exept for "Copper mutiny" in 17th centuary
Russian copper coins are known from far ago...well I don't even know the dates. You are absolutely right when you say that it was Peter I who started with them. Before there were so called hammered silver and copper coins. In 14-15 centuries and before Russia was separated in many small independent principalities like Novgorod, Suzdal, Pskov, etc. Each of the city had its own coin. Also there wery many Tatar coins which came from the East. Later (~16 century) Moscow became center of Russia. It was tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich (1645-1676) who tried to reform money system in Russia and made first all Russian copper coins. But he failed. In the beggining of 18 century Peter I reformed the system and new kinds of coins appeared. I made a mistake when I told there were 17-19 centuries. 18-19 is true. I made several finds of hammered coins before. Yesterday was very poor day. 600 km. of driving for a couple of ****ty coins and a button. Here is a picture of hammered pre-Peter period copper coins Moscow and Tver principalities. I got more pictures. This is just to understand what I am speaking about.
