Minelab Metal Detector Helps Tony Find Treasure!

In the mid-1970's, my parents bought me a Relco Metal Detector. It had a depth range of about 6 inches, no earphone jack, and you could barely hear the audio tones on the beach when it was windy. But I had a blast with it and I was hooked on detecting.

Now I am primarily a beach hunter in the Orlando area. I hunt with the Minelab Excalibur about 80% of the time. I love the amphibian advantage of this machine and thus, the ability to walk into a good trough as I spot it. I also use a Minelab GT with a WOT Coil when I want to cover more ground, and I recently bought a White's Dual Field Pulse.

As a beach hunter, most of my finds are rings and jewelry. My best hunts have always been the short-focused tactical hunts. Longer hunts are useful for observing beach crowds and conditions, but the finds have not been as numerous.

My most productive spots tend to be recurring troughs that tend to always be on the same spot of the same beach. I think of one trough as my "Diamond Rings Trough" because it has produced FIVE diamond rings in about 15 hunts!

(Click on images to enlarge)

My favorite find to date is a ring that is covered with diamonds. I had been hunting a popular beach and getting no signals at all. I had my Excalibur and I decided to pause for awhile to re-tune it. I slowed down my swings, turned up my volume and moved excruciatingly slow. Then, I started getting signals; LOTS of signals. They were faint bumps, but they were repeaters.

The beach had been sanded in and by slowing down to the extreme, I was giving the detector more time to push to the limits of its capabilities. I dug up a few clad coins and then I heard another bump signals. I could not call it a whisper, in that it was not a faint signal, but more of a bump in the threshold tone.

As I was scooping, nothing came up. It was still in the ground. Finally on the third full scoop in the same hole I was looking at the ring. There were so many diamonds I thought it had to be fake.

But when I arrived home and put the needle of the diamond tester on it, it shot up to green; for REAL diamonds! I couldn't count the diamonds in it so I had to look at the bottom of the ring and count the settings; 51 in total. And I will never forget the value of trying something different when the hunt is not producing.

Read more about Tony's treasures (we update them as often as he finds jewelry!) at: www.KellycoDetectors.com/Finds/minelab/tonyd.htm