Finding Junk And Not Coins

Just a few questions if I may.

What kind of detector are you using?

How long have you had it?

Where are you hunting and do you have a lot of competition?

One rule in detecting is to dig every target. I live in an area rich in colonial and civil war history. If I were to skip the iron and tin targets I could be missing out on a great relic find. Something that seems worthless at first may turn out to be valuable to someone else. About 90% of what I dig is junk, but I can not wit to here the machine beep. It is the thrill of the hunt that has me hooked. A good find just makes it a little better. I must thank you for posting this thread for I am off today, fist time in a few months, and it has motivated me to grab my Ace and hit the road. Adios Amigos!

My metal detector is from harbor frieght tools.

It cost $29.00 on sale regular $39 but I had a $ 10 off coupon

I bought it on a budget . My wife lost a ear ring in our back yard and we searched forever.
The earing was not that valuable in metal content but was from her mom.

We found the ear ring in about a hour scavanging the yard. Along with buried beer cans, roofing tacks, various metal iron junk from construction on the house 50 years ago.

Then I moved to a few play grounds and abandon houses.

At the play grounds more junk . Old soda pop tops, alum can tops, few modern clad coins,
A braclet made out of paper clips

The abandon house built in 1911 was more junk , bottle caps, nails , pipes from maybe a old clothes line
along with a 2 wheat cents that were badly corroded so bad you could only see very few traces of the wheat ears
Floria stays kinda wet most of the time in my area ,humid with a low water table and moist ground, I have read that people have bad luck in places like that with corrosion of coins and relics.

In my area of florida (tampa) the houses at the earliest are around 1890-1911 and early 1920's for somereason that was a boom time during tampa realestate old wooden houses then a huge gap exist not many homes in the 30's,40's prob depression and ww2 but the mid 50's exploded with alot of concrete block homes in this area

Most of the early relics of florida are made from stone, Indian arrow heads and various tools along with burial monds not many metal relics to find. Although south floria along the beaches people have made the newspaper finding gold/silver coins that have washed up on the beach after huge storms.
In fact about 5 years ago around the time of katrina 40-50ft deep oceans swells 15-20ft reaching the shore stirred up all kinda of stuff on the ocean floor and people found coins that washed ashore near marco island sanabel island shortly after along with aterilally practice shells, bombs,under water mines used in ww2 washed ashore

Well Coppertop you have two choices. Dig every signal or up grade your machine. I would suggest you try some dry sand beach hunting. You will still find more junk than keepers, but I think you may have better success. A pin pointer would help a lot, but would run you about $89.00 for a cheap one.

By the way I went detecting yesterday after reading your original post and got skunked, 6 pull tabs and a bottle cap was all I found. I only got to hunt for about 10 min. as a frontal system moved in and the rain poured.

looks a ace250 is on my christmas list ,

sorry for jinxing your day tim LOL ( mumbles underbreath now he knows how I feel )

keep the metal detection going on. You will find some valuable coins.

warm wishes.

what I would do is place some items I would like to find along with some junk you have been finding and sweep it across those items to see how it sounds and keep doing it until you can differentiate between the sounds and you may have better luck