New Sand Shark owner here! Been out on the beach with it the last 4 days. Here is my experience:
Top left Pile: Day1, the morning after Lucifer pounded the So Cal beaches. First day using my machine, didn't really know what I was doing all that well, basically chased the high tones. Found some change, some trash, and 1 gold and diamond engagement ring. This beach doesn't have much small iron on it, it was mostly those tent stakes. But If I had to guess, I was hitting 50/50 iron and trash, to coins.
Middle Right Pile: Day2. Hit the same beach I hit on day 1, but got started earlier in the day 6 am when the beach opened. Coins were everywhere. Much less iron in comparison. Probably 25% of my targets day2 were iron. 3 rings, 1 gold, 1 silver, 1 stainless and 1 silver bracelet.
Middle Left Pile (With the glass and rocks): Day 3. Started at the same beach, but it had sanded in. Targets were much more scarce, so I went south to the next major tourist beach. Hit that silver ring as my first target. Iron trash was heavy on this beach, tons of nasty barbed wire looking things, and nails, and just chunks of iron. I'm going to go with at least 60% iron and trash to 40% good targets on this beach. The guy I met at my first beach who was using a PI detector switched to a Minelab Sovereign GT for this beach. His comments were similar to those reflected above that the iron content was just too heavy to use a PI detector. HOWEVER, I did notice that I could go back over areas that he had detected and found a few coins scattered around the iron targets that he skipped over. I'm guessing they were deeper in the sand and he didn't hear them.
This was the most difficult day to detect for me simply because of the sheer volume of iron trash. Just roaming around produced a lot of frustration because I felt like I was digging iron after iron after iron. Especially after detecting post-Lucifer and finding that bounty of coins. I did, however, find success once I switched my strategy from quickly roaming to slow and careful gridding of an area. I slowed down, listened for the deeper tones (still learning this) and carefully detected an area of the beach. I dug tons of iron, but I also dug plenty of coins. Found my first Susan B Anthony coin deep down doing this method.
Day4 is the bottom pile, the sad one with no ring lol. Only spent 2 hours around low tide on the beach. Early bird gets the worm, my friend had already found a gold ring. I ended up crevicing for coins on some exposed bedrock and that's where pretty much 100% of my coins came from day4. You can see the iron trash I was digging as well, that's what's left of the trash I didn't dump midway through detecting. Beach was kinda sanded in and I wasn't hitting a lot of targets which is why I decided to try crevicing for coins.
Long story short, PI detectors work fine in iron infested areas, but you have to be more deliberate and patient with them (Harder to use). The benefit of a PI is that they are the deepest beach detector you can use. So you need to use that advantage by going slow and learning the sounds of a deeper target so you don't miss out on the deeper targets that you can easily miss by speeding around the beach. Yes, you dig iron/trash/everything. But the advantage is, is that you dig everything, and you dig deeper. You might not cover as much visible beach area as you will with a VLF discriminating out the iron. But you make up for it in additional depth ONCE you understand what your detector is saying. So you gain back that lost yardage underground. And you don't miss gold targets that you discriminate out because you thought it was trash.
I picked up my Shark used for $360 bucks. Not sure what the value of the two gold rings plus the two silver plus the silver bracelet are, but I'd like to think that between that and the clad I'm at least halfway to paying myself back after a weekend of fun.
Seriously, If you need a good salt water beach machine and haven't detected before, Either get a cheap VLF machine and stay in the dry sand, or get a good multifrequency machine and hunt anywhere. In your price range, you're looking at a used machine. A local detector store would be my first choice. They can give you hands-on help getting started. If you think you can figure it our on your own, check with our sponsor dealers here on Tnet. They can give you advice on which machine(s) to buy for your needs and maybe have a few to pick from.
