Quick noob question (garret Ace 250)

[kayden]

I purchased & ace 250...I have about 20 hours under my belt now but all i seem to be able to find is mostly pennies ( 35 in all with a few wheaties) My question is there something i should be doing to find some silver ...Im on jewlery mode with about 4-5 sensetivity & yes the areas im hunting are early 1900 lots


Thank you very much in advance

 

[stanski1980]

Hi I do not have the 250 but I have a 150 I know it has some different setting then the 150 but start diggen every sound but Iron null that out. I seen you said it was set on Jewelry then it won't make a sound on Iron. Well on your next outing dig dig dig dig all of the tones and you will get the hang of what your machine is telling you. I have had the ACE 150 for just over a month and have found over 20 in clad and found a few nice charms with best one being a nice 9.6 charm. I am saving up to get the AT PRO with the money i find with the 150. I hope this helps out some I know some one on here that has one will tell you some good stuff about it. But since you are still new all I can say is DIG DIG DIG DIG and you will be surprised in the long run with what you find oh and try a few tot lots to get going in the wright direction it help me out a lot.

 

[Terry Soloman]

I purchased & ace 250...I have about 20 hours under my belt now but all i seem to be able to find is mostly pennies ( 35 in all with a few wheaties) My question is there something i should be doing to find some silver ...Im on jewlery mode with about 4-5 sensetivity & yes the areas im hunting are early 1900 lots
Thank you very much in advance

Hi Kayden! You may be discriminating out silver - along with tin foil. Get in the all metal mode and stop cherry picking until you have about 100-hours of experience. Let the sound tell you what it is, not the machine. Most newbies use discrimination Too Much! Then again, may not be any silver there under 8" deep - because that is about it with an Ace 250 - Good Luck!

 

[Sandman]

Silver is very conductive and was easy to find years ago, but it is still there maybe beyond the depth of your detector because you don't have ground balance. But it could also be because you are looking in the wrong places. Garrett has out a great book which you should order. http://www.garrett.com/hobbysite/hbby_successful_coin_hunting_book.aspx

 

[Swartzie]

Start digging those iffy signals. The deeper something is the more iffy the signal becomes especially if it's something small like a dime. The 250 is not know for it's depth, but it is a good machine. If you get a consistent signal for two or three swings of your coil and it looks like the target may be deeper than a few inches then I'd dig it. The signal will bounce around a bit when the target is deeper, but if it does give some consistency then dig it. It may help to walk around the target while your swinging too. Sometimes a target may be iffy one way, but hit better when you approach it from another angle. A bigger coil will help you go deeper as well. I put a 10x14 Excellerator on my 250 and it gave me a couple more inches and is more stable than the stock coil. Most the silver I have found with the 250 was in the 5-6 inch range and most were dimes. The deepest was like 7 inches and the most shallow was at three and it was a Barber along the edge of the park up in the tree line.

A lot of the good stuff may have already been picked out by others. Try a more obscure area of the park where others may not have gone. A place where it doesn't look like a good place to metal detect. If there are wooded areas try going off into the woods for a while. It may have been part of the park back in the day. The old farts couldn't have taken all the silver out. Be persistent and keep at it.

-Swartzie

 

[spartacus53]

I also have a 250, and I couldn't agree more with Terry Soloman, hunt in the all metal mode. I'm used to my machine, but I see no reason to hunt in any other mode. I think you just have to get used to the tones, so you know what you may have before you even dig. The only tricky ring is sometimes it will ring between a penny & a dime, and even a strong dime ring may only yield a penny. That aside, I love the machine as a beginner too and the finds already covered my initial investment.

 

[calisdad]

Make sure you don't have it inadvertantly notched out. The black squares under the icons tell you what is and isn't notched out. The machine will retain settings from the previous use. You don't want to notch out pull tabs unfortunately but jewelry mode down 2 clicks is what I use mostly and I found a nice quarter yesterday. Just keep diggin'.

 

[kayden]

Thanks guys for all your replies!

 

[savant365]

Not trying to put you down or anything but 20 hours isn't really that long. The Ace 250 will sound off when it's over a silver coin but they are few and far between. I see posts on here where guys find several in one hunt but they don't find them on every hunt. It's a waiting game for sure. I have only found more then 1 silver once in a hunt and that was only 2 but it was an SLQ and a Washington. Keep at it and you will get silver eventually. Jewellery mode is fine depending on the area you are hunting, I change settings on mine all the time depending on what is in the ground. If there is a lot of foil or can slaw you are gonna dig a lotta trash to find silver and gold. Good luck and be patient, it'll happen eventually.

HH Charlie

 

[lookindown]

Try running your sensitivity as high as you can without getting falses. The old silver may be a little deeper than you are getting. If you cant run your sens any higher, you may need a machine with manual ground balance. Like others have said, there might not be any silver where your hunting. Good luck.

 

[NOLA_Ken]

I'm running my ace in jewelry mode with the sensitivity set either at two or three depending on how trashy the spot is, and not doing too bad. Dug a lot of nickels last time out and one silver, so I'm hopeful. Of course the ground in New Orleans seems to be almost entirely made of junk, so I'm still getting used to the signals here.

 

[relichunters]

Only discriminate IRON and that's it. Dig everything higher than 15 or 20.
It's possible that where you're detecting used to be a booth or store with and everything cost a penny. Like a gumball machine, a carnival booth, etc. But they would be all wheats.

 

[NOLA_Ken]

here's another suggestion, if you have any silver coins, dig a few holes in your yard, and bury the coins at different depths, some on their sides, some with other things like nails etc, then run your detector over them and listen to the signals. Try it with the ground dry, and wet, leave some loose filled, some hard pack. Try the same thing with jewelry too.

 

[Woodland Detectors]

Keep digging, listen to your tones, and the silver will come. Silver is not as common to find as you think. It takes a little time

 

[28138digger]

I also have the 250. I have dug alot of pennies that showed dime signal.. I am also a newbie but have been digging everything and have loved it.. I dont care if it is an old bent nail at 4". Maybe I am just sick...LOL Love finding and wondering how it get there...HH

 

[mfitzy111]

yeah - I have an Ace 350 - so just keeping in the right mind set here. I'd try a few things- I'd set up a test bed, and see what silver sounds like (I did that with Ebay's help) -silver for the 350 sounds like a bell tone/ and at 3 inches down, it's unmistakable...

- out of about 2 months and 30 bucks found in clad I found 1 silver dime - a barber 1906. so your location might be your issue- I believe my park's been back filled and back filled again... try another location. I found a few junk rings, and a few nice pieces of silver jewelry in the 350s coin mode. the areas I hunt are junky and jewelry mode would drive me crazy!!! I'm going to attach some pics of silver I found in coin mode...
not to high jack your thread...but just to show you coin mode for silver is workable, jewelry mode in a noisy area will drive you to drink. ...

I don't always want to dig up pulltabs and junk (can slaw!) but I can say I will dig every nickel. some gold rings will come up as pull tabs and some will come up as nickels. the advice dig everything is good advice, but I can't say I'm going to be able to do that all the time. (resting up from tennis elbow right now- next outing this weekend Sunday!) since your new like I am one mistake I made was using a short 6 inch blade to dig all the time for hours on end! don't do that! (lowes special- for $10 life time warranty) anyhow find a small spade shovel or longer unbreakable blade if you can- take a lot of breaks at first - because tennis elbow is the worst....

 

[RvaDiggn]

I seem to have dug more pennies than silver, I guess in the past, people lost more pennies than silver, why I do not know. For instance, the house I hunt down the street I have found around 18 wheat cents but only 1 1902 Barber dime. I would think there would be more silver there, but I have yet to find it.