It would really be useful to know how serious you or your wife are into metal detecting relics. Also, where you actually live in Virginia makes a BIG difference. If you live near the Potomac, the Bay, or Tidewater, South/Southwest Virginia, Winchester, or the Shenandoah Valley then you will be dealing with mild soil and just about any VLF detector will serve you well. If you live anywhere near Fredericksburg, Culpeper, Orange or other central Virginia civil war hotbeds you will be dealing with highly mineralized red clay that renders most VLF detectors practically blind. Even the Deus needs to be tweaked in a very deliberate way to enable it to be useful under these conditions. If you live in Northern Virginia, unless you live on a Farm or have plenty of Permissions, the restrictions against metal detecting are worse than the gun control laws and can get you into a lot of trouble if you attempt to detect public lands. That is actually true throughout much of the state other than the public spaces near the Tidewater beaches.
That being said, if you are still wanting to get her started relic hunting in VA then though I am a whole hog Deus fanboi, without any other knowledge of what experience you or your wife have with detectors, it might make sense to start off with a much less expensive but very capable and user friendly relic detector. I recommend the Tecknetics T2 or Teknetics Patriot. Both are very capable detectors for the money (~$500 or less for gently used units for sale now on Tnet) and very straight forward to operate and will find plenty of relics in normal soil conditions. The Minelab Equinox looks like a killer detector also based on the advertised specs but is iffy to be coming out by Christmas, plus no need for your wife to be a guinea pig to help Mindlab get the bugs worked out (two models ranging from $650 to $900). You will also need, as you probably know, to invest in a capable pinpointer (at least $100), a capable shovel, pouch, gloves, digging hand tool to completely outfit your relic hunter.
If you are still determined to get a Deus, first see if you can find a gently used package here on TNET classifieds. What you should get: 9" coil, control box, shaft/stem assembly and a set of wireless phones. I personally recommend the WS4 backphones vs. the WS5 over-the-ear phones for the following reasons: The backphones are completely submersible which means that if it starts raining you can just leave them on and keep going no problem (the remote is not waterproof but you can place it in a waterproof phone bag/case or just stuff it in a waterproof pocket and you can just keep detecting by sound using the headphones alone). The WS5 are weatherproof but cannot take a complete dunking. Also the WS4 puck can be removed and you can mount it on the detector stem or on a third party wrist mount or armband pouch and use the mini display on them for target ID (but then you need to plug in a set of headphones into them (using a separately purchased headphone adaptor plate) or into the control box in your pocket if you want to hear signals. More sensibly, you can plug the module on to one of any number of third party headsets and replicate the over the ear headphone experience of the WS5's which gives you the flexibility of either configuration depending on what is most suited to your detecting conditions (cold or hot weather, noisy or quiet environment, etc.).
Since the Deus can be used with just the wireless phones and the mounted coil, that is the Deus Lite setup you have seen for ~$800. As others have mentioned, you miss out on some of the features that are incorporated into the remote such as the displayed target information, the built-in coil pinpointing function, and the ability to modify the built-in programs and save them as custom programs. I would only recommend getting the lite setup as a second "backup" unit that could be used/borrowed by a hunting partner (you or the kids) while your wife uses the the full blown unit with the remote. The remote can be used to enter programs into both coils so you only need one remote to program all the coils you own. If you were to go this route. I would get two different coils one coil for the full setup and one for the lite setup. Personally, if I were to go this route I would by the 11" coil, remote, and wireless phones. And then purchase an HF 9" coil, wireless phones, and coil mounting stem and you have a complete backup set while being able to use the capabilities of the LF COIL (the lower frequencies are good for deep high conductors like silver coins) and the HF coil capabilites with the higher frequencies for mid-conductors like gold or lead and brass relics. Unfortunately, you cannot at this time purchase the HF coil as part of a headphone, remote, stem, coil package. if you get this whole hog setup you can also both go detecting because you will have two coils on stems and two wireless headsets. You will have to duke it out for the remote.
Also, if you are going whole hog, you might want to also look at the XP wireless pinpointer that integrates with the Deus such that the pinpointer sounds off within the Deus headphones when you switch over to it.
So you can get a basic (not light) setup with LF coil, remote, mounting stem, and wireless phones for about $1500 give or take (haggle with your dealer). If you get the hf coil "lite" setup I described that would be an additional $800 to $900 bucks because you would be buying the HF coil, headphones, and stem separately rather than as a llte package but if you buy all this stuff at once the dealer might give you a price break. The pinpointer will set you back another $150 to $200 each. Plus the other relic hunter accessories I mentioned above.
Hope this helps get you thinking about what all this entails and please ask additional questions.
