My wife bought me a Minelab GO-FIND 40 for my birthday last year because I love my local history and have been coin collecting for years. I knew this was a beginner detector and it was reasonably priced so this is the one I chose. I wanted something easy since I was a beginner, and didn't expect to find much other than new coins, but within the first week I pulled an 1869 Indian Head from my yard, along with various other coins (not nearly as old though) - with relative ease.
I asked a local town's permission to hunt alongside an abandoned railroad track that was built in the mid 1840's on the edge of a large swath of town forest, to which they agreed. On my way to the tracks, just within view, I was searching the banks of a river and found a civil war era musket ball buried 5 inches into his side of an embankment! I was feeling pretty good when I crossed the tracks and went down a steep ditch to where I noticed a stone circle that I assume had been used for fires for generations (these abandoned tracks are well travelled). I searched the stone circle and came up with mainly beer caps, large discarded railway bolts and other bits of iron. Off the beaten path a ways though, on a small game trail leading towards a peninsula jutting out into the river about 50 yards I began sweeping between spindly blueberry bush branches and got a large hit. It sounded just like the beer cans I had dug up, and hit just as loud as the lead musket ball that I had just found. I pinpointed, I dug, and I see the money...the tell tale roundness of a large coin.
I wasn't sure what I was going to find out there, being so secluded and among trash, but there it was! An 1839 Large Cent, almost perfect condition, seven (I measured) inches down lying flat (which helped). I couldn't believe it.
My beginner detector had just pulled a bucket list coin! Love my GO-FIND 40. I'm about to upgrade to something better (undecided), but my GO-FIND 40 is coming with me either way. Excellent scouting machine, I've wedged a 1919 wheat penny out of a crack in a rock miles from the nearest trail after climbing a rock face only because I could collapse and fold up the GO-FIND and climb to find it. I can get into tight spaces and hike miles on scouting missions with this machine.
Love it!
Diggermike – MA, USA.
