A simple frequency change bagged Laurence 22.000 Roman coins. Whilst detecting on a quiet field in East Devon Laurence Egerton came across a very strange signal, as he passed his 9” coil over the target it sounded like large Iron. I’m sure many of us would have possibly ignored it….He then used his favourite Deus trick and switched from 12Khz to 4Khz, and from that point his whole world changed. Switching to 4Khz to confirm a target made the signal much more confident. As Laurence started digging through the hard compacted stony ground he discovered 3 Iron ingots laying together, they were quite large 30cm long and 7cm wide. He was quite prepared to accept that they were the reason for big signal. As he removed the ingots he could see some bronze Roman coins stuck to the underside of the Iron, like all good detectorists he checked the hole again and the Deus gave another massive signal, this time the audio sound was perfect ! With the help of 4Khz the XP Deus had seen past the iron and led him to a find of a lifetime. As he dug down to just below the plough line (15”) 38cm and was greeted by 22,000 Bronze Roman coins all in fantastic condition.
I interviewed Laurence and asked him about the day, he said the field had been detected by other people in the past, who had never returned. The ground was like concrete to dig and the lack of targets gave him no reason to think there was any ancient history… He went on to say in East Devon the soil is so bad it was very rare to find a Bronze Roman coin in good condition, so to find this large amount was truly unbelievable. I asked Laurence what made him switch to 4Khz, “If I have a suspicious signal, I find switching to 4Khz one of the best way’s to tell if the target is iron or not” he commented. This little tip went on to find one of the biggest 4th century Roman Bronze coin hoards in Europe, 76 Kilo’s in all, so if in doubt switch to 4Khz, you never know what you are missing! The coins were mainly from the Emperor Constantine and his family.
Gary
Source: http://www.xpmetaldetectors.com