New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Hi poohbear. Wot you have there is an english penny and a half. Came around in 1971 because of the change to decimal currency. Was a very small coin thus not a very popular one at the time. I have one myself which i found near my front door..

Shane

Edited by user Monday, 5 September 2011 8:17:47 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

What you have there isnt a penny but rather it is a halfpenny - the penny would have 'One Penny' above a crown sitting on a portcullis with a chain on either side and at the bottom a 1 and the half penny has the words 'New Penny' above just the crown which is above 1/2

Well went to this same spot today...i did half the rugby field and came away with 106 coins and 2 keys..including 2 florins and a shilling...there is $20.00 in spending money..lol....so all together so far i have found 198 coins at this site and plenty of room to go there yet.

Edited by user Saturday, 10 September 2011 6:09:38 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

oh that will be good eh..i think your detector was starting to think you forgot about it..lol

i normally do a complete circle and take the divit right out and set it aside..then check the hole and divit for the target..once target is located i put divit back in hole and stomp it down nicely with my heel to make sure it is back in place.....most of the time you cant tell i dug there other than the bit of dirt around the hole
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Thanks for that, good info. As the summer moves on it becomes harder to dig and make tidy the holes as the ground becomes all crumbly and dry. So for me the best time for public fields is over the autum, winter and spring. On land I use my LCD screen to hunt for coins. My minelab sovereign GT has an optional LCD screen which I use to work out what coins I am digging up before I make the hole. I don't have it hooked up at present as I am doing beaches. Well it gives me a range at least for lots of coins or other targets, and sometimes precise numbers for some targets. For example I tune the LCD readout to read the $2 as +200. So everytime it reads +200, 99% of the time it will be that a $2 coin. Public fields are bloody brilliant for targets though. Some fields, such as school fields, have hundreds of targets. At schools though I tend to stick to the bark playgrounds.

No. I have tended to do the beaches. Been out so many times to St Kilda, mornings, nights, afternoons in the weekends. Just came back from tonight from st kilda, There have been some massive collapses of sand from the dunes today. If anyone had been near them it would have buried them! Hope there's no missing tourists! Plenty of coins there. So I'm not looking elsewhere at present. Happy hunting. If you see me out and about please come over and introduce yourself. Cheers

Have you tried Frasers gully where the trees have been cut down. Someone told me about it. I don't even know really where it is. Just that there used to be old old houses there and someone I know found a 1853 enfield bullet sticking out of the soil recently. Bet its a good place. Let me know if you try it.

Interesting - what differentiates an 1853 Enfield bullet form any other? I am curious about that.

Yes it is likely to find such bullets so a good observation - I have found that Snider bullets seemed to be the most common with some Martini Henry but then again it was around Waikouaiti that I did most of my detecting. Theres a spot there where I have not actually looked with the detector but I do know that somewhere close by there will be extremely large numbers of Snider bullets because my grandfather and I picked up large numbers of decayed Snider cases and there was a rifle range there.

Yes indeed the Pattern 1853 was the standard rifle in New Zealand - I think they were first brought out by two British regiments and used from about halfway through the Maori Wars through to the end...strangely enough they later had Callisher and Terry Capping Breech loaders. In 1867 the Snider was adopted in Britain and of course they were initially converted Enfields. They arrived in NZ too late to take an active part in the wars though it is said that Gilbert Mair may have taken one into the field to try which does make sense.
Ironically enough Te Kooti had an ultra modern Spencer lever action rim fire repeating carbine and could fire seven shots in the time a British soldiers fired one!

Edited by user Monday, 12 September 2011 9:39:02 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified