More XP ORX Gold from Derbyshire

It was another one of those magical golden days for me metal detecting on a friend’s permission in the Yorkshire Dales with my trusty XP ORX.
It was a YouTube collaboration hosted by Mike & Shaun from The Metal Detecting Channel Vs (in a friendly way) myself aka The Dukes Of Derbyshire and my friend Jamie.

We commenced detecting around 8.30am on a gloomy Sunday upon a lovely green pasture hillside. I didn’t find anything for half an hour, my feet were saturated and I was beginning to think it was going to be ‘one of those days’. I decided to search the steepest area of the field near an old footpath that other detectorists might not have wanted to detect.  I got a sweet faint signal on my XP ORX set to Coin Fast, I opened up the clod and saw silver looking back at me. It was a beautiful Georgian complete silver cufflink. I got the boys over and said, “This would be find of the day!”

We carried on detecting for a couple hours finding the usual crusty coppers, buttons etc then I heard a shout from the distance. It was my mate Jamie shouting “Hammered!”, I had myself just opened up a plug, which I then abandoned along with my detector & spade. I ran to my friend on the other side of the hill, he had found a lovely James I hammered shilling. It had a fantastic portrait on and I was a little envious.

I headed back to my kit and the plug I had previously opened, the signal was a lovely sweet faint 92, something I would dig every time. That kind of signal would normally be a crusty Georgian copper or an old silver coin if it’s your lucky day! I dropped down to my knees and as I reached for my pinpointer, I saw it at the bottom of the hole around six to eight inches down; that spectacular sight we all dream of – GOLD! I could see a small portion of a coin, enough to know it was a gold coin!

I stood up and started screaming “MIKE!!.. REYNOLDS!!!… SHAUN!!!” I was screaming their names, shouting as loud as I possibly could for what felt like an eternity. When they finally arrived, we all crouched down in amazement as I carefully removed it from the hole. You could see that beautiful early milled edge pop out the hard soil. I quickly realised it was a George II Half Guinea. We sprayed it off and wiped it down to see that it was immaculate, a truly stunning coin.

Jamie went back in the hole with his pinpointer and it starts beeping again, we all thought holy crap there could be more gold in there! I carefully extracted the second target to reveal a worn William III shilling. We went back in with the pinpointer and nothing so I went over it with my ORX and was still hitting a signal. I took another chunk out the bottom of the hole and boom another William III shilling. This one was also worn but bent into a love token. I had on my hands a simply stunning gold & silver early milled pocket spill, the stuff of dreams.

I headed back to the car with my gold coin, opened up a nice fruity IPA and sat there feeling on top of the world. I didn’t really find much more for the rest of the day, but I did not care, I’d had one of the best days of my life (again).

I have said it many times before and I’ll say it again – there is no greater feeling in this world than detecting and recovering a gold coin from the Earth. In a few months, I will be a father for the first time, maybe that will surpass this feeling…

Gareth Millward
The Dukes of Derbyshire