Notes: 2/10/26
The layout to the website has been changed since we currently don’t have an editor for a newsletter.
On this page you will have the Monthly Meetings and the Monthly hunts in the order that they happned.
The section for the monthly Meetings will contain the presidents message, the winners from the competition table, random pictures and any other important club news. See the Event page for meeting locations, times and monthly hunt dates and times.
It was one of those crazy super warm days on March 1st. Mission Beach was packed. The hunting was fun the catching sucked. It was an enjoyable way to get in some exercise. A total of 33 coins were found for 6 people. Guests Welcomed.
President’s Message:
It almost looks like summer out there lately, but, I think we’ll still have some cooler weather before Spring ends. If not, be prepared for the heat while detecting. Wear sunscreen, a hat, breathable clothes, bring water with you, and don’t overdue it. Heat prostration and stroke are not to be fooled with. Take advantage with cooler days to hunt inland and spend the hot ones at the beach or closer to the ocean. Snake season will be starting soon too if they haven’t already come out with the warmer days. Other critters will be out on the hunt also, so, keep your head on a swivel and maybe one ear out of your headphones if you’re in that sort of area. With more “depositors” at the beach, maybe the good finds will start to pick up soon. Hopefully, the gasoline prices will come down in the near future so, getting to our detecting areas won’t cost so much! Gold Luck out there !
Mark Rubey
Feb 1st was a drop dead beautiful day for metal detecting on Coronado Beach, San Diego, CA. We had a really good turnout and a big minus tide. There is so much sand at this beach its impossible to cover it all in the 2hr limit. Kurt won the hunt with a beautiful gold colored Tungsten Carbide ring. Kurt will be awarded a Mercury Dime at the next meeting.
We kicked off the new year with Mark Rubey back at the helm as President and Rocky serving as Vice President. The competition table had lots of great entries. There was a door prize drawing and name tag drawing. Thanks to Denise and Mark for bring the great refreshments. Check out the pictures of the winners of the competition table with 9 categories.
President’s Message
As the song by Aerosmith says, “I’m back! I’m back in the saddle again!” We still have some challenges as a club, like always I guess, but, nothing we can’t overcome if we all pitch in to help. I know, we all want the club to be fun and benefit us all, but, it also takes a bit of work to make everything run smoothly. We can still use someone to take over the secretarial duties at meetings, and someone to help coordinate the snack volunteer schedule. A newsletter editor would be nice too if anyone one of you has some publishing ambitions. Congratulations to all the competition table winners! Some nice finds were made by many different members.
As for what the club can do for you….we’re working on some ideas. It’s still a bit up in the air as to the prizes we give out for the competition table winners. That’s mainly going to be based on the price of silver and our bank account balance. Ray has volunteered to be in charge of the door prizes…Thanks Ray! Rocky has volunteered to supply some snacks/food for the February meeting, but, we need volunteers to do that starting in March. Our February meeting will be at our preferred location, the Tierrasanta Library. March is going to be a different story though as Tierrasanta isn’t available, nor is Mission Valley, so, it’s back to College/Roland for March as of right now. Looking at other options too. The March meeting will be starting a half hour later due to the meeting room being booked until 5:30pm. That means all entries for the competition table must be made by 6pm sharp so we can get everything done by 7:45pm.
We had a nice turnout for our club hunt on Feb 1st in Coronado. Finds were rather scarce, but, it was a beautiful day, and several decent targets were scooped up. Hopefully, the March 1st hunt will be even better. Hope to see you all there!
Thanks, Mark Rubey
It was a beautiful afternoon hunting in Pacific Beach.
Nice club hunt at sunset, La Jolla Shores, San Diego. Lance won the hunt with a 1gr gold bar in a 14k bezel. Lovely sunset and minus tide, fun times.
Friday December 12th we had our annual Holiday Party and Awards Ceremony. A huge congratulations to Mark, Rocky and David for winning Detectorist of the Year and Best Find of the Year. 1St, 2nd and 3rd in both categories respectively. It takes a lot of dedication and time to compete with these guys, they are definitely some of the best of the best.
Thanks to the generosity of our club members and our sponsor Destination Gold Detectors we raised enough money for a nice holiday party, where we gave away over $600 in appreciation gifts, awards and prizes.
This month we had a really busy and fun meeting. In addition to the competition table this month we voted for President and Vice President for 2026. Congratulations to Mark for being elected President and for Rocky being elected Vice President.
We also voted on the Best Find of 2025 and Best Detectorists of 2025. The winners will be announced and awarded at the Holiday Party, see the schedule for details.
Thank you to Lorraine for bringing the Pigs in a Blanket, they were very yummy.
Thank you to everyone that made our auction a big success. I was really pleased with all the items that everyone donated to the club and for the bidding and purchases. A special thank you to our auctioneer Kurt and his humerus lyrics. A big thanks to Evan for being a really fast runner, delivering items and collecting the funds. Last but not least, thank you to Destination Gold Detectors for being a huge sponsor for out club and for their very generous donation of so many items.
This month we had a park hunt. The park we choose was Dusty Rhodes in Ocean Beach. Unfortunately there were only 2 members and one guest. I wonder why we had such a poor turnout? Are members just not interested in park hunts or is it too early for a Sunday morning? I know a few had other commitments and a few were out of town. I was surprised with the large amount of coins found. Both Mark and Tom found 47 coins in the 2 hour hunt, very impressive.
October’s meeting was really good. In addition to our usual monthly events, this month was the nomination of officers to the club. We received a nomination for the president and vice president and we are still accepting nominations/volunteers for these positions, November will be our voting. That means that the club will continue in 2026 for their 51st year. I really enjoy the club and I’m happy that it will continue for next year and hopefully many more years. Let’s continue to think of ways to make our club even more enjoyable for all.
This month’s hunt was held in Ocean Beach, San Diego. It was a really beautiful afternoon to be out at the beach. The finds weren’t great but not bad either. There was a large number of coins that were found. Several members had 30 or more. Dave won the hunt with a silver turquoise ring.
This month was our ice cream social, We also gave tribute to Malcolm Campbell. Malcolm was very involved in the club Check out his memorial page Malcolm Campbell. We had a great competition table and continue to give away 12 silver quarters every month, even with the price now over $45/oz.
Have you ever been on a suckie hunt? I guess that’s how you would describe this one. However how can you complain on hunting in beautiful San Diego Mission Bay. It’s always great exercise and a beautiful view, or is that is something that the you say when the findings are slim to none.
This month was a great meeting. In addition to our monthly Show and Tell, and Competition Table, we had Brian and Joe from the Southern California Prospecting and Mining Association SPMA. They really got my blood boiling talking about their club and the claims that the club members have access to. This club is defiantly worth checking out. I huge thank you to Paul and Heather for bringing the refreshments which was homemade Enchilada Casserole, avocado, chips and chocolate chip cookies, thanks guys, much appreciated.
This month we had a scavenger hunt in Mission Beach. We started the hent early to avoid people, sun exposure and allow for easy parking.
Once a year we have a scavenger hunt. It’s a lot of fun. If all you find is junk like me, then this kind of hunt is for you. Mark made a ling list of items to look for, anything from gold to a black pull tab. At the end of the hunt a spinner was used to select random points to each item. There were three winners for the hunt. 1) Most Unusual, 2) Best find, 3) Most Points. Each of the winners will be awarded a silver quarter at the next meeting. Mark won best find with a Silver Ring. Team Evan and Eric won the most unusual find with a thing-a-ma-jig. Mark won the most points. Here is a breakdown on points. Team Evan and Eric 53, Forrest 69, David 45, Mark 95 and Jeff 52. We also kept a coin count. Team Evan and Eric 6, Forrest 19, David 3, Mark 28, Jeff 10. Another beautiful morning in Mission Beach and the bonus for me was seeing some dolphins.
We had a very good meeting, thank you Team Eric and Evan for bringing the refreshment, We really enjoyed the yummy treats.
The competition table was competitive as always. Dave won the Best of the Best with a men’s gold band. The subject of the program was Coinshooters, Past Present and Future. See the President’s message in the July Newsletter for more information.
This July we had the monthly club hunt at the beautiful Coronado Beach in San Diego. The hunt was in the early evening which allowed for easy parking and just in time for the towel line to go home. David Lyon won the hunt with a designer watch. (unfortunately he learned the watch was fake, but still a cool find.)
The program for May was our bi-annual auction. We had a very successful auction fundraiser. A huge thank you to our sponsors who really kicked up the game to support our club. Also a huge thank you to all the members for donating items for the auction and for Jim Walker as the best Auctioneer and Evan for Evan being the runner,
The first set of pictures are the winners from the competition table. Nine categories and all winners receive a silver quarter plus the best find.
May was a very special Members Only hunt. The Oceanside Historical Society allowed us to hunt the surrounding area of the historical Pioneer Cemetery. The agreement was that the Historical Society would have first dibs on any thing found of historical interest. Unfortunately nothing like that was found, Some factors made for a difficult hunt, including very hard soil and very trashy from homeless. Despite the difficulties we all had a very good time and appreciated a different kind of adventure. I hope we can arrange for more historical hunts.
Thank you Oceanside Historical Society.
We had a lovely morning at Rohr Park in Bonita CA.
Nothing great was found but we had a good time trying. Young Evan was the winner with a cool Sea World pin.
We had a great meeting. Thanks to Gene’s wife for making yummy cookies. The competition table with 12 categories was filled with cool finds. We give away 12 silver quarters every month. 10 for the competition table, 1 for the name tag drawing, also another for the Monthly Club Hunt Winner.
This month’s club hunt was held in South Mission Beach, San Diego. It was a very beautiful to be out detecting.
There was a real nice low tide (-0.8) and lots of dry sand with volley ball courts, However unfortunately not a lot of cool finds. Mark came through again with the best find, a Sterling Silver Pendent, Mark also had the largest coin count as well.
We had a great meeting. Our guest speaker was Jessica Johnson, she runs Hidden San Diego, she had a wealth of information to share and inspired us to go metal-detecting in areas that perhaps we have overlooked. Check out her website, I added a link on the Resources page. We had a good turnout and there some really cool finds entered into the competition table. We give away 12 silver quarters to winners at every meeting.
We decided to have the February Club Hunt at Mission Bay, as it appeared that the beaches were sanded in.
It was a beautiful late afternoon hunt with a 0.8′ tide. We gave it the good old college try. It was slim pickings but Jeff found silver ring with 18 tiny stones in an eternity pattern.
Our fist meeting of the year was very good. Our guest speaker was Robert Hart for the Chula Vista Coins and Collectable Store. He had great information to share about buying and selling precious metals. Robert will give you a great deal. If I was going to sell any gold I would take it to Him. We had a great competition as well. The club gives away 12 silver quarters every month for the winners.
A beautiful day for hunting
Following are the monthly winners from the competition table. More details from the meeting are in the newsletter. Down load a coy from here Newsletters
This month’s hunt was held in Mission Bay during a minus tide. Jeff found 2 rings, one was 14k with a stone, one was a Stainless Cross ring. Mark found a silver dime, Bill found a wheat cent, and Kurt found many items including a lot of coins.
In the words of David Vilett.
“Thanks to all who participated in making this one of the best seeded hunts Coinshooters has ever had! If you missed it you missed out. Lots of silver coins, ( I got three Washington quarters and four Mercs), foreign coins, rings and jewelry, tokens for up to $100, 50, and 25 gift certs for Amazon and a bunch of clad. This was an event not to be missed. Thanks Cris, Mark, Denise, Jeff and everyone else who made it happen.”
Another great meeting with excellent finds in the monthly competition. Below are the winners.
We had a good meeting. Following are the pictures from the winners of the September competition table.
This month our hunt was at the beautiful Coronado beach. Now that’s a very long beach that has tons of sand to hunt. We meet an hour before low tide and continued into the night for an hour after low time, for a total of 2 hours. I think all in all the finds were slim and far in between we did clean up a bunch of trash. Bill was the winner with a glass pendent.
Following are the winners from the August meeting competition table. This month was the competition table. This month the club hosted an ice cream social. Thanks to Kurt for bringing a great assortment of ice cream treats. Much enjoyed by all.
Have you even been on a metal detecting scavenger hunt? This month was the Coinshooters of San Diego’s annual scavenger hunt and it was great. The hunt was in Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA.
This is how it works. Each person is given a list of things to find. Find as many different items on the list for your best chance of winning the hunt. Each item on the list found will then have a random point value based on a 10 point wheel of fortune spinner. Most points wins the scavenger part of the hunt. There will also be a prize for best find and most unusual find.
This hunt will be at Ocean Beach from 8am to 10am. No early starts or raiding the trash cans please. All items must be found with a metal detector as usual. We’ll meet in the dog beach main parking lot toward the rest rooms end of the lot. For those of you who complain that all they find is junk, this is the hunt for you!
The winners were Cris for the most scavenger points. Mark for the best find (Gold w/diamonds ring), Cris for most unusual – a drug pipe.
These are the July competition winners selected from 8 categories. Pictures curtesy of Kurt. See the About page for more information
The July 2024 hunt started at 3:00am to take advantage of a very low tide. The hunt was amazing with many great finds. A designer watch, rings and gold necklace. Pictures curtesy of Kurt.
Here are the winners from the June 2024 competition. For more information about the competition see the About page.
It was a beautiful June morning with a super low tide. We began the hunt at 4:30 am to take advantage of the low tide. There is a splendor to be at the beach to see the awakening as the sun rises. This was truly the treasure for me today. I don’t think the pictures does it justice but perhaps it shows a glimmer of how it felt. As far as the detecting goes, it was slim pickings for all. Rick out did us all with the amount of jewelry and coins that he found. There were only two entries for the competition for the best find. It was a standoff between a pretty stainless steel men’s wedding band found by RIck and a Milwaukee Hydro Flask (found by Cris). It was a very close count, and Chis won. Cris will receive a silver quarter at the next meeting.
May’s hunt was held at Crown Point, in San Diego’s Mission Bay.
It was another beautiful San Diego day for Metal-detecting. Lots of sand to hunt. I concentrated my hunting around the volley ball courts. Even though they were playing at the time, i took advantage of the outside areas and when they were taking short breaks between sets.
I only found 1 gold Spanish coin the others were silver colored :). David L. also found some Spanish replica’s as well. However the best find was Lance with a chunky 14k ring. Congratulations to Lance.
The following pictures are the winners from the April meeting. During the monthly meeting there is a competition with 9 categories, The winners of each category receive a silver quarter and one point. The points are totaled at the end of the year to determine the winner of Detectorist of the Year award, which is presented at the annual Christmas Party.
Here are pictures from the Coinshooters of San Diego monthly club hunt. This month’s hunt was held at Fiesta Island, San Diego, CA.
2 rings, 12 dog tags, and about 80 coins between 2 people.
Here are the winners from this Months competition table. Each winner receives a silver quarter and bragging rights!
Not a bad club hunt. Another beautiful day at the beach. This month was held at Imperial Beach, CA.
I thought for sure that I would win with a gold ring. Nope, it was actually Dave with a Brass Social Security Card.
What I found out was that a company made these cards, it was not part of the SS department. Cards were being easily destroyed because they were made of paper and especially service men needed them because of their environments. Several nice finds were recovered as usual with the normal amount of cleanup. It was nice to see a good turnout for this fun event.
Winners from the monthly competition,
The February hunt was held at Carlsbad State Beach. The hunt was at minus tide and there was a nice slope with some rocks exposed and some beach erosion. We hit it hard for two hours. It was slim pickings with noting to brag about other than a being a beautiful day in Southern California.
January Meeting, – This is the competition from December and January. We have a Christmas party in December in lieu of a meeting so the competition is for two months.
The Coinshooters of San Diego had their 1st of the year in Mission Beach. It was a late afternoon / evening hunt with a minus tide. Unfortunately the finds were slim. This may have been due to the fact that there have been king tides all week and the beach was heavily detected all week with detectorists taking advantage of the moving sand. Despite this a couple of rings were found and everyone enjoyed the Gold Sunset.
The December hunt was in Pacific Beach during a minus tide at night. It was a beautiful evening and everyone had a great time,
Jeremy was the winner, finding and returning a wallet. Lance found a very little ring might be white gold or silver need to be tested.
This was the last meeting for 2023. December 15th will be the club’s Christmas party.
Following are the pictures from the 8 categories in the monthly competition table.
This was the most unusual request that the club has received. A few months back a retired FBI agent contacted the club with some questions about the capability of modern metal detectors. It turns out that there is a cold case that the agent would love to solve. The request was to search an area in San Diego County for the remains from a serial killer that occurred over 20 years ago.
Here is the story of the case: Click to watch about the “Serial Killer”
This excerpt is from the Coinshooters November Newsletter by President, Mark Rubey
November was an interesting month for us Coinshooters. We had the opportunity to help law enforcement look for a crime victim in the east county by using our skills as metal detectorists. 11 of us met with two FBI agents, Sasha and his wife, to see if we could help solve a cold case involving the murder of a woman married to a psychopath who had been convicted of murdering his first wife also. The story of these crimes were showcased on a TV show that I linked to you all in a previous email. Even though we weren’t able to come up with the victim, or, anything definite connecting the criminal with the crime, we found a few items of interest that may lead to something. We now have a better idea of the search area and what might help in any future searches at that site should we be asked again for our help. If nothing else, it was a beautiful day for a hunt out in the fresh air. We all got a bit of exercise hiking and searching the hills out there. A few relics and several coins were found along with the typical scrap metal we all get on every hunt. Dave Vilett even managed to find a mercury dime! Congrats Dave! Looking for coins, relics, and jewelry type treasure is fun and what got most of us into this hobby, but, we as a club might think about volunteering for more of these sorts of outings. I would be willing to make contact with various agencies in this regard if we get enough support from our members. We’ll talk about that at our next meeting to see what interest you all have. See you there!
Thanks, Mark Rubey
It was a drop dead beautiful day at La Jolla Shores for our November Club Hunt. Not a lot of great finds, but after all it is November :). San Diego does not disappoint. Cris was the winner with a Hobie Kayak pedal drive mechanism. I saw a lady walking a pet Holland Lop bunny, pretty unusual.
The San Diego Coinshooters October hunt was held at the Silver Strand State beach, San Diego, CA.
The finds were slim to none but a few good ones did surface.
The September meeting was lots of fun with the competition of the month and the White Elephant Sale that generated some funds for the club. Thank you to SAKOBS for donating a metal detector to the auction, your generosity is greatly appreciated.
SponsorsThe San Diego Coinshooters had their semi-annual seeded hunt in Bonita Cove, Mission Beach area, San Diego California, USA September 17.
Such a beautiful area and such great fun to search for coins and tokens. We had a great turnout with 34 hunters. Thank you to our sponsors for the great raffle prizes. Proceeds from the raffle are donated to the Ronald McDonald House. Sakobs was very generous donating three metal detectors. Two were given away at this hunt and the third will be auctioned off at our next meeting which is a White Elephant Sale (9/26/23). Come to the meeting to see what we are finding and meet some fun people.
Here are the winners from the August competition. There are 8 categories in the competition. This month Rick and Mark tied for the Best Gold/Platinum category.
A scavenger hunt is a really fun type of hunt and really levels the playing field. This is how it worked. Everyone meet at South Mission beach and was given a list of items to look for. Tent steak, Red pull tab, copper penny, ring, jewelry, and many more. Then after the hunt, points are randomly assigned for each item. Everyone adds up their points and the winner always seems to be Mark who won again :).
There is also a prize for BEST (Barbie – Watch) and Most Unusual (Cris boat rudder).
The June club hunt was held in Mission Beach from 3:30am to 5:30am. Have you even gone hunting in the middle of the morning at O’Dark hundred? Why? to catch a – 1.5 ft tide. The finds pictures below represents the best find from each person. Then we vote on the best find. On this hunt Mark won with his most unusual find. Want to know what it is? Ask Mark.
The following pictures are the winners from our monthly competition. Each of the winners here are from the 8 categories.
The April metal detecting club hunt was a Dusty Rhodes park in Ocean Beach, CA.
When the Coinshooters of San Diego board members made the schedule they they didn’t realize that on the day before would be an organized hunt in Lake Elsinore with very enticing prizes. Several of the coinshooters participated in the Lake Elsinore Hunt. Coinshooter Tom Dunning won a boot load, check out his post on the Blog. The coinshooters played hard at Lake Elsinore and others had work or family things that prevented them from going to the hunt. However that didn’t stop the Coinshooters Newsletter Editor and Sectary Kurt Hoeger. Kurt did really well using his new Equinox 900.
These are the winners of the best finds of the month. This month, Jan, also includes finds from Dec. The Christmas party was instead of the meeting.
What a great time to have a hunt in December. When the Hunt was planned we know it was going to be a minus 2 foot tide; However, we had no idea that there would have been recent storms with beach erosion that we have not had in years!
It was raining during the day but stopped before the hunt started. It was windy and cold but that didn’t stop all of us. The time of the hunt was selected for a minus tide. It was tough pickings with few targets. We did scratch up some odds and ends, a few rings and even a laser pointer. Josh was the winner with a silver ring.
A mini hunt is where coins and tokens are seeded in the sand. You keep the coins and trade tokens for prizes.
