Yep. Only useful for grid searching a very small area - I've used one under a wooden platform on an ornamental lake when the water level was low to find dropped coins. They can only detect coins to about an inch or so, and you literally need the tip to be above the coin - think of it like drawing with chalk. There's a reason they are called a pinpointer. Don't bother with it. They are a fantastic tool for speeding up recovery of finds with a regular detector, but it's like washing an elephant with a toothbrush.
My kids do when they come with me detecting for treasure in parks and the like. They actually find stuff too. just a cheap $12 ebay security wand (VLF) you can tune up to get 2-3 inch depth and a cheap fun toy for them to practice with. level it will cover a foot per pass and will detect 1 gram+ nuggets but they have to be a few mm away. if your after gold with a pinpointer you could try a bit of crevicing or any exposed bedrock areas in gold bearing creeks with natural traps
A friend of mine's wife runs around the edge of park gardens with a Garrett ProPointer while he goes off detecting, she occasionally finds coins but one day we were out detecting at a local park and I had a bit of a chuckle at her doing it and guess what? she found a gold/ish pendant lol, I'm not sure what it turned out to be but still not a bad find using nothing more than a pinpointer. P.S. I also use my pinpointer when crevicing and testing small pieces of quartz but mainly use it for coin shooting.
Would this be good: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Handhel...580?pt=US_Metal_Detectors&hash=item2a1457c7fc
I know a few guys using beefed up Pro-pointers for checking in-between tight spots along creeks and around old diggings. They attach them to the end of a broom handle. You can greatly increase the sensitivity of the Garrett Pro-Pointer with a simple external modification. I'm not sure whether it can be done with other brands though.
