Nokta The Legend
Nokta The Legend Target ID Chart: What Each Number Means
Quick answer
The Legend reports targets on a two digit scale of 0 to 99. Iron generally falls below about 15, foil and small gold from the middle teens into the 30s, nickels around 25 to 35, pull tabs roughly 33 to 50, zinc cents in the 50s, and copper, clad and silver coins from the high 60s into the 90s.
Target ID on The Legend is a conductivity ordering, not a lookup table. The machine measures how a buried object responds to the transmitted field and places it on a scale from 0 to 99. That ordering is reliable and it is physics: iron at the bottom, foil and small gold low, nickel and pull tabs through the middle, copper and silver at the top, and a large silver coin near the top of the scale. The exact digit is where people get into trouble.
Nokta does not publish a per-target lookup chart for this machine, and anybody who hands you one as gospel is repeating owner reports rather than a specification. The bands below are exactly that: the readings Legend owners consistently describe on the 0 to 99 scale. Treat them as a starting map, then correct the map with your own soil. If you also run a second machine, read how Legend numbers line up against an Equinox or an AT Pro before you assume a number carries across.
Top pick
Nokta The Legend Pro Pack
The Pro Pack ships with both the 6 inch and 11 inch DD coils, so you can test your ID bands with a separation coil and a coverage coil without buying a second coil first.
Price was accurate when this page was compiled and changes often.
What does each number on the Legend actually mean?
Read this table as bands, never as single digits. Where two rows overlap, the machine genuinely cannot separate them by number alone, and that overlap is the whole reason gold hunting is hard: a small gold ring sits in the same electrical neighbourhood as a foil wrapper and a pull tab.
On the Legend 0 to 99 scale, iron generally reads below 15 and silver coins read from the high 70s into the low 90s, with gold scattered across the foil and pull tab bands in between.
| Target | Typical band (0 to 99) | Shares the band with | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nails and small iron | 0 to 15 | Rusted fragments, wire | Leave unless you are relic hunting iron deliberately |
| Large iron objects | 0 to 20, often unstable | Anything corroded and flat | Check from two directions before committing |
| Foil and gum wrappers | 15 to 25 | Small gold, thin aluminium | Dig on a permission you are working properly |
| Small gold jewellery | 15 to 35 | Foil, small tabs | Dig, this band is where gold lives |
| US nickel, five cent | 25 to 35 | Small gold, lead shot | Dig, the nickel band is a gold proxy |
| Lead, musket ball, sinker | 25 to 55 | Tabs, mid range alloys | Dig on old ground, lead reads by mass |
| Pull tab and beaver tail | 33 to 50 | Mid size gold rings | Dig if you want rings, skip if you want coins |
| Aluminium screw cap | 45 to 60 | Larger gold, thick alloy | Repetitive on modern parkland |
| Zinc cent, post 1982 | 52 to 62 | Screw caps, alloy scrap | Dig when you are learning the bands |
| Copper cent and clad dime | 68 to 78 | Silver dime, thin brass | Dig, this is a coin band |
| Silver dime | 70 to 80 | Copper cent, clad dime | Dig every stable signal here |
| Clad and silver quarter | 78 to 88 | Large copper, tokens | Dig, the top bands repay the effort |
| Half dollar and silver dollar | 86 to 95 | Large copper, big brass | Dig, very few modern rubbish items read this high |
| Bottle cap, steel | 60 to 80 but jumpy | Coins, infuriatingly | Judged on stability and tone, not the number |
These bands are owner-reported readings on the Legend scale rather than a published Nokta lookup table. Nokta documents the 0 to 99 scale and the search modes in the user manual, not a per-target ID chart.
Why does the same coin read differently on two days?
Because the number is a measurement of a situation, not a property of the coin. Six things move it, and on a bad day several move it at once.
Soil chemistry and mineralisation. Iron-bearing and salt-bearing ground compresses the scale and drags readings downward. Moisture. The same field reads differently after rain than it does in drought. Depth. As a target approaches the edge of detection, the ID becomes an estimate and then a guess. Orientation. A coin lying flat gives a clean number, and the same coin on edge can read fifteen or twenty points low. Corrosion and halo. A century of copper leaching into the surrounding soil changes what the coil sees. Firmware. Nokta ships firmware updates for this platform, and processing changes can shift how borderline targets are reported.
This is why the honest version of a target ID chart is a band and a method rather than a table of digits. The depth page covers the same problem from the other direction.
How do I build an ID chart for my own ground?
- Collect known samples. A nail, a foil scrap, a pull tab, a nickel, a zinc cent, a copper cent, a clad dime, a quarter and, if you own one, a small gold ring.
- Bury them in your own soil. Not in a sandbox and not on the lawn surface. Use ground that represents the sites you actually work, and mark the row with something non-metallic.
- Bury at two depths. Two inches and six inches. The gap between the two numbers is the single most useful thing you will learn about your machine.
- Read each one in your normal mode. Use the mode and sensitivity you actually hunt with, not a laboratory setting you will never run again.
- Write the numbers down. On paper, kept in the bag. Repeat it when the ground is wet and again when it is dry, and you will have a chart worth more than any published one.
Does a higher number mean a better find?
No, and believing so is how people walk over gold for a decade. High numbers mean high conductivity, which on most sites means silver, copper and clad coins. Gold is a poor conductor for its value: a thin gold ring can read in the foil band and a heavy one in the pull tab band. If you dig only above 60 you will come home with coins and you will leave the jewellery behind.
The practical compromise most experienced Legend owners settle on is to dig the coin bands everywhere, and to dig the low and middle bands on sites worth the extra holes, such as a permission you have to yourself. When you decide which coil to put on for a trashy site, the coil chart matters more than any discrimination setting, and the dig time budget will tell you how many of those extra holes you can actually finish in an afternoon.
Sources
- Nokta The Legend user manual, target ID and search mode sections
- Nokta The Legend Pro Pack published product listing specifications
- Minelab Equinox 900 instruction manual and published listing features
Frequently asked questions
What target ID is silver on the Nokta Legend?
Silver coins generally read high on the 0 to 99 scale: a silver dime around 70 to 80, a silver quarter around 80 to 88, and a half dollar or silver dollar from about 86 into the mid 90s. Large silver reads near the top of the scale because it is both highly conductive and physically large. Depth, orientation and mineralised soil all pull those numbers down, so treat them as bands.
What number does gold read on The Legend?
There is no single gold number, which is the honest answer and the useful one. Gold reads by mass and shape rather than by being gold, so a thin chain or a small earring can appear in the foil band around 15 to 25 while a heavy signet ring can read in the pull tab band around 35 to 50. Hunting gold means digging the low and middle bands and accepting the rubbish that comes with them.
Why does my Legend read a nail as a good target?
A long nail can present an end to the coil that behaves electrically like a small round object, and a flat rusted plate can do something similar. This is why the machine offers iron filtering and why checking a signal from two directions matters. Sweep across the target, turn ninety degrees and sweep again. Most iron falsing collapses on the second pass while a genuine coin holds its band.
Do Legend target IDs match the Equinox scale?
They do not transfer reliably. Both machines use a 0 to 99 style display, but the processing behind the number is different and Minelab cites 119 high resolution target ID segments for the Equinox 900, which includes a ferrous range below zero. Coin bands land in roughly similar territory, and the low and middle bands do not. Our comparison chart covers where the two scales agree and where they part company.
Does a firmware update change my target ID numbers?
It can. Nokta publishes firmware updates for this platform, and the Legend 2 listing describes both wired and wireless updating, so the processing your machine runs today may not be the processing it ran when you first wrote your numbers down. After any update, re-read your buried test targets before you trust a marginal signal. It takes ten minutes and it prevents a season of confused digging.
Researched, not professional advice. This page is compiled from published specifications, manuals and owner-review consensus, not hands-on testing. Target ID numbers, depth figures and settings vary with soil chemistry, moisture, target size, depth, orientation and firmware version, so treat every figure here as a starting point and verify it against your own machine's manual and your own ground. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.