Trekking pole baskets

Don't see a trekking-pole thread, so I guess I'll start one. My question is actually about baskets. My wife & I each hike with a pair of trekking poles. Currently Leki, but probably switching to Black Diamond. Where we hike in the US we never need baskets. On our NZ trip we won't be going through any snow deeper than an inch or two for more than a few hundred meters -- at least that's the plan. So I don't need baskets for snow. I'm assuming baskets serve no useful purpose in mud, and would probably be a hindrance anyway? My real question is sand & beach. We'll be doing the Cape Reinga + the entirety of 90-Mile Beach, probably with the heaviest packs of our entire trip, as we've allocated 6 days for that . We'll also be doing Abel Tasman, coastal portion of Heaphy, and a few other things that involve extended beach-hiking. Would baskets be useful for beach-hiking? I'm envisioning them stopping the poles from sinking too deeply in soft sand, but I really haven't a clue & nowhere here to test locally...