Digging pennies...pros and cons...

I like to stay away from pennies in the local parks as our parks are loaded with them but if in an old area I dig everything in that range...

Do remember lots of oddball coins, tokens, large gold rings, sterling silver rings and religious metals, indian heads, two cent pieces, gold coins to name a few just might be missed darned if you do and darned if you don't and certainly your call..

I dig all high tones or signals. I have a bucket full of zink pennies. Condition is so bad I do not know what to do with them. The effort has paid off for me as sometimes the signal will fool me. I do tend to pass over those signals that are very shallow.

Tom in SC

Dan, I have been hunting the county fairgrounds for 5 or 6 years. I usually have used an Explorer, Coinstrike, or DFX while hunting here. Up until last year I hardly ever dug any Indian heads as they are sound exactly like a rotten zinc on the Explorer. Out of boredom one day last year I got a signal in the zinc range on my DFX and when I dug it was an Indian head about 5 inches deep. I had hunted this particular section many times and had found about 20 silver coins with the oldest being Barbers. I rehunted the entire section with the DFX and found 11 or 12 more Indians. Now for the unbelievable, some were less than 4 inches deep. This was last fall and I have since sold the DFX and started the year off with an AT Pro. Rehunted that spot and two other sections of the fairgrounds where I have found old coins in the past. With the AT I found 18 more Indians and three Barber dimes. After scouring the producing spots with the AT, I took my Explorer 11 over it and found two more Barber dimes and an old mercury(1917). In addition I have found many wheats. Yesterday I had a weird thing happen. I was at these same fairgrounds and the pickens were slim. I had only found some clad and an old ring. I got a loud, shallow hit on the EX 11 and knew it was a penny on the top of the ground. These shallow coins do not pinpoint accurately so I quicky found it with my propointer and stabbed it with my screwdriver. Nothing great, but a real nice shape 1910 wheatie that was less than an inch deep! I guess this just goes to show you can never assume that everything shallow is new. Last month with my AT Pro I was working around the water standoffs which crisscross the entire fairgrounds. I actually found two Indians with my bare eye in the dirt around these pipes. Both were in the 1860's! My advice is if you are in an old spot, dig the zincs. You just never know. R.L.

Dan
A couple of weeks ago I dug 13 shallow pennies out of a small area,rescanned the area,got a foil signal at 5 inches and dug a ladies 14 k gold ring with 2 rubies.Penny masking.The ring was a surprise plus I'm 13 cents closer to a Greyhound ticket to go hunt Tom Dankowskis back yard.

On my T2, copper pennies read very close to dimes on VDI. I got a penny?? signal couple weeks ago. Still learning the machine...so I dug it. It was a 1916-S barber dime in EF condition. It was about 3" deep. Way too shallow, so I thought, for it to be a old coin in this area I was detecting. Building was built in 1913. One never knows I think the soil has been turned, and it brought the dime up close to the surface. As I was finding clad at 6-7" deep in same area.

That type of event reminds me that if the soil is 'disturbed' then all bets are off. It can easily explain both IH pennies on the surface and 80s pennies at 10".

I dig pennies, because they all add up, and I have dug some thing that were not pennies, onces you find one thing out of the norm, you dig it forever more

I agree with Caretaker on the fact that once you dig something out of the norm you always dig it. I used to ignore zinc pennies as much as possible until one day I decided to dig one and it was a 17.9 gram 10 k religious medallion reading exactly what a zinc does now I dig them all.

$10.00 Eagles (American Gold coins) ID as 'zinc penny'.
Almost all Indian Head pennies ID on the low end of 'zinc penny' range.
Silver Half-Dimes ID as 'zinc penny'.
Tilted silver dimes ID as 'zinc penny'.
.58 cal minnie balls ID as 'zinc penny'.
.69 cal musket balls ID as 'zinc penny'.
Many tokens ID as 'zinc penny'.

(I have 3 large men's gold rings....that all ID as 'zinc penny').

And there are plenty more items that ID as a zinc penny.

I also have dug a Large gold ring that id'ed as a gold ring.

Whoops, meant to say a large gold ring that ID'd as as zinc penny

Also ... digging them gets them out of the way and just might reveal some goodies.

HH Joe

I also once dug a massive 14k mens wedding band that ID'd as a penny. Ring was a size 10-11. Almost passed it up as it was a penny reading.

I dug a silver looking ring a couple years ago, biggest ring I ever saw. Don't remember the VDI. The mans fingers had to be 1-1/4 inches in diameter, looked like a wedding band. When I got home I showed my wife and said "look at the size of this ring hon, the guy must have been a giant". She said " thats a cloth napkin holder silly". "Oh" I said, "that makes more sense". Women, they lead you right back to reality, when sometimes ya don't want to be there.

That's a hilarious story Ozzie

Thanks for the smile Ozzie....after 47 years of marriage....been there done that....

I will dig every penny. I collect Indian Heads, tokens, artifacts that may be copper , plus the I.D. may be off as mentioned above.