Silver coinage...JMO

I truly believe that over 70% of the silver coins ever lost over time are STILL out there...in the ground...waiting to be found. From what I have studied the "sink rate" of these coins is very fast for the most part. I know that different soils can and do affect this and many other factors can be involved...but to encourage my fellow coin hunters...THOSE COINS ARE STILL THERE...SO GO GET 'EM!

Mintage amounts of US silver coins predating 1965 are phenomenal and only a fraction of lost silver has ever been found. The coins are deep...very deep. We have only found the "easy pickens" for the most part. With newer technology surfacing every day our odds become more in our favor...but at the same time the silver coins can get deeper and deeper. Newer detectors that can penetrate to the "next lower level" will help but we have to be ready and willing to dig deeper. A lot of the improvements in our newer units are focused on finding coins that are "masked" in the trash...and that is great...but these units can only go to a certain depth depending on the conditions they are operating in. This leaves behind a lot of coins...untouched.

Personal Case in Point: There is a city park in our town dating back to the late 1880's. It had no new topsoil added. All I ever found there was a lot of clad...a handful of wheats...and a sprinkling of silver. That park was razed of the first 3 inches for renovations. It was like hunting "virgin territory" again! The lower levels of coins were Indianheads...V's and Buffalos...and best of all...Barber, Walkers and Franklin silver halves...Barber, Standing Ladies and Washington quarters...and Barber, Mercs and Franklin dimes! I couldn't imagine what might lay even deeper.

The majority of the silver is STILL out there folks. Don't get discouraged. Watch out for renovations in your city. Listen to the weaker signals and don't be afraid to dig deep. That larger coil may be all you need for now (until something else is built) to find the silver that is over $32/oz.

Well put Charles....I might add strike while the iron is hot as in many cases these areas are covered over in a hurry and come from an area with a lot in the hobby and if you don't act quickly one of them will beat you to the area...

In the areas I'm searching, I'm more concerned with masking due to iron and trash. If technology was able to successfully address that, every site would become "virgin" again.
Also, if there was a machine could correctly i.d. at depth that be a game changer.

Sure, couldn't agree more. A couple years ago, for instance, my circle of hunting friends pounded a empty lot next to some rail road tracks that was the site of picking people up and unloading them onto trains. Never an official depot with a building, just a small town spot the train would stop. About 6 of us raked that site for what it's work and came up with a lot of good coins, including silver halfs from the 1800's. The soil had a bit of black sand and iron in it, though, so even with the best of machines a coin at 6" or so could be a real iffy coin hit.

One day I was driving by after we gave up on that very small lot and noticed they had stripped about 12" of topsoil off of it! I called my friend and we met up later that day for a hunt. They had stripped the top soil but there was a layer of yellow limestone based clay (a very hard layer) that was left behind. We found coins laying right on top of that layer, but we also found coins IN that layer. Many people would think coins won't sink past hard packed clay like that. Nope. If it gets wet enough, combined with freezing/etc, time, and so on...I've seen with my own eyes that coins will penetrate that stuff.

Anyway, it was like a virgin site all over again. Just think, despite our best efforts pounding that site many times before hand, and it not being a overly big site where we'd miss stuff, despite all that there were tons of coins left to be found. I just wish I knew where they hauled that topsoil. I bet that first 12" of soil had a ton of silver in it.

At another site, the soil is heavy, containing a good deal of limestone clay mixed in the top soil. One would think coins wouldn't sink much at all in that stuff, yet I've dug 11" coins in it. Why? It's a lower sitting field off a slope, so it gets very swampy at certain times of year, and as a result coins sink very deep in it. Lesson? Never judge a site by the quality of the soil. Judge it by how deep you dig stuff in it. Digging round tabs at 6" or deeper? Then you can be assured there is silver that deep and much deeper.

At a few of my other sites with finer soil, it's nothing to dig newer state quarters at 6"+. Shocking how fast they are sinking. Wanna bet there is some very deep silver at that site? I know there is.

So a bigger DD coil in the 12" range is a must IMO to punch deeper. Dig those soft/faint deep ones that don't even ID or give a coin tone. At the fringes they'll lower in conductivity before sliding into iron null oblivion and beyond. Dig the deep ones. The ones that sound deep enough to not ID as a coin *for that site's mineralization*, which can vary depths in terms of what one considers fringe. At one site 6 or 7" might be "fringe" due to the ground matrix. At another under wet conditions it might be 8 or 9" or even a bit deeper where the coin finally gives you ID issues.

Then, stir into the pot all the shallow silver that is being masked by junk. Like Tom says in his one article, even a steel staple can mask a silver coin if the staple is shallower, and you won't even know anything is there. At a certain point in depth a tiny piece of iron will no longer even null to indicate iron, let alone there is a silver coin deeper below it. Silent masking. And, a piece of trash doesn't have to be directly over the coin. It could be fairly off to the side of the coil, while the coin is directly under the coil, yet the trash being shallower and hitting/interacting with the detection field first, means you'll never see that coin. The great the distance between the coin and the trash depth wise, and more importantly the closer to the coil the trash is (thus the broader the detection field), the further off to the side the trash can be and you have no hope of ever hearing that deeper coin.

I chuckle when I hear people complain about all the public sites being hunted out. I gurantee you you can go to one of those "dead" sites even with a cheap detector and still pull silver, provided you are willing to dig what others "experience" has taught them not to bother with. Silver can read much lower on the scale due to orientation in the ground, being worn, ground matrix issues, mineralization, masking, and so on. I've even dug mercs that read as pulltabs in the past. Not masked or even deep, but just for some odd reason the mineralization/matrix has them reading like tabs. I suspect high nickel or some other mineral/metal in the soil was dragging down the conductivity of the targets.

So next time you get the blues and think there is no public site left to hunt, start digging what nobody else will. You'll find stuff 100's of people have passed right on by.

Another tip- Go slow. Don't worry about "what is over there" 10 feet away. Only thing you should worry about is the ground right in front of your toes. Advance the coil only by an inch or so forward as you seep. Doing that alone will find stuff others missed, and even give you a perfect silver signal, but others either never centered right over it (important when a coin is real deep), or they were advancing the coil too fast and missed it due to masking both right before and right after that coin. Only when the coil was between those two pieces of trash would you see the coin.

Final tip- My favorite is to grid at an odd angle. Human nature is to parallel landmarks such as sidewalks, roads, or tree lines. Some even hunt 90 degrees in relation to those objects but I bet that's about only 30% who do that. But if you really want to find the coins that only sound off one way, start hunting at a odd diagnal angle such as 45 degrees to these objects. You'll find masked coins or ones on edge that won't even sound off from the "normal" human nature directions. I'm trying to make this my religion for now on, and yet even I catch myself blindly assuming the natural parallel to objects unless I make a conscience effort to change that.

PS- A few years back, even with lessor machines, I could wander a "dead" public site and still find those fringe 7" or so silver dimes that other machines and people missed, yet would give me perfect coin hits because I had the machine tuned right and was working the coil properly. Now those same sites I can wander for hours before finding those. I've changed my goals now. Why wander for a hour or more looking for that one clean good silver hit at depth, when I could have dug 20 iffy coin hits both shallow and at depth? Those can easily be masked or too deep of coins for the given ground. Sure, I dug plenty of those in the past, but just the same I find I'm wasting far too much time looking for the deep/clean ones. They just don't exist anymore, unless you are at a site where the silver can sink deeper and is out of range of other machines, and you are using a good machine with a larger coil to punch deeper. So I'm trying to stop wandering and hoping, in particular at sites where I know silver can't sink beyond the range of other machines, and instead look for the bad coin hits that are either masked or for some other odd reason are giving only an iffy hit. Better use of my time I think...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2012 07:09PM by critterhunter.

Accurate/Spot-on thread.

The LAST thing any Chief Design Engineer of any of the metal detector Mfr companies want to hear is: "Need more depth". It makes them very angry. They do not want to hear it. I am beginning to believe this is truly their worst nightmare..... from a design point; yet, without exception...... I fully understand. Great pains are encurred in the attempt to break the current (((near-field))) depth incarcerations. This is a plateau that has not been broken..... for nearly 25 years...... since/with the advent of the 1266-X/CZ/DMC. In the mid-1980's........ 7-1/2" on a dime was the approx plateau. Then....... in the late 1980's........... (I credit Dave Johnson, George Payne and a couple of others) .... the bench was raised to approx 11-1/2" on a dime. This was a huge plateau shatter..... and game changer. This 'reset' peoples 'mindset'. In the mid-1980's......... most folks were nearly positive that most coins were only a few inches deep. Then...... when the 11" & 12" units were starting to hit the markets in the late 1980's///1990........... a mental paradigm-shift took place................ subsequently/ folks were stunned to learn that most coins were deeper than "just a few inches". And still........... even to this day............ most folks reside to the fact that most (especially older) coins are only a handful of 'inches' deep. Yes..... there are times when a detectorist (self included) will find a old coin at just 2" or 3" of depth. This does NOT give the right to claim the assumption that "therefore --- most old coins are shallow". The old/shallow coins that are found .... are the 'exception'.... and not the 'rule'. Yes..... we are due/overdue for a 'reset' of the 'mindset'. Even today.... with current technology.... it pains me to think that I am restricted to finding things at depths of only a handful of "inches". Especially when (((with multiple validated/proven experiences))) I know that many of the areas that I hunt...... the targets I seek to find..... are too deep/out-of-range of current technology. One example: I have a site that is a 2nd Seminole Indian War site. The Seminole site was burned down in 1834. It was in existence from the 1790's to 1834. This site is in the meadow's of a large parcel of land............. of which has remained a farm field since 1834. Rarely any human/foot travel since 1834. There is nearly zero targets in this ground that date-range from 1834 to present time. Many 'famous names' visited or lived in this area in the 1810's. Archaeologists have had just barely enough funds to 'site sample' a few small holes............. to validate the site................ and verify that the strata of 'era/period' targets are in the 14" to 21" depth layer. If you take current day technology metal detectors to this site............. you would claim that the soil is sanitary of any metal objects. What you don't know ... WILL hurt you. You don't know.... what you don't know. How do you know what you are missing............. if you don't know it even exists. And this is only one example (out of hundreds) that I give you.

So..... depth is critical. If you are hunting an area that is a 1880's homesite.......... and you are finding zinc pennies to 7" deep......... and clad coins to 10" deep.......... and starting to find wheaties and silver Roosevelt's at 11" and 12" deep................... then.................... I must ask..... what are the depths of the Mercury dimes. Then............ what are the depths of the Barber dimes. Then........... what are the depth of the Seated dimes. Just a (painful/real) thought. Honesty/truth sometimes hurts. Or......... is this an opportunity for a design engineer of whom is first to invent a 14" capable on-a-dime unit.

Masking is another entirely different ..... and equally important..... crippling condition. I have important (recent) data/experience to share (regarding the GMP)......... but need to find the time to post it.

On nearly the same tangent........ I have been hunting hurricane Sandy......... Cocoa Beach. In a nutshell.......in two days...... I found 7 gold items with the AquaStar. Six of the seven gold items would/could never be found with any other detector. I deliberately hunted exclusively behind other detectorists (mostly Excal's and 2 CZ-20's). They had not found any gold......... and ....... furthermore........ they did not know they were missing any gold.
Moral-of-the-story = If my mid-1990's AquaStar dies and cannot be repaired............ I am forced to reside to 20-years newer technology........ of which does not compare to this (AquaStar) mid-1990's technology.
((((Be careful 'how' you think)))).

*** If my mid-1990's AquaStar dies and cannot be repaired............ ***

Tom, your AquaStar-II with ~8uS dies ... then what? What is the next best choice for depth on micro/tiny jewelry and rings in wet sand at the beach?

White's TDI Pro?

Resurrect Eric Foster from retirement. (((Not going to happen))).

............ The AquaStar-II will NOT detect any gold micro-jewelry. There are NO (wet salt) detectors that will detect micro-jewelry...... hence/subsequently........... the wet salt beaches are saturated with micro-jewelry. The AquaStar-II will.... however.... detect quite small (almost tiny) real gold jewelry. No other detector will do this.

IRT the White's TDI. It is the 'next best thing'...... but by a fairly wide margin. It is a Eric Foster GoldScan-5/AquaStar-II.............. however............... because it must be 'mass produced'......... each coil can not be given exceptional attention in build; subsequently, restricting it's pulse delay to around/approx 11.5uS........... due to mass production margins. Coil Inductance (measured in Henry's) is the 'key' to building sub-10uS pulse induction units. ((( I speculate ))) it would be difficult to create a Mfr'ing process so as to 'mass produce' sub-10uS coils.

I now have had two design engineers (completely independent of each other) contact me via e-mail ........ in "violent agreement" ....... in regards to my (above) statement.

This more than implicates the exceptional challange of breaking current-day technology "near-field" detection distance barriers.