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Joining The 2 Cent Piece Club


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Out again today in my current favorite (century old) park.  Three Jefferson nickels in the first hour -- very first find was a consistent 12 (no 13) TID on the Minelab Equinox -- something I've been skipping over given the thousands of pulltabs in this park.  I figured it was going to be a nickel kind of day but with 30 minutes left of the 3 hour hunt I had only added a couple corroded Zincolns.  Then in a picnic area I got a nice shallow 13 TID, which could still be a pulltab but it was my 4th nickel.  Shortly after I was about 1 foot from a utility pole and got a low-mid 20's signal which sounded very good in one direction but flutey at 90 degree angle of attack.  I was also hearing some iron grunt, but when I shortened the swing amplitude over the target down to just a couple inches there was no iron sound.  Strength indicator (what is popularly called "depth indicator") showed 4 bars = moderate.  So far, so good, but as most of you know when near a utility pole, lots of decent sounding targets can show up -- copper and aluminum wire, copper lugs, steel bolts.  And in a picnic area (which I was), the dreaded aluminum screw cap, especially when flattened, can sound good with TID low-mid 20's.  It was even possible I was hearing an Indian Head penny or early Wheat penny.  Digging down in the 4-5 inch range I popped out a disc which looked about the size of a nickel, but it was green (copper signature) and the TID was too high for a nickel.  My next thought was 'token' but it was smaller than the tokens I'd been finding in this park, although could still be a different variety.  A spray of water showed part of a shield.  Hmmm.  Shield nickel (no), 2 Cent Piece (unlikely) so I'm still thinking it's a token.  But using a magnifier I clearly saw '1864'!  What is a 150+ year old coin which hardly circulated even 125 years ago due to its unpopularity doing in this 100 year old park?

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Just in the last 9 months I can find three posts of USA 2 Cent Piece finds:  post 1, post 2, post 3.  Those are in better shape than mine, but it's the first ever 2 Cent Piece I've found so I'm going to count it.  Mine is also an 1864, which I guess isn't too surprising given that 44% of all 2 Cent pieces ever minted in the USA had the 1864 date.  (Throw in the next year, 1865, and almost 3/4 are accounted for.)  Nice article in Wikipedia points out that they were first minted late in the Civil War in an attempt to alleviate the shortage of coins (caused by hording) but after the war ended and coins were in sufficient supply their popularity dropped considerably.  1873 was the last year of mintage and those 1100 were proofs for collectors.  In 1872 only 65,000 were minted for circulation.  Many (but unknown number) were returned to the mint and melted.

We've discussed the small motto vs. large motto version of the 1864.  Currently mine is so badly encrusted that it's difficult to tell.  I can only see the 'W' in 'WE' and the 'R' in 'TRUST'.  I'll get a friend with high quality camera to take better photos and maybe we can figure this out.  (I'm still on hold cleaning with more than soft brush in water and olive oil until I can do more research on cleaning coins without damaging.)  Odds are certainly in favor of it being the more common large motto, but I can still hold out hope, can't I?  (fingers crossed)

 

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Congrats!

It's about time you found one of those hehe.

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Great find GB glad that you finally got one of those. I just wonder how many of those you may have past over thinking that it was a pull tab.

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9 hours ago, 2Valen said:

I just wonder how many of those you may have past over thinking that it was a pull tab.

This TID'ed in the lower half of the 20's on the Equinox.  (I'll do an air test later, but at this time it was good enough to dig so I didn't bother determining its TID centroid -- just pinpointed and dug.)  I have seen a couple large pulltabs up there (like the kind that come on auto fluid cans), but the typical trash item 22-23 is the aluminum screw cap.  Sometimes I skip 19-20 (zinc penny zone) but when I'm somewhere that I suspect Indian Head pennies may have been dropped I don't do that.  My high tone region (out of 5) starts at 20 just to make sure I don't miss IHP's.  I've already found three of those in this park.  They usually TID a bit higher than Zincolns, and are typically deeper, but 'usually' and 'typically' don't mean always, as I've found out more times than I can remember.

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On 6/3/2020 at 9:30 AM, GB_Amateur said:

This TID'ed in the lower half of the 20's on the Equinox.  (I'll do an air test later,...)

Done.  Minelab Equinox TID was mostly 23 with occasional 22 in an air test.  I also have a USA 2 Cent Piece (1865, I think -- pretty worn) that didn't come out of the ground.  It was consistent 23.  Eqx coin hunters know that this is the sweetspot for aluminum screw caps.  Obviously if you're in an area that can have both you want to be extra cautious if you are trying to avoid digging the annoying screwcaps.

I've long wondered why some 95% copper USA coins hit at such different target ID's.  This really drives home the point.  More recent 95% copper pennies (most copper Memorials and the later Wheaties) typically hit somewhere in 25-26.  Early Wheaties (maybe not all of them), Indian Heads, and now I've found the 2 Cent piece are lower.  The big irony is that the 2 Cent piece is larger (23 mm diameter, 6.22 g weight) than the modern 95% copper small cent (19 mm diameter, 3.11 g weight).  I don't have a half cent piece, but a 1851 Large Cent (not taken from the ground) air test TID's at 35 with some 34 thrown in.  Those are pure copper and much larger (28-29 mm diameter and 10.89 g) so that makes sense to me.

My best hypothesis points at the remaining 5% of the composition.  For most of the 95% copper coinage lifetime the mint has said "5% tin and zinc" without being more specific as to how much of each.  I conclude that the intentional vaguery means that part of the composition isn't consistent.  Starting in 1962 (I recall for memory, so may be off a bit) and through the first part of 1982 before the zinc pennies took over, the composition was stated to be (all) 5% zinc, so no more tin.  Those hit 25-26.  So it's the tin that drags down the TID's?  And the more tin, the lower it goes?

 

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Orientation and iron contamination seems to play a big part on id's here. I had a KG that I could here in one direction and other it just a crackle due to iron and being on edge. My last large cent had a strange number that some thought was a bottle cap and if it wasn't for that slight hint of iron I wouldn't have dug it.

The small silvers like half dimes and trimes I think are really tricky as they are so small and thin orientation can play a major difference. Either of those deeper than 6" on a stock coil could be really really tricky and easy to walk past.

So when you joining the Trime club?

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3 hours ago, kac said:

Orientation and iron contamination seems to play a big part on id's here.

Definitely the case where I hunt, too.  The Minelab Equinox is pretty good with nearby iron, but that's probably the final frontier for IB/VLF -- unmasking from metallic trash and especially iron with its combination of magnetic and conductive properties.  From what I've read the XP Deus and (sister) ORX may be even better unmaskers than the Eqx.

3 hours ago, kac said:

So when you joining the Trime club?

Good question, and until I found this 1864 two cent piece it wasn't really on my radar.  Fortunate for me that it was high enough TID that I was going to dig it anyway.  Reminds me that I found a 1867 Shield nickel 3 years ago with the Fisher F75, but that one made sense because it was near the site of a (now razed) 19th Century farmhouse.  Further, it's the same composition and TID as modern nickels, so no special treatment needed.

Glad to be reminded by my find and your question that I need to open up my TID space.  Like I said once again, "what was *that* doing here?", but it was.  Nickel 3 cent pieces, silver 5 cent pieces, even gold coins have TID's in what I naively like to think of as the trash zones.  Time for a TID reset!  Thanks for the reminder.

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I have been using my Gen Mode (all metal) and 4 tone in some of the trashier areas and going for size than the id. I picked up quite a few nickels that way today in short run I did before the heat sent me home. Some the ID's where higher than normal and many lower in one direction because they were on edge. I did dig a fair amount of aluminum bits but I was going for any jewelry in the area.

I found woods hunting is bit easier as it usually has much less trash so finding those odd signals and digging them isn't as big a deal as trudging through a trashy park where ever swing has a half dozen or more targets all clustered.

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Wow, never found one of those. 😀

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