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Went Urban Gold Mining And Found Silver


nickelNdimed

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Where there are wheat pennies, the likelihood of 1920s to 1960s silver is very high unless  someone beat you to it. Park 2 will hit many of the oddball oriented and masked good targets that other detectors miss. Yes, the Equinox will average co-located target IDs to some extent. Great finds !!!!!

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16 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Where there are wheat pennies, the likelihood of 1920s to 1960s silver is very high unless  someone beat you to it. Park 2 will hit many of the oddball oriented and masked good targets that other detectors miss. Yes, the Equinox will average co-located target IDs to some extent. Great finds !!!!!

Thanks Jeff. 
 
I have a few sites where I find wheats back to 1918 and old artifacts but struggle to find silver. And the wheats often come up high like silver dimes and quarters would. So if someone beat me to it, would they not have dug those wheats and other clad dimes and quarters I find?  How would they skip those but pull all or most the silver?

 I hunted this park, found wheats, and kept hoping to hit silver but no luck until today. And I think I lucked out on this quarter digging for something else!  Maybe just the tough ones are left and I’ll have to regrid in Park 2 after some good rains.

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   Good looking finds, and great looking quarter!

   I think there are few qualifying parks, if any, that haven't been cherry picked for their silver! But no matter how hard hit, there will always be those that were missed, or out of range to detect! That makes you appreciate the one's you do find, that much more! Keep at it!👍👍

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Nice finds even though you had to dig a lot of trash to get them.

Remember that in the past the detectors did not go as deep as the Nox on coins. I am learning this in a park that has been gone over by a lot of people. I have even had the parks ground keeper tell me that there is nothing old left, and that is when I show him a dime I found. They just look at the detector and shake their head on what they missed.

Good luck on your next hunt!

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Nice quarter find!

Silver dimes and Wheat pennies should go hand-in-hand for the most part.  (Wheats stayed in circulation past the silver dimes by a few years, but they were getting scarcer to find in change as time went by, which is to be expected.  So, for example, a park that was established in ~1975 should have an occasional Wheatie but unlikely any silver.)   So in general I agree with Jeff -- Wheaties are an indicator of silver dimes.  I have had a couple private home permissions that produced lots of Wheats and no silver dimes, but I attributed that to children playing with pennies (that parents handed to them, not dimes!  :biggrin:)

Larger silver (quarters and halves) are a different story in my experience.  Besides the obvious fewer having been minted and thus circulated (maybe a factor of 2 there between dimes and quarters -- I haven't delved deep into that yet), the fact that they are larger means they give stronger signals (for similar depth) and were easier for other detectorists to find.  I found only my second silver quarter (pretty sure it was on edge) last month in my ~1000 hours of detecting.  Compare that to 28 silver dimes over the same time period.  I think part of the that is because quarters can be detected deeper (e.g. air test) but also that as coins get deeper you need to get the center of the coil over them to get a signal.  (I think this effect is a bit more exaggerated for concentric coils but still true for DD's.)  Very shallow targets can be picked up that are off the edge of a coil, for example.  Thus coverage is critical for the deepest (and smallest) targets meaning it's more likely dimes have been missed compared to quarters.

I suppose it's possible that people have cherry picked silver dimes over copper pennies and clad dimes.  I think they TID a bit higher (on the Equinox anyway so I'm figuring other detectors, too) but it's a small effect and the orientation of the coin can wash it out.  I would never try anything like that but not everyone has the same mindset when it comes to time spent digging undesirable targets.

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1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Nice quarter find!

Silver dimes and Wheat pennies should go hand-in-hand for the most part.  (Wheats stayed in circulation past the silver dimes by a few years, but they were getting scarcer to find in change as time went by, which is to be expected.  So, for example, a park that was established in ~1975 should have an occasional Wheatie but unlikely any silver.)   So in general I agree with Jeff -- Wheaties are an indicator of silver dimes.  I have had a couple private home permissions that produced lots of Wheats and no silver dimes, but I attributed that to children playing with pennies (that parents handed to them, not dimes!  :biggrin:)

Larger silver (quarters and halves) are a different story in my experience.  Besides the obvious fewer having been minted and thus circulated (maybe a factor of 2 there between dimes and quarters -- I haven't delved deep into that yet), the fact that they are larger means they give stronger signals (for similar depth) and were easier for other detectorists to find.  I found only my second silver quarter (pretty sure it was on edge) last month in my ~1000 hours of detecting.  Compare that to 28 silver dimes over the same time period.  I think part of the that is because quarters can be detected deeper (e.g. air test) but also that as coins get deeper you need to get the center of the coil over them to get a signal.  (I think this effect is a bit more exaggerated for concentric coils but still true for DD's.)  Very shallow targets can be picked up that are off the edge of a coil, for example.  Thus coverage is critical for the deepest (and smallest) targets meaning it's more likely dimes have been missed compared to quarters.

I suppose it's possible that people have cherry picked silver dimes over copper pennies and clad dimes.  I think they TID a bit higher (on the Equinox anyway so I'm figuring other detectors, too) but it's a small effect and the orientation of the coin can wash it out.  I would never try anything like that but not everyone has the same mindset when it comes to time spent digging undesirable targets.

Yeah, that makes sense about the larger silver coins.  I just always wonder if more experience detectorists or those that hunt by sound can really tell. Or certain detectors separate the two by VDI or tone better than others....  

But I really do think I am finding the tough ones that were on side or signal was blended to a lower VDI by another nearby item. Lots of patience, lots of trash digging, but rewarding. 
 

I’m starting to find that a good strategy for working sites that I have repeat access to is to work them in buckets.

1. Cherry pick the obvious coins and higher tones in Park 1.  

2.Then work those high single digits and teens as another layer in Park 2.  

3. Maybe then go back in Field modes with lower iron bias, maybe the 6” and try to wiggle out some more goodies. 

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29 minutes ago, nickeldNdimed said:

I’m starting to find that a good strategy for working sites that I have repeat access to is to work them in buckets.

1. Cherry pick the obvious coins and higher tones in Park 1.  

2.Then work those high single digits and teens as another layer in Park 2.  

3. Maybe then go back in Field modes with lower iron bias, maybe the 6” and try to wiggle out some more goodies.

For #2, do you change the direction of the search?  Native gold detectorists (the smart ones, anyway 😁) use this ploy, sometimes to an extreme.  For example if 1st pass they walk N-S, on 2nd pass they travel E-W.  And if really wanting to be thorough they come back at 45 degrees (so NW-->SE or similar).

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7 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

For #2, do you change the direction of the search?  Native gold detectorists (the smart ones, anyway 😁) use this ploy, sometimes to an extreme.  For example if 1st pass they walk N-S, on 2nd pass they travel E-W.  And if really wanting to be thorough they come back at 45 degrees (so NW-->SE or similar).

Yes, when I grid I go 90 the second pass. Try to implement as many techniques as I can but there are an infinite number of variables for sure. If I really had freedom on a site that had good odds, I think it would be interesting to go as far as some of the unmasking experiments by Tom Downkowski and put the Seahunter to work on these sites too 🤔

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