Nothing But Nickels (almost)

[F350Platinum]

It's been a few days since I got out but I intend to remedy that this week. Today started out at 32 degrees but made it up to the mid 50s quickly. I went to a permission that I have been waiting a while for, the farmers cleared it of soybeans last week, and left it nice and flat for the winter. 95 acres, almost 200 if you count the farm next door but I  only have permission to hunt one side, the farmers plant it all but only own one side. There is a long gone farmhouse on the other side, I'll try to get it.

Over by the concrete silos the grass is over a foot high, and there are power lines running through that emit a ton of EMI. It's almost impossible to hunt over there, and further up the road the lines go underground on the left side taking out the first 30 feet or so. The road is almost a mile long.

There was a house near the silos on the other side of the road, the largest one is about 60 feet.

Supposedly the family that farmed this place was very poor, and the log cabin style house (now gone) had about 12 occupants. That is where I searched today, and it was unusual.

All I found for coins today were nickels! This means in my opinion the place got cherry picked for pennies, dimes, and quarters, by the dates of the coins I dug there should have been silver. I'm not completely done here but there really isn't much. It's really odd that the only Jeffersons I dug were both 35% silver 1943 P nickels, a first for me. I can't get a date off any of the buffalos. The Jeffs were in the low 20s, and all the Buffalos were around 12/13. Dug a ton of trash here, but the other keepers from it are below:

Old Slaymaker padlock, rein guide, small crudely cast pistol ball, a piece of a "Red Cross" padlock, and a highly figured piece of white metal I found out by a signal tree with the old button. The old buckle, probably late 1800s or early 1900s was found at the house site.

At the end of the day I tried to hunt a small field by the silos, a couple of large dogs herded me back to the truck. I petted them and left. Luckily they weren't mean.

[NCtoad]

Congrats on the two war nickels and the buffs!   If I were you I’d go over that area again very slowly.  There’s a high probability of more silver whether it was detected before or not.  

[oneguy]

Back in my coin shootin days my last 2 seasons I tried to focus on nickels more than silver as silver was getting a little bit slim pickens.  I enjoyed the hell outta "nickel knockin" because most the guys scrim out anything in the beaver tail and/or square tab range....so there's plenty of nickels still out there!!!!  Plenty of v's and buffs laying around and also the occasional gold ring! Last 2 seasons knocking nickels my average was between 200-300/season with about 10% being war, buffs, or V's.

Take those worthless old buffs and V's and scrub the piss outta them with steel wool to clean them up...you won't hurt them as they are dug nickels and enviremental damage, pitting, etc. has made them worth about 5 cents anyways.  Here's my last season of "keeper" nickels, you can see that after the steel wool they look a little better than a brown turd....

[F350Platinum]

35 minutes ago, NCtoad said:

Congrats on the two war nickels and the buffs!   If I were you I’d go over that area again very slowly.  There’s a high probability of more silver whether it was detected before or not.  

Thanks. I probably will go over it again. I go quite slow and dig just about every "iffy".

In my experience farms are not like parks that may have many layers of "deposits". Almost all my finds today were in the first 4"! The farmers here haven't plowed deep in many years, preferring to "no till" or "turbo till".

I'm running my Equinox 600 in all metal, sensitivity 23. I'm using the Coiltek 10x5 which ground balances extremely well and separates targets better than the 11". I will usually use F2=0, but sometimes push iron balance to max when I'm in a lot of large iron. I had an ax head give me a solid 17 with F2=0. 😵 Iron bias sure isn't stopping me from getting the nickels 😀

[F350Platinum]

30 minutes ago, oneguy said:

Back in my coin shootin days my last 2 seasons I tried to focus on nickels more than silver as silver was getting a little bit slim pickens.  I enjoyed the hell outta "nickel knockin" because most the guys scrim out anything in the beaver tail and/or square tab range....so there's plenty of nickels still out there!!!!  Plenty of v's and buffs laying around and also the occasional gold ring! Last 2 seasons knocking nickels my average was between 200-300/season with about 10% being war, buffs, or V's.

Take those worthless old buffs and V's and scrub the piss outta them with steel wool to clean them up...you won't hurt them as they are dug nickels and enviremental damage, pitting, etc. has made them worth about 5 cents anyways.  Here's my last season of "keeper" nickels, you can see that after the steel wool they look a little better than a brown turd....

Wow, now that is what I call clean!

What grade of steel wool do you use? I just got a rock tumbler not too long ago to clean up the clad. Might try it both ways. 👍

[oneguy]

I use regular old s.o.s pads and if the nickel isn't pitted too bad I'll sometimes take it a step further and scrub by hand with a powder abrasive like Comet or Bon-Ami, etc.

Good tip for nickle knockin:  Most parks, schoolyards, any public grass has been manicured with many fertilizers/chemiclas and I've found some of these that the nickels are just way too pitted to waste my time on, not to mention TONS of pulltabs.  Hit the curb strips and any private yards for nickels, less pulltabs, and most folks don't use chemicals, etc. on their curb strips so usually much better condition nickels.....

[F350Platinum]

1 minute ago, oneguy said:

I use regular old s.o.s pads and if the nickel isn't pitted too bad I'll sometimes take it a step further and scrub by hand with a powder abrasive like Comet or Bon-Ami, etc.

Good tip for nickle knockin:  Most parks, schoolyards, any public grass has been manicured with many fertilizers/chemiclas and I've found some of these that the nickels are just way too pitted to waste my time on, not to mention TONS of pulltabs.  Hit the curb strips and any private yards for nickels, less pulltabs, and most folks don't use chemicals, etc. on their curb strips so usually much better condition nickels.....

I was surprised that the two war nickels were as nice as they are, had to be the silver content. I don't have a park near me at all, and these farms see a lot of chemicals. Coins come out smooth most times, you should see them when they come out of the brackish water. 😵

[kac]

How old is that rein guide? I have a couple similar but they don't have threaded bottoms and look to be made of bronze or brass.

If you go over the area again, slap the stock coil and see if you can go a bit deeper. It might have been detected quite a few years ago and the Nox with stock coil can go much deeper.

Really nice places you hunt. Think that really makes the day even if pickings aren't off the charts.

[Valens Legacy]

Great looking hunt in the books again for you.

Wish you more luck on your next outing.

[strick]

Those guys that cleaned out the silver here’s to them 🤮

thats what we get for being late to the game...don’t think I’ve ever been to a spot where there was silver in abundance....nice shooting that elliptical is awesome

strick