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Some Finds From The Good Old Days Of Metal Detecting.


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Very nice finds and I can tell that you had a lot of hard work finding them. There is no telling just how much trash you had to dig up to find what you got.

Good luck and good hunting.

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Great to see your treasure box full of pennies. I wish mine looked half as good. I hope you still give the old detector a walk every once in a while. Thanks for showing us.

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6 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

Very nice finds and I can tell that you had a lot of hard work finding them. There is no telling just how much trash you had to dig up to find what you got.

Good luck and good hunting.

Oddly enough, I don't remember digging too much trash. The old detector was pretty good at discriminating the junk. A coin gave a very distinct tone. I probably missed a lot of deeper targets and coins-on-edge though. 

Coins were more plentiful back then. I remember an old country church that gave up nearly 100 pennies from the 30s-50s, and I was only able to do half the area due to tall grass. There were many sites that had never been detected back then. It wasn't unusual to find 25 or more old coins on a single outing. The boulevards in the older part of the river valley neighbourhoods were full of old coins.

The soil around Edmonton was very easy on copper coins. I pulled an 1896 penny out of the ground (maybe 85 years in the soil) and it only required a basic scrubbing with a toothbrush and soapy water to clean it up nicely. Almost no visible corrosion. Likewise the George V necklace was ilikely in the ground for 60+ years, and it cleaned up well (it still had some original lustre). A few of the pennies in the photo may be from coins I pulled from my pocket change. Silver coins were still circulating back then, and it wasn't odd to find an old coin in your change. Half my Canadian nickel collection was from pocket change.

Obviously, as the years go by, more and more of the older copper coins are going to be in rough shape.

The area I live in now absolutely destroys copper. Brass and silver items are ok. Copper coins that have been in the ground as little as 20 years tend to be noticeably corroded. I've done some pH tests on my rainwater, and it's quite acidic; almost too acidic for many houseplants. There are a lot of oil and gas operations west of my place (the prevailing winds are from the west), and I have a theory that H2S gas might be the culprit.

I'm curious about the opinions on the soil in other areas that folks on this site hunt.

Longwinded, as usual........... 😲

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This is what modern (1983-current) US zinc pennies look like after being in my Colorado park iron rich soils after only a few years. I suspect that fertilizer chemicals may have something to do with how fast they degrade. However, copper US pennies (1982 and earlier) usually come out of my ground looking very good with a nice patina, but no degrading.

 

Zincolns.JPEG

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15 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

However, copper US pennies (1982 and earlier) usually come out of my ground looking very good with a nice patina, but no degrading.

Same is true in Canada. Pre-1996 copper pennies typically come out looking decent. I imagine the modern plated pennies won't fare well in the future.

Vintage Canadian 5 cent pieces are very difficult to discriminate with a detector. They are made of almost pure nickel (except for the wartime era 1944-1945 and 1951-1954 chrome plated steel, and the wartime tombacs). They show up as a choppy high signal when flat in the ground, or a solid -8 on-edge on my Nox 600. US 5 cent pieces are no problem.

I've likely missed a lot of Canadian 5 cent pieces over the years, thinking they were steel washers.....

I never thought of the effect of fertilizers before. Makes sense. The coins I hunted 40 years ago were mostly in urban areas. I now live in a farming community, where urea-based fertilizer is commonly used. That stuff will rot most metals.

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19 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

This is what modern (1983-current) US zinc pennies look like after being in my Colorado park iron rich soils after only a few years. I suspect that fertilizer chemicals may have something to do with how fast they degrade.

Although fertilizers can contribute, the problem with Zincolns is galvanic action.  IMO it's ridiculous that they've been minting these for 40 years knowing of this problem.  Well, it's ridiculous the USA is still minting worthless cents, period.

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12 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Although fertilizers can contribute, the problem with Zincolns is galvanic action.

I wonder what our UK friends experience with the old bronze coinage?

I dug a Victorian English penny a month ago, and it was beautiful (It's the one I use for my profile picture). Likely been in the ground for 80+ years.

Seems like copper and tin make a stable combination.

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IHPs seem to fair better than most Wheat Cents in my area. The alloy mix variations over the years does have an effect for sure. Zincs a trash in less than 5 years in the ground. Nickels are pretty linear in condition/time in the ground. Evidently a more consistent alloy.

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