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Pennies On The Beach!!!???


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This is kind of a know-nothing post, but after finding so many pennies on the beach on my last four beach hunts, I thought I would throw the question out there.

On the beach I mostly hunt there are vendors selling their wares. Boogie boards, fruit, ice cream, water and so on. All the charges are increments of 25 cents. Dollar, two dollar, five dollar, 50 cents and so on. Nothing ends in an odd amount leaving you or the vendor having to use pennies. So why all the pennies? In my last four beach hunts I dug up about 120 pennies and that's not counting the ones I passed on!

So, I ask you, why so many pennies?

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I've seen people actually "seed" the beach with pennies here in central Florida just to "play" with detectorists!   Having said that, I too have wondered why so many pennies are found on the beach since beach goers can't really use them for much of anything! 

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I ask myself that same question regarding Zincolns.  It seems someone is salting my dry land hunting spots with them just to frustrate me.  I look at my pocket change (when I get some...) and the ratio of zinc to bronze seems lower there than in the field.  If you think about it, given that field finds are distributed over 'history' it should be the other way around.

One (actual, not imagined) possibility is that the detector I'm using is more sensitive to the (lower conductivity) Zincoln compared to the bronze Memorials.  Another (WAG) is that Zincolns float to the top while bronze Memorials sink.

Maybe people selectively pitch the Zincolns because (like we detectorists) they know they are PoS.

Another (psychological) explanation is that they just seem to be more prevalent because we dislike them so much.

For the practical among you who respond: "just discriminate against them", I answer: "I've tried that."  In fact just last weekend I was cutting off above Zincolns and when I got home found an Indian Head penny in my finds pouch!  It should have been rejected since they hit around Zincoln on the TID scale.  Now I'm second guessing myself:  "how many IH's did I walk past because I had my (mental) threshold so high to reject the Stinkin' Zincoln?"  Sometimes you just can't win....?

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