Nickels Undersearched In Heavily Searched Sites?

[GB_Amateur]

Happa 54's thread about hunting nickels (and Steve H's previous, similar thread) plus some recent hunts have got me thinking.

Back in the early days of discrimination, all you got was a knob to determine what conductivity to cut off your signals.  If you set it to detect nickels and above you had to deal with the annoying pulltabs plus other trash targets (including Zincolns).  So there certainly was reason to set the discrimination level higher, even just below dime & copper penny, which cost you finding nickels.  If you were on virgin ground, holding silver coins, there was extra incentive not to waste time dealing with trash just to be able to pull in those lowly nickels.

I'm hunting a school which was built in 1926.  Of 354 coins I've found there, only 7 (four Wheaties, one Indian Head penny, one Warnick, one silver dime) have been what I consider 'old'.  (For me, 'old' means pre-Memorial penny, pre-Jefferson nickel, pre-clad.)  Yesterday I pulled in 11 Jeffersons (no other nickels); one was 1939 and two were 1941.  I realize these date+MM are among the highest mintage prior to 1960, and you can find them in pocket change today (particularly the 1941).  Still, it got me wondering if previous seachers who took most of the old coins were skipping nickels.  Thoughts?

On a side but related note, what year did metal detectors start giving an indication of coin ID rather than just accept/reject above/below a certain threshold value?

[Steve Herschbach]

I agree - lots of people passed on nickels and still do. I certainly have done it a lot when chasing silver.

I am not sure which exact company or model first featured target id meters but the 1983 White's catalog features the first White's with target id - the Coinmaster 6000/Di Series 2. First mention in a White's catalog of "VDI" Visual Discrimination Indicator. Click on image for larger version. Before this meters just showed depth and battery indications or trash/treasure type displays.

[LipCa]

Both of my parents used the old coinmaster and I don't think they left many nickels.  They would come back with a pouch full of pull tabs and bottle tops every time. They dug everything.  My aunt did the same thing.

Maybe there wasn't that much discrimination going on?

[EMField]

I think a lot, if not most, of the early detectorists were cherry picking only silver.

Back as a kid with my Father, using only BFO machines with no discriminator, silver was usually the prize, as at that time it had been out of circulation for a while.  When I got back into detecting about 10 yrs ago, a lot of the longtime detectorists I met had said they did exactly that.  When the discrimination circuits were incorporated in detectors, it made cherry picking high conductive silver very easy.

[GB_Amateur]

21 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

...The 1983 White's catalog features the first White's with target id - the Coinmaster 6000/Di Series 2.

I think (please someone correct me if I'm wrong) this is the detector featured in the White's publication Taking a Closer Look at Metal Detector Discrimination by Robert C. Brockett (with later editing by A. Keith Zorger).  I didn't realize it was available that early (1983) -- unbelievably now 35 years ago.?  (I say that because 1983 seems like the day before yesterday.)

[GB_Amateur]

Now I have a new thought to contemplate:  if one is wanting to capitalize on nickel cherry picking, is there an obvious detector that hits hard on nickels and separates their TID's from nearby junk targets?  If not an obvious choice, please name some candidates.

I admit this might be a lost cause, given that a lot of cupro-nickel alloyed coins suffer badly from being in the ground a long time.  However, three of my 'old' coin finds this year include two Warnicks and a (unfortunately dateless) Buffalo nickel, all of which are in otherwise excellent condition considering how long they've been in the ground.

[EMField]

16 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Now I have a new thought to contemplate:  if one is wanting to capitalize on nickel cherry picking, is there an obvious detector that hits hard on nickels and separates their TID's from nearby junk targets?  If not an obvious choice, please name some candidates.

I admit this might be a lost cause, given that a lot of cupro-nickel alloyed coins suffer badly from being in the ground a long time.  However, three of my 'old' coin finds this year include two Warnicks and a (unfortunately dateless) Buffalo nickel, all of which are in otherwise excellent condition considering how long they've been in the ground.

I would think the GB/GB pro/GB DP, F19, or G2/G2+ would all be good candidates.  At 19KHz they all hit hard on low conductors like nickels.  I was amazed how many I found in locations that I had thought were pretty picked over.

[Steve Herschbach]

On 8/8/2018 at 5:52 PM, GB_Amateur said:

I think (please someone correct me if I'm wrong) this is the detector featured in the White's publication Taking a Closer Look at Metal Detector Discrimination by Robert C. Brockett (with later editing by A. Keith Zorger).  I didn't realize it was available that early (1983) -- unbelievably now 35 years ago.?  (I say that because 1983 seems like the day before yesterday.)

A real classic and details the development of White's first target id detector, and yes, that was the 6000/Di Series 2 (mentioned in the book on page 18). Some things never really change and the phase based discrimination system as laid out in the book is still the same all these years later. Different detectors assign different target id numbers, but the relative positioning is the same to this day. Well, with the exception of the Fisher CZ series, which purposefully rearranged the scale.

"Taking A Closer Look At Metal Detector Discrimination" by Robert C. Brockett. 

[Happa54]

On 8/8/2018 at 5:58 PM, GB_Amateur said:

Now I have a new thought to contemplate:  if one is wanting to capitalize on nickel cherry picking, is there an obvious detector that hits hard on nickels and separates their TID's from nearby junk targets?  If not an obvious choice, please name some candidates.

I admit this might be a lost cause, given that a lot of cupro-nickel alloyed coins suffer badly from being in the ground a long time.  However, three of my 'old' coin finds this year include two Warnicks and a (unfortunately dateless) Buffalo nickel, all of which are in otherwise excellent condition considering how long they've been in the ground.

Hey GB

I know for sure either the Etrac, Safari and Nox kills it on the nickels. I can't speak for the other detectors.

Last year I was tuned in to the silver tones and other high conductors and did well. But, I tuned out the nickel signals and basically got almost nil. Over the last few months focusing on nickels signals and a couple hundred nickels later, I only have 2 buffs and a V nick to show for it.  I also got my first 18k gold ring due to a nickel signal.

Recently, I did a search to find out if buffs were being taken in large numbers, or whatever... and the buff ratio to modern nickel was not impressive. It seems that for every 150 - 200 nickels, a buff is taken. It also appears to me that the buff count is not that much better than the V's. My research may be way off but this is what I've come up with so far. 

I only hunt once a week this year, anywhere from 4-6 hours on Sunday and my nickel count could be better with possibly more buffs and/or V's or another gold ring to show for it if I had more time to put in. However, for the remainder of this year I will continue to pursue nickel signals. 

 

 

[dsb]

When i got my first Tesoro (1996?)i went to a fresh water beach and two guy's with Minelabs were just leaving. I never saw a Minelab before and still remember thinking they looked like a goverment survey crew with all the hard cases and gear sitting in the truck bed.  They told me they didn't leave me much to find.  I found about 13 nickles , a gold bead earring and 2 clad dimes.