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Nickels Undersearched In Heavily Searched Sites?


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Back on the OP subject of nickels, there's a good reason that most don't find what he would term "old" nickels, Shield nickels were only minted for 17 years (1866-1883), Liberty nickels were minted for 30 years (1883-1913), Buffalo nickels were minted for 25 years (1913-1938), on the other hand Jefferson nickels have been minted for 80 years and still counting (1938-present), more than the other 3 mintings combined, and of course it's easier to find a more or less recently lost nickel than any of the others that were most likely losted up to 80 or more years ago.

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1 hour ago, Alluminati said:

The very first line the OP posted was about a gold thread was it not?

Do you not see the correlation between skipping prime gold numbers in lieu low hanging high conductors? Isn't the reason most dig silver is because it is easier? Think about it, you dinn't even have zinc pennies until 1983.

I've already explained why there is a surplus of low conductors, that is exactly what the OP is asking for. I at least gave the courtesy to talk about the right metal. You're lack of understanding is why you perceive this is being off track.

YES, the OP's first line referenced a thread by Happa 54 "Chasing Nickels Signals I End Up With Gold".

YES, I fully understand the TID range of gold, in all it's forms, and what can happen if someone ignores  a signal in possible gold TID range. 

YES, many dig silver because it falls in an easy high conductive range, MUCH more easily identified than any type of gold. (see my first post in this thread where i referenced "cherry picking")

I've been doing this a pretty long time.  My first detecting was done with a Jetco BFO around 1969-70.  I got back into detecting about 10 yrs ago.  Honestly, I believe there is very little you could teach me. I fully understand the large conductive range gold items fall within.  My 1/2 Eagle $5 gold coin fell right at 54/55 on my F75 TID, right at the aluminum pull tab mark. Most would have passed on it.  I have found plenty of gold rings, bracelets, pendants etc., that fall in a huge range of TID's.

I believe Steve made a VERY GOOD post above dealing with all that.

This is the "metal Detecting For Coins & Relics Forum".  The OP said ..."it got me wondering if previous searchers who took most of the old coins were skipping nickels.  Thoughts?  That is the context I took his question. As it relates to coin hunting NOT gold jewelry.

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13 hours ago, Gold Seeker said:

Back on the OP subject of nickels, there's a good reason that most don't find what he would term "old" nickels, Shield nickels were only minted for 17 years (1866-1883), Liberty nickels were minted for 30 years (1883-1913), Buffalo nickels were minted for 25 years (1913-1938), on the other hand Jefferson nickels have been minted for 80 years and still counting (1938-present), more than the other 3 mintings combined, and of course it's easier to find a more or less recently lost nickel than any of the others that were most likely losted up to 80 or more years ago.

I don't know if you've experienced this but, for me, some locations tend to give up certain types of old nickels, even though the location is of a similar age to other search sites.

There are a couple of old school sites that the majority of nickels I find are Buffs, while a couple park locations are generous with an occasional V nickel.   The schools are now closed and all the more modern stuff has been vacuumed up over the yrs., so I guess most of the remaining nickels are the older Buffs as they tend to be deeper?

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8 hours ago, EMField said:

I don't know if you've experienced this but, for me, some locations tend to give up certain types of old nickels, even though the location is of a similar age to other search sites.

There are a couple of old school sites that the majority of nickels I find are Buffs, while a couple park locations are generous with an occasional V nickel.   The schools are now closed and all the more modern stuff has been vacuumed up over the yrs., so I guess most of the remaining nickels are the older Buffs as they tend to be deeper?

The fact (or perception, sometimes) that targets we find are biased by previous searching is a factor, and possibly the most significant one.  But others are both the history of the ground itself (natural and human induced) as well as the *source* of the lost treasures.  I've been searching a couple schools extesnsively this summer and can't help but speculate while I'm out there (hours of time where my brain is less than 100% occupied can do that ?) who/when/what led to the things I'm finding.  'Who' is mostly the children attending the school.  'When' is the time period of the school's attendance.  'What' is actually the items they were carrying and subsequently lost.

Why are children carrying coins in the first place?  One obvious answer is 'lunch money'.  What did lunch cost when these coins were dropped?  In general a lot less as we go back in time, possibly excepting subsidized lunches.  Why is it harder to find silver halves and quarters?  I think one reason is that lunch only cost a dime.  Why would parents send their children to school with more money than needed to buy lunch?  I don't even know if schools still use cash as a medium of exchange at lunchtime.  Maybe students carry credit cards; maybe parents are billed or prepay.

Pennies are the weird ones thanks to the brain dead decision that has been made by the US government.  (Well, I guess on the scale of bad decisions this one has to be on the low end....)  When many of us were growing up a penny meant something.  Now people would rather toss them on the ground than have them weighing down their pockets and purses.  I remember when 1 cent would buy a piece of bubblegum.  What is the smallest price you can buy *anything* for today?  I don't know but I'm guessing 10 cents.  Takes ten of those annoying Stinkin' Zincolns to purchase the lowest price item in a store.

The reason coins are located where we find them is a complicated evolution that is site specific.  Lots of fun (for some of us) to speculate on but difficult to tie down with much certainty.

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So true about the enjoyment in figuring out the why of what we find!

Back in the day we used to pay a nickel for milk in school now that I think about it.  I guess one of the benefits of people cherry picking silver back in the early days with the onset of the ability to discriminate certain conductors, is that they did leave a lot of old nickels for us.  I enjoy finding the old Buffs and V nickels.  Most of the V's I find are pretty toasted.  I would love to find one in good shape!

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18 hours ago, Alluminati said:

The point I was making was to disassociate the performance of a mostly copper 5 cent to the performance of the machine on gold.  The TID does nothing to tell you if you can hit a target at an inch or a foot. Correct?

Older machines were hotter on high conductors and lack the resolution to disc very well close to iron.

The fact that people use a nickle-clad dime as a pseudo silver dime demonstrates my point, the nickle in your coins isn't nickle enough to call it nickle. If you want to use the TID of an US copper nickle as numerical benchmark, no harm in that. However using one to test nickle or gold performance is very flawed.

I disagree with you on the usefulness of employing a nickel to help determine the relative gold performance of two detectors. We will just have to agree to disagree on that.

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On 8/16/2018 at 8:30 AM, NAGANT said:

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.  

I was just saying these guy's were probably cherry picking silver. And they did a good job too!

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