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Semi-key Lincoln Cent Find


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As a Christmas present, a friend of mine asked around amongst many friends/acquaintances and received five positive replies for permission for me to search their properties.  Last weekend I went to my 3rd (actually 3b since this is a property now owned by one of the original five, but a second property).  I find it interesting to compare/contrast two of these properties which I'll call 3a and 3b.

3a) small (<1000 sq ft) home built about 1940 on a corner lot.  Total property size ~0.1 acre.  There is a detached garage, part of the yard is fenced off for farm animals, and although I had permission to search in with them (goats and chickens) I didn't do as thorough of a job searching their space as the rest, for obvious reasons.  I was expecting good results but a 4 hour hunt only produced one old coin -- a  late 1930's Wheat Cent.  It's possible this site had been searched previously but I think it's less likely than a second theory -- whoever has lived there just didn't hang out much in the yard and/or didn't carry coins in places where they could be dropped.  Regardless, I was disappointed to the sparsity of finds, but that just makes me hungrier for other sites and more excited when those produce.  To my surprise and appreciation, that home owner told me she was in the process of buying a rental and said I was welcome to search it.  Proceed to...

3b) similar size home and lot, but this time no farm animals, built ~1955.  Assuming the 'old' coins I seek stopped being circulated by the early 1970's, this property only offers about 15 or so years to have accumulated these targets as opposed to twice as long with 3a.  After my previous experience I wasn't expecting a windfall but still was hopeful.  Last Sunday I was able to put in 3 hours of searching and covered a little more than half of the searchable ground.  During the hunt I was finding a moderate number of coins, mostly copper Memorial cents, a few clad dimes and quarters and a couple Jefferson nickels.  I was discriminating hard against Zincolns which might have been a mistake.  Two of the copper cents I found (I think both were Wheats but not sure) hit 20-21 ID on my Equinox 800 (Park 1, 5 custom tones, ground balanced, recovery speed = 6, iron bias = 2, gain = 18).  When I don't expect Indian Heads I tend to discriminate at 21/22 ID break.

I don't like trying to clean coins in the field so although I knew I had some Wheaties I wasn't sure how many.  Turns out 7 of the 21 pennies I recovered were Wheats.  My standard procedure is to soak in just water for several hours and then use just my fingers (including fingernails) and a soft toothbrush to figure out date+mintmark.  Soaking removes the loose grit (think 'abrasive' which is why I don't mess with coins in the field) and a fingernail is soft enough not to scratch the metal.  As most of you experience, copper coins that have been in the ground a long time tend to build up a scale which doesn't come off easily.  95% of the time I have to scrape the date area with a fingernail.  It's kind of a fun process because rather than seeing a date immediately there is a gradual revelation.  For example:  "looks like a 194x, no maybe 191x (scrape some more), OK 1942?  or is that a 3 or 8?  I'm seeing a mintmark but can't tell if 'D' or 'S'.  Hope it's an 'S'...."  Part of this process is driven by poor eyesight, even using magnifiers.

That's exactly what happened with the coin shown below.  It looked like a 1924 but there was too much scale to see a mintmark.  As usual I hope for the best "please be a -D" but my dreams almost never reach fruition.  However, this time, bonus!!  Just as I had begged for, a -D (Denver mint) showed through.  Of the >200 business strike Lincoln cents, the order of rarity (based upon mintage) is 1909-S VDB, 1931-S, 1914-D, 1909-S, 1924-D.  I found the fifth scarecest Lincoln (not counting the rare and sometimes valuable 'error' coins such as the Double Dies and off-metal planchet errors nor 'proof' coins issued for collectors only).  In the 1960's I searched bank rolls and pocket change religiously for my collection.  I estimate over the years I looked at 25,000 or more Lincoln cents and not only did I never find a 1924-D, but no cents as valuable either.  (Actually the value even today is quite modest.  Given its wear, even if I can successfully clean off the scale it would only be worth about $15 on Ebay.)  Since restarting metal detecting 3 years ago I've found just over 100 Wheaties.  1/100 beats 0/25,000 every day of the week.

1924-D_cent.JPG

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