GB_Amateur

Excellent find (and approach). Another reminder that discrimination (whether detector settings or brain settings) should at least be site based. Makes me wonder how many keepers I've missed by being too selective.... Too bad they didn't leave you a few pennies inside, but still a worthy display piece. There was a period (1950's?) when commercial banks were advertising by handing out similar items, but I don't see advertising on yours (do you?). There are collectors of those. I agree that yours looks way older than 1950's.

...you see yourself on the comics page.

That water sure does a number on 95% copper coins. Was the wheat penny (which looks to be in decent shape, at least relatively speaking) in a different environment? That's what I was thinking. Could it be part of an assembly that was patented and all that's left (or all that you were able to find) is this one piece? Same thing with the bolt. Back in the second half of the 19th Century through the first quarter (or so) of the 20th they put patent dates on a lot of items. (Wish they hadn't stopped since it helps us with dating our finds.)

I could give you mine, but this guy (Gerry McMullen) has a lot more experience in the field:

17 years of age (1970, summer before senior year of high school) -- Heathkit GD-48. But after 10 years of low activity I went AWOL for another 35 years and missed out on all the best USA detecting. Water under the bridge; glad my sister relit the spark 6 years ago, and happy to say it's just as fun as it was in 1970.

That's the best sign it's not EMI. I'll have to take a look at single frequencies when I get heavy ground noise in multi- and see if I can reproduce your experiences. I've always assumed I was picking up iron trash (especially nails) after I verify the detector is ground balanced. One more question -- which software version are your running? I don't know if this would affect what you are seeing, but it does seem that some of the updates quieted things down.

Are you sure you're not picking up EMI? Noise cancel doesn't always do that (i.e. completely cancel); it can only do so much. Also, I didn't notice if you are wide open in your discriminating or notching out the lower channels (horseshoe button toggle). One thing about EMI and multi-vs-single frequency: when I get a lot of (non-cancellable) EMI in multi I usually get it at either 5 kHz or 40 kHz single frequency, with the intermediate frequencies (10 kHz, 15 kHz, 20 kHz) being quiet(er). The new 4 kHz option tends to be quiet, at least compared to 5 kHz.

I think this is the show (got the right title -- but I haven't listened yet). And sorry if someone beat me to posting this:

Welcome, Bruskihi! Your GMT question is probably better asked in the main forum than in this 'gravity recovery' sub-forum but there are plenty of people who read both. Depending upon how you define 'obsolete' (Minelab has their own definition ?) I say the GMT is not obsolete. If you were going out to buy a new gold nugget IB/VLF then the GMT might not be at the top of the list, but that's mainly because of features, ergonomics, etc. I think you're all set in that category; now you just need some good ground to search (and if you already have that -- then time to search it)!

Silver quarters are very good finds, regardless, and older ones even better. Only two mints produced quarters in 1847 and yours is the scarcer of the two -- half as many minted in New Orleans as in Philly. It's always nice to see a mintmark on a well-worn coin since sometimes the mintmark is so vulverably placed that it has worn off (e.g. Mercury Dime). Excellent finds you've shown us. Approximately what percentage of this settlement have you searched? I hope you don't have a time limit on your access to this site and I look forward to your future revelations.

I figured they'd want my e-mail address and you know what happens then. I spend quite a bit (make that 'a lot') of time here and it seems YouTube videos take up considerably more. (When someone posts one here I do often at least start watching. Posters here do my filtering for me. )

Yes, the 11" is my default. I use the 6" when after tiny gold in the desert. I've tried the 6" in a trashy spot in one of my parks but I didn't feel like it was helping much. The 11" separates surprisingly well in my sites (and they are pretty loaded with both aluminum and nails, although not uniformly so). However, the 6" performs well so if someone prefers that I'm not going to discourage them. As always it depends on so many variables, including personal style, etc. As far as the large coil, if I'm on flat ground (and the grass has been cut!) so that I don't have to lift it much AND if the area isn't trashy it works nicely for me. I don't get many of those chances, particularly the non-trashy part. I run at F2=0 always. The only time I might consider increasing it is in ghost towns or around remains of buildings that had a lot of sheet metal (roofing, etc.) I could change my mind in the future, but in my current (park and school) sites I don't get many crown caps so I just dig them and let them tell me when they were deposited (by their condition) and how deep to expect to find coins. BTW, good to see you back posting. I wondered where you went and now I know. ? Frankly I couldn't be paid enough to live in that massive gridlocked sweltering hot (& humid!) place named Houston. But obviously lots of people like it (or at least tolerate it) and looks like you got transferred for your job. When retirement comes around for you I bet you'll be following the compass arrow, too. ?

Your school sounds a lot like a couple I've also hunted frequently. Old trees help because the earth reworking usually avoids trees (because the land owners demand it, not because the earth movers respect trees...). Often you can tell if old trees had backfill added because of the root spread (or lack thereof). Also some detectorists shy away from trees because of having to deal with the roots. (I dig around, not through them, unless they are tiny enough to break with my hand.) I assume you are hunting in Park 1 or Field 1. (I use both and they seem to be quite similar if I set things like Recovery Speed and Iron Bias the same on both.) But here's a trick I seem to have found: set up Field 2 (Park 2 might work as well) with multi-tones and recovery speed of 6. (I hunt in the 1 modes with RC = 4, IB F2=0 and custom 5 tones with 12-13 getting its own tone of 24, just under but easily distinguished from high conductors I set at 25.) Targets that show 12-13 in the 1 modes can show different numbers in the field modes. The USA nickels in Field 2 tend to stay somewhere in 12-13 (but not identical to the TID signals in the 1 modes) whereas beavertail-only and bent ring-only pulltabs often 'droop' into the 11's and sometimes even a 10 peeks through. Bent and broken racetrack (modern) pulltabs which show 13 in the 1 modes will also display some 14 in Field 2. Also, I used to put Field 2 in the User Profile slot but that is such a PitA button that now I just rotate through all 8 modes. It's actually easier (since I can do that with one hand; User Profile takes two hands ?). Don't take my suggestion as gospel but try it out yourself and see if it lines up with your experience. Also, deep nickels (like the oldies you're looking for) can spill out of 12-13 on both sides as you probably know. I've gotten faint iron grunts for deep nickel hits which I think were nearby small nails or wire. Deeper is trickier (but that was the case for previous detectorists too which is one reason they left them for you)! Another suggestion, don't depend too strongly on the 360 confirmation technique when in trash (as you are). Iron nails and wire bits are evil, evil, evil!

I don't FB, either, nor do I subscribe to YouTube channels. But I searched YouTube for 'treasuretalkshow' and found some previous episodes, so maybe they post them after the live show.

You might want to pick up this Charles Garrett book. I doubt there will be anything earth shattering (no pun intended) but just one tip you don't find elsewhere could easily be worth the $10 price.

That blanket statement is at least a bit overstated, IMO. Do you have comparison data? My small Fisher coils (5" round DD's for both Gold Bug Pro and F75 and 5"x10" DD for the GB Pro) have worked quite well for me. I never used the 7"x11" DD's much even though I have them for both detectors so can't comment much on them although I never felt like I was suffering the few times I did use them. Overpriced compared to the Eastern European models of similar size (that are sold for First Texas detectors)? That does seem to be the case. (See Serious_Detecting.) I'm not going to defend that 15" boat anchor that is the subject of the initial posts on this thread, though. I'm thankful I read about it long before I was tempted to get it. Doesn't seem like they did their reputation any favors by continuing to sell these, even on the fire sales they conducted.

That's resourceful, and I'll bet Calabash has quite a stash (from his bottle hunting, not his beer drinking... ?).

Joe, I thought you were going to tell us how to find old coins in tossed out appliances -- kinda like searching the sofa for pocket change that has worked it's way down deep into the innards. Here's a related story. Back in the late 60's when I was in high school I was hanging around with friends, riding our bikes (still did that in HS) and they took me to a vacant lot where there were 2 or 3 old cars (late 40's or early 50's models) that were upside down and for which someone had burned out the insides. I looked around inside and on the roofs (the inside of the roofs since these were sitting on them) and found a couple Wheat pennies. Fast forward almost 40 years, I was on a GPAA claim in Arizona and there was a late 50's auto resting on its side near an abondoned mine. I remember the treasure find of my youth and pushed the car over on its back, both looking inside but also detecting the ground where the side had previously rested. Sad ending this time as I found no coins, but a couple of relics salved the wounds.

Just to round out the subject, here are the top 40 lowest mintages (date+mintmark) Jeffies of the 176 prior to 2017: Notice both the 2009-P and 2009-D made this list at #33 and #39 respectively. To find another coin minted in the last 50+ years in the full ordered list you have to go down to 1975-plain (#73).

OK, here are the USA coin mintage ratios (taken from Wikipedia). These are for 1965 through 2018, normalized to the half dollar = 1: Quarter -- 21.0 Dime -- 22.7 Nickel -- 13.2 Penny -- 113.6 So, yes, fewer nickels than either dimes or quarters, but only at about the 60% level. My numbers have varied over the years, partly due to my sites, but also caused by different detecting techniques and change of detectors -- the big three: location, detectorist, detector. Anyway, with that caveat here are my ratios for modern coins from beginning of 2016 to present, again normalized to a single half dollar found: Brass dollar -- 4 Quarter -- 455 Dime -- 620 Nickel -- 625 95% Cu Memorial -- 1050 Zincoln Memorial -- 1139 (note: only coin I sometimes ignore) Wheat penny -- 294 Thus I've found about the same number of nickels as dimes. (Old coins are a separate story and not part of these statistics other than the Wheat pennies I tossed in there for reference.) There are so many variables besides the ones I just mentioned, e.g.: size of coin affects max detection depth, as does the composition. Size of coin affects the likelihood that it would have been noticed (by the person who dropped it or even someone else) before it got covered/buried, and even the likelihood that someone who dropped a coin noticed it was missing and went back to look for it. Finally, the mintage numbers don't necessarily represent circulation numbers. Notice the disparity in half dollars (minted compared to my finds). It's been decades since half dollars have seen much circulation but the mint ignored that for a long time. (Starting in 2002 I think they've just made them for collectors, but not sure about that. The mintages each year are typically only ~4 million compared to roughly 10 times that many from 1977 to 2001 and 100 times as many in the 1971-76 years.)

What, no 1894-S? ? I noticed you have several keys & semi-keys of the Barber Dime series. Have you ever put them in a Whitman folder? I'm curious how many slots you'd fill (and how many would remain empty). Maybe half and half? Those of us who didn't participate in the heyday of coin detecting knew that we missed a lot, but reports like yours are quantitative evidence of something few experienced and maybe almost no one will ever get to do again. Thanks for this series.

Well, then we're both odd ?? (probably not the first to think that...). I've wondered about this very question myself many times and even bought a book I thought may answer that. I haven't finished the book (it's not quite as light reading as I had hoped, but still good and steeped in history) but so far I haven't read anything about distribution. I thought the 1964 record high mintage was eclipsed in later years in all denominations but the one (denomination) exception is the nickel -- 2.8 billion is still the record (1999 and 2000 were 2.3 billion and 2.4 billion for 3rd and 2nd place respectively. Yes, they do seem to show up a lot. 1964 was an anomalous mintage (not all coins with that date were minted in 1964 -- they continued well into late summer 1965). The federal government (legislature in particular) was in a pissy mood and were figuring out a way to kill coin collecting. They saw it as a threat to the circulation of coins. (Ironically they eventually went 180 degrees opposite and encouraged the public to pull coins from circulation, thus the State Quarters of 1999-2008!!) So record numbers of coins were struck with 1964 (both in Philadelphia with no mintmark and in Denver with the -D mintmark). That was in all denominations, 1 cent through 50 cents.

Oooohhh, that is scary. A plastic that was used early in the 20th Century (maybe before) is celluloid. That hot needle 'trick' worked with it, but ruined more than a few antique pieces by burning holes right through them. Isn't there a less potentially damaging way to determine this?

I've looked at the dime vs. quarter mintage numbers but don't recall comparing to nickels. I'll do that, but I'm sure it's nothing close to 75::1. Which frequency of the N/M Multi-Kruzer do you typically use in these situations? (I'll also pull my counts for the various modern coins to compare. I was going to report on something similar for my end-of-year summary but decided not enough people care and my reports tend to be overly long to begin with. If people want to read a book they'll go to the library and get one, not come here to read my posts! ?)

And they did a very good job of that since most Warnicks fall in the same digital TID range as the 25% nickel kind. Contrast that with the 1943 zinc coated steel pennies vs. the 95% copper pennies they replaced where the conductivity requirement didn't exist.