Diggin' The Campground (update)

[Joe D.]

  Unfortunately, the bank I'm stuck with for now, deserves dirty coins! (Their washed and are legal tender, discolored or not!) Since they freely report unrequired customer info to the "establishment"!! 

   And there ain't nothing "neighborly" about them!!👍👍

[F350Platinum]

9 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Red/orange looking modern clad is something I find almost weekly. Usually a third of the clad I have to clean before depositing in the bank is either orange, copperish red or brown. It comes off in my tumbler. You have some reddish orange quarters in your earlier photo from the same area.

There have been some Philadelphia Mint error 2000 nickels that were accidentally made on a copper penny sized planchet. I don't know of any Denver Mint errors like that for the 2000 nickels. Those Philadelphia Mint error nickels are worth quite a bit of money for collectors.

This is all new to me digging such a large about of clad, it's a surprise to know the more experienced detectorists even bother to dig this stuff, but $700 a year is $700 a year 💰. 🤪 I have all the colors as you saw, quite a few red quarters. This one stood out to me, as it really had a major change. Think I'll hold onto it in case there are enough of them to declare a true collectible. It's only one nickel.

What sort of tumbler do you use? I was thinking of filling my large plastic coin jug with water and Tide or something. 🤣 Maybe a handful of gravel.

My bank didn't worry about crud, they took it all the last time most of it being a hoard given to us by a relative. I sneaked the last 300 or so in the hoard. 😁 Thanks Jeff. 👍

[mh9162013]

Every few dimes or quarters I dig will have a pinkish-redish "coating" on them, similar (if not identical) to the coins Jeff showed. I figured it had to do with fertilizer, weed killer or a "stage" in the coin "aging" process.

[Jeff McClendon]

1 hour ago, F350Platinum said:

This is all new to me digging such a large about of clad, it's a surprise to know the more experienced detectorists even bother to dig this stuff, but $700 a year is $700 a year 💰. 🤪 I have all the colors as you saw, quite a few red quarters. This one stood out to me, as it really had a major change.

What sort of tumbler do you use? I was thinking of filling my large plastic coin jug with water and Tide or something. 🤣 Maybe a handful of gravel.

My bank didn't worry about crud, they took it all the last time most of it being a hoard given to us by a relative. I sneaked the last 300 or so in the hoard. 😁 Thanks Jeff. 👍

I live in a big urban environment with dozens of trash filled old parks nearby that also have plenty of clad, jewelry and the occasional silver/older coins. I also have a dog so I detect while walking my dog.

The more shallow trash and clad I clear out, the more likely I will be able to detect deeper jewelry, relics and older coins. I am also a coin collector and I have had gold fever for as long as I can remember. So I definitely dig clad……especially US nickels and zinc pennies which sometimes turn out to be larger karat men’s gold rings!!!!

Any tumbler will work even Harbor Freight models. There are lots of cleaning “recipes” to add to the coins in the tumbler to get them cleaned up. 

[GB_Amateur]

9 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

There have been some Philadelphia Mint error 2000 nickels that were accidentally made on a copper penny sized planchet.

That is what I was hoping.  Those wrong planchet errors happen from time to time and as you note are valuable.  In the past (maybe present, too) the US Mint will stamp coins for other countries and occasionally their planchets work their way into one of our presses.  But more common our just our own planchets.

That 25% nickel, 75% copper alloy is apparently pretty vulnerable to chemicals in some soils.  I think some tree leaves in particular are hard on them.  But fertilizer is another suspect, too, as mh9162013 points out.  Freshwater lakes seem particularly bad, not surprisingly.  A couple years ago I posted a photo of a coin (modern quarter) where the Ni alloy outer layers were completely eaten away, leaving only the copper core.  I found that in a very small artificial pond at a friends house which was loaded with decaying leaves.

Thanks for the photo, F350.  I was hoping....

[F350Platinum]

28 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

That is what I was hoping.  Those wrong planchet errors happen from time to time and as you note are valuable.  In the past (maybe present, too) the US Mint will stamp coins for other countries and occasionally their planchets work their way into one of our presses.  But more common our just our own planchets.

That 25% nickel, 75% copper alloy is apparently pretty vulnerable to chemicals in some soils.  I think some tree leaves in particular are hard on them.  But fertilizer is another suspect, too, as mh9162013 points out.  Freshwater lakes seem particularly bad, not surprisingly.  A couple years ago I posted a photo of a coin (modern quarter) where the Ni alloy outer layers were completely eaten away, leaving only the copper core.  I found that in a very small artificial pond at a friends house which was loaded with decaying leaves.

Thanks for the photo, F350.  I was hoping....

I was too, but am always suspect of thinking any of my finds might be valuable at this stage 😀 I'm sure it's some sort of chemical change. I did see the nickels struck on a penny planchet, there are photos of them somewhere but they look nothing like this. They're all hacked off and nasty albeit valuable. I'm still gonna keep it as a curio.

One of the things that makes this forum great is that an expert will humor a neophyte with patient advice and respect. I hope to be one of those eventually. Thanks.

[Jeff McClendon]

20 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

One of the things that makes this forum great is that an expert will humor a neophyte with patient advice and respect. I hope to be one of those eventually. Thanks.

Chuck (GB_Amateur) is definitely a coin expert. I have had the pleasure of spending a day hunting with him and "talking" detectors. He is also a super nice guy that I would hunt with anytime.

Everyone on this forum has different physical abilities, hunting environments, target preferences and at least in my case......addictions (gold nugget prospecting). So, there is absolutely nothing wrong or lowly about hunting for US clad. If it makes sense to hunt for clad, it can be just as fun as hunting for anything else and it pays for the experience immediately.

The Equinox you have with its single digit notching and simultaneous multi frequency operation, makes cherry picking for US clad, specific denominations of coins, silver coins and gold jewelry super easy and accurate to do. Since the Equinox rarely up or down averages target ID numbers in normal to mineralized turf (black sand infested beaches are another story entirely), notching will be extremely accurate even on deeper targets. Sometimes when I am in a sea of aluminum trash where my other detectors refuse to go, I just set up a simple US coin pattern and see what I can find. I have found some really nice gold and silver jewelry by doing that too. 

Conversely, not digging pull-tabs which can hit between 11 and 19 depending on what kind they are on the Equinox, WILL result in missed gold jewelry if there is any present in that target ID range.........So cherry picking compromises are good sometimes and so is hunting for aluminum/gold.

[geof_junk]

 

14 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Conversely, not digging pull-tabs which can hit between 11 and 19 depending on what kind they are on the Equinox, WILL result in missed gold jewelry if there is any present in that target ID range.........So cherry picking compromises are good sometimes and so is hunting for aluminum/gold.

It would not be needed if the public could read. 😊

 

[Joe D.]

    I've heard a few "urban legends" of people putting them in the can after opening, (both kinds) and getting them caught in their throat!!😬 But at least they didn't litter!! 😁👍👍