A Couple Firsts

[Steve Herschbach]

I did a thread recently where I was hunting local park areas and wanting to experiment with "cherry picking" settings that would net me the most coins the fastest without bogging down into overly serious detecting. I normally hunt 50 tones with no items rejected, which works well but which requires me to work slowly analyzing targets sounds. Time is limited so I wanted to get out and cover some area. The settings worked well enough to get a pile of coins out of some trashy modern park settings.

Park 1 - Multi-IQ
50 Tones
Iron Bias 0
Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7
Auto (Pump) Ground Balance
Sensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMI
All items from 21 on down rejected except for 13

For nickels I was being really picky, just digging good, solid 13 readings. I do know nickels can also read 12 but I did not want to recover too many pull tabs so kept this very narrow. And I have to note - I am experimenting!! There is nothing magic about these settings, just something I am trying in modern trash.

Anyway, it worked halfway well and I was able to readily skim coins out of a modern trashy park area with minimal trash, and nearly all that being square tabs that read 13 like the nickels. Very little high end trash. I was getting quite a bit of ferrous high tone squeaking but only a couple that tempted me enough to dig them anyway, and got a couple nails.

This weeked I wanted to try an area I had cherry picked before for copper/silver range targets, but my ear is better tuned now so wanted to give it another go with more open settings than above but still not wide open full tones. I employ different levels of intensity in my hunting that varies by location, time constraints, and my mood. Sometimes I want to recover all non-ferrous targets. Sometimes just copper/silver. And sometimes varying levels of in between.

This next round I opened up the discrimination a little.

Park 1 - Multi-IQ
50 Tones
Iron Bias 0
Detect Speed 6 unless in dense trash, then 7
Auto (Pump) Ground Balance
Sensitivity 21 or 22 depending on EMI
All items from 16 on down rejected except for 12 & 13

This time however I rejected everything from 16 on down except 12 & 13. The goal here is zinc pennies read 21 and since I hate them it makes for my regular cutoff point in areas from around 1930 and newer. However, in older areas there are two things in particular to pay attention to, assuming you still want to reject some stuff. Indian Head pennies overlap the zinc penny range. New zincs come in at 21 but corroded ones will read lower. Indian Head pennies can read in that same "high teens / low twenties" range.

Also, a $5 gold coin will normally read at 18. Ground and age can pull readings lower, and so I decided on 17 on up as being good, but 17 is debatable. I will decide on that later after digging enough 17 targets. But 18 on up has to be open because I am determined to find a $5 gold coin with Equinox.

I also wanted to open up the nickel range as older nickels seem to hit around 12 and newer ones more in the 13 region.

Again, just experimenting! I also need to note that I am using Park 1 - target id can vary depending on mode and frequency.

I told myself I would skip shallow zinc signals but I have a real problem passing on clean sounding targets, and so dug most of these since they are shallow and easy to pop. I did finally make myself stop though as it is a time waster - zinc pennies were the most common "trash" target followed again by some square tabs. Like I noted, I detected this area before, so once I pulled the about 20 zincs aside I ended up with 10 copper pennies, 4 dimes, and 3 nickels, none all that old.

However, I got three special signals. The first was as nice a 12 reading as I could hope for, just a nice clean, mellow tone. And down about 8" appears my first ever Liberty or "V" nickel, a 1909.

Some time later and maybe 100 feet away another identical, mellow 12 reading - I just knew it had to be another nickel. This one was down under a tree root at about 8" and popped out of the ground dry and green - another V nickel, 1898 this time. My first Liberty nickels, and two in one day!

Some time later, with time running out, I got a messy 19 reading. It was trashy sounding but just good enough to get me to dig, and my first Indian Head penny pops up next to some ferrous trash.

So after 45 years of detecting, why am I only now finding my first old coins of these types? I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and lived there my entire life up until 5 years ago. Anchorage was founded in 1915 and most of that area is paved over core downtown. Most of the town is far newer. I considered 1930's coins to be the great old finds, with only a couple ever from the 20's, and never anything from the teens or earlier. The bottom line is these types of coins just did not exist where I lived. And then I got into nugget detecting......

So anyway, a couple firsts for me, and that alone made it quite fun. I used some cleaning tips mentioned on this other thread  (steel wool) on the 1909 Liberty but left the other alone as cleaning it would probably make it worse. The IHP has a couple weird corrosion blobs on it so have not messed with it.

Anyway, opening up the extra notches did not get me into too much trash except for the zincs I did not resist digging. The big lesson is that deep Liberty nickels, or at least these two, were the most wonderful mellow 12 signals one could imagine. So my current working theory is newer nickels will tend towards 13 and older ones 12 while in Park 1 mode.

 

[fredmason]

congratulations, Steve!!! and thanks for doing all that fun research...you da man!

fred

[Richard Williams]

Impressive.

[Cabin Fever]

Great report and congratulations on your first V Nickels and Indian Steve..  I have also found that the older Buffalo and V Nickels have leaned more 12 then 13 in Park 1 and the tones often sound a bit special..  I really like the 50 Tones Audio on the Equinox..  The deeper Nikels just have a warm fullness to them that you don’t want to pass on..  I remember the Gold Coin I found also had that same warm, smooth fullness to the signal that I was aware of at the time.. 

Bryan

[Skate]

great hunt! I can only imagine the thrill you had when those V nick's jumped out. I would venture there are many more like it still out there given most people's propensity to only cherry pick for silver. My father in law would only dig a nickel if 95% of it was uncovered because to him it was always going to be a pop top/piece of trash. Things are going to be picking up for you Steve for sure.

[Major696]

Thanks for the report and noting the settings you used.

You wouldn't be testing a 6 inch coil would you?  HaHa.

[Tiftaaft]

Love this post Steve!  Thank you for sharing your experience and your settings.  Tim.

[Vez]

Are you hooked on park hunting yet?  It is my favorite thing when I am on a nasty dry streak on permissions; go to a park.  Here is a hunt with my 3030 a week before the 800 came in.  It will probably still be my favorite slump busting machine for park hunts! :)  

15 wheat 1 IHC and 1 buff.  The wheat on the left are 16, 16, 11 no mint mark.

 

 

[Vez]

[steveg]

Steve --

SUPER report!  So glad you got a couple of "firsts!"  You gotta love that!!  I am also finding that shallow nickels are rock-solid 13s, while deeper ones that have been in the ground awhile have at least some "12" numbers associated with them...

And I MIGHT be just starting to imagine/clue into the possibility that there perhaps just might be subtle tone differences between a 13 nickel, and a 13 tab...

Vez -- NICE digs!

Steve