Chris,

Headphones are very important if you want to get these old coins and be successful. Depending on you detector will depend on your response you will hear. If you have a silent search detector it might just be a slight blip you will hear that is the deep old coin. If you have a machine with a treshold hum that hum might just change so very slightly and there is no way you will hear it without headphone. Another thing is with headphone you will not be disturbing other people that are around you or attracting attention everytime it get a signal. I once run into a guy in a park and we were using the same machine and in the same area and when we compared our finds he only had new coins while over half of mine were old, he wondered why and I told him he needs to wear headphone to hear those weak and faint signals. I seen him again a few weeks latter and he couldnt beleive the difference in finds it made with the Headphones. You do need to get out more than a couple of hours a month to know your machine as this will make a difference too if you dont understand its language.

Rick