Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

[limegoldconvertible68]

Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I always hear talk about how we are close to getting "peak oil" meaning most of it has been found and then it a slow decline until nothing is left. At some point the same thing has to happen to the silver in the ground. Looking at the "todays finds" its easy to find many people still finding hundreds of silvers a year. I know in the three years I have been running my F70 my silver numbers have gone up every year and this year is my best start ever. I stand a chance at breaking the coveted 100 mark. With all the top dollar machines out there right now it would seem that at some point soon the silver has to start drying up. I know I have now reached the point where some of my favorite places aren't worth the effort anymore. Its a scary thought to ponder that most places are out of silver. Will the next round of machines bring these places back to life or is the end of silver of possibility in the next few years?

 

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[The_EE]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I always hear talk about how we are close to getting "peak oil" meaning most of it has been found and then it a slow decline until nothing is left. At some point the same thing has to happen to the silver in the ground. Looking at the "todays finds" its easy to find many people still finding hundreds of silvers a year. I know in the three years I have been running my F70 my silver numbers have gone up every year and this year is my best start ever. I stand a chance at breaking the coveted 100 mark. With all the top dollar machines out there right now it would seem that at some point soon the silver has to start drying up. I know I have now reached the point where some of my favorite places aren't worth the effort anymore. Its a scary thought to ponder that most places are out of silver. Will the next round of machines bring these places back to life or is the end of silver of possibility in the next few years?

We are no where near peak silver. As the price goes up, it becomes economically viable to put more resources into getting the harder to get silver. We will still have a steady stream of silver for a while to come, from what I gather. I think new deposits will be found as well. The real question is, when we start using more in industrial applications than collectors collect and how will that drive up the prices?

 

[Jason in Enid]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

EE, he's asking about metal detecting, not mining.

According to the definition of "peak", then we peaked at 1964. The majority of easy silver was gone decades ago. Today we are fighting over scraps and the number left to find gets smaller all the time.

 

[TORRERO]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I am of the same opinion....
It is very hard to find any silver any more, much less hundreds of silver coins in a year ?
Maybe your in an area that does not see much detecting, or no real hunters over the years, I suspect
there are places like this out there....

But in 28 years of heavy hunting I have only found what I believe to be a virgin site maybe 3 or 4
times, I don't believe it will happen any more.

I used to have large County Maps with Churches listed and as I traveled I would carry the maps
with me and stop at all churches that looked promising, and I went to some 20 years ago that did not
produce anything more than a few wheats....

And trust me when I say that if I found some good coins in a church yard and did not get run off.....
I stayed until... or returned until....
Until such time as I was not getting targets or so few as mark the site worthless to hunt.

If there is a Church in SC or NC or an old school yard, or old Post office or old Library or old
court house, that has not seen a detector in the last 30 years, then it's in some type of time warp
or on private property...

(not that I got them all, but the hundreds of hunters that are out there, I can not imagine any that have missed the coil)

 

[fistfulladirt]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

The silver's still there. I am hitting the same 'ol spots that everyone else has been on for years, mostly county parks and public areas. The old timers I run into are amazed when I tell them that I've dug 30 from this park, 40 from that one, all in the last year or two. I don't believe in virgin spots as detectors have been around for so long. Some might call the local fairground or county park "virgin spots" just because they may dig a half-dozen silvers, lol!

 

[gleaner1]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. The days of finding ten or twenty pieces or more in a day are a distant memory. I found 8 silver this year, in roughly fifty hours tectin time. I say peak silver was in the sixties and seventies. Can you imagine having good modern machine back then, when only a few people were out there, in all those virgin sites?

 

[bazinga]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. The days of finding ten or twenty pieces or more in a day are a distant memory.

False.

With the right machine and the right attitude, 10 silver in a day is not a distant memory. It's reality. I expect 5 silver per hunt and hope for 10+. I had several 10+ days this past year and a few years back had my best ever day with 25. 2 years ago I had a 4 day span that I found 39 silver, and one of those days was weak with just 4 silver. The rest were 15, 10, and 10.

I hunt public parks that have been hit heavily. I would never say any spot is hunted out because I'm too confident in my abilities. But I hunt with lots of guys that would consider 8 silver in a year a PHENOMENAL year and we are hunting in the exact same spots and a number of them detect more frequently than me. I just detect on the weekends when the weather is favorable.

It's all about attitude. Get a new attitude and the finds will come.

Don't go out HOPING and PRAYING to find 1 silver that day. Go out EXPECTING to find silver. Be cocky, not negative.

 

[gleaner1]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. True.

 

[bazinga]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. True.

Then enjoy the years of 8 silver with that attitude. I'll enjoy finding 8 silver a hunt, and there are plenty of others in my shoes.

 

[DanRiverMan]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I dont know about "Peak" or how you would define it as far as detecting for it goes.. I do know that the amount of coinage that is lost every year is astronomical..Theres PLENTY left..
The internet and access to maps and research along with crowd sourcing etc. along with better equiptment has helped keep the odds still in the detectorists favor if your willing to be DEDICATED to it..
Also Silver and gold jewery are still being lost everyday..

Scott

 

[Bum Luck]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. True.

Then enjoy the years of 8 silver with that attitude. I'll enjoy finding 8 silver a hunt, and there are plenty of others in my shoes.

Years ago, I hit a small virgin park. I took a few dozen coins out of it, the newest 1940 in perfect shape. They are not in the ground any more. When I went back many times, I skunked out; as in nada.

Simple math, not a belief system.

 

[Smudge]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I think part of our problem is that the traditional places we hunt, like the beach, parks, and school fields, have been re-sanded and re-soded so many times that a good number of silver coins are likely buried pretty deep now, deeper than they would have otherwise been.

Thats why private or abandoned sites are such a great place to go: those old items are closer to the surface and have not been hunted heavily.

 

[TORRERO]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I don't know about "Peak" or how you would define it as far as detecting for it goes.. I do know that the amount of coinage that is lost every year is astronomical..Theres PLENTY left..
The internet and access to maps and research along with crowd sourcing etc. along with better equipment has helped keep the odds still in the detectorists favor if your willing to be DEDICATED to it..
Also Silver and gold jewelry are still being lost everyday..

Scott

I think we are referring to pre 1965 silver coins,
even though thousands of coins are still lost today, almost 0 are Silver.
I can't imagine how many Hundreds of Thousands of Silver coins have been found with Metal Detectors over the years,
But I think "peak" refers to when the over all average person with a metal detector would have been
likely to recover a substantial amount of silver coins without having to work extensively hard to find a high producing area.
There is no question that Silver coins can still be found, and there are apparently a lucky few that
are still finding silver coins in Large quantities....
But most of us will agree that the days of large quantities of silver coin finds is over...
Hence the assessment that we are indeed past the age of Peak Silver.

 

[Jason in Enid]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. True.

Then enjoy the years of 8 silver with that attitude. I'll enjoy finding 8 silver a hunt, and there are plenty of others in my shoes.

You must be pretty new to detecting. 8 - 10 silvers is an awesome day in modern detecting. How do you think it was in the 1960s? HAve you read the treasure hunting mags from then? Avid hunters were pulling 100's of thousands of coins a year. They didn't even talk about "finding silver" because it was the normal type to find. Silver had only been gone from circulation a few years in 1970. Fastforward to the 1970s THing mags. The articles then were about hunters finding 10's of thousands of coins in a year. Hmm, thats a big drop. Now, they don't have articles on massive quantities of coins. Now they articles about people finding a handful of pre-1964 coins. Looks like the very definition of "peak silver" as per the OP's question, was the year silver stopped being minted because from that point on less and less was being dropped, and more and more hunters were pulling out what was already in the ground.

 

[bazinga]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Peak silver is long gone. True.

Then enjoy the years of 8 silver with that attitude. I'll enjoy finding 8 silver a hunt, and there are plenty of others in my shoes.

You must be pretty new to detecting. 8 - 10 silvers is an awesome day in modern detecting. How do you think it was in the 1960s? HAve you read the treasure hunting mags from then? Avid hunters were pulling 100's of thousands of coins a year. They didn't even talk about "finding silver" because it was the normal type to find. Silver had only been gone from circulation a few years in 1970. Fastforward to the 1970s THing mags. The articles then were about hunters finding 10's of thousands of coins in a year. Hmm, thats a big drop. Now, they don't have articles on massive quantities of coins. Now they articles about people finding a handful of pre-1964 coins. Looks like the very definition of "peak silver" as per the OP's question, was the year silver stopped being minted because from that point on less and less was being dropped, and more and more hunters were pulling out what was already in the ground.

I was simply telling the guy to keep on believing that silver is out there. Even in the early 80s, one of my friends said he was finding so much silver he could have quit his job, he was finding that much. But just because people pulled out gobs of silver back then doesn't mean there isn't still gobs of silver left in the ground. Myself and others are proof that isn't not impossible to find 100-500 silver coins a year.

Peak silver is long gone. True.

Then enjoy the years of 8 silver with that attitude. I'll enjoy finding 8 silver a hunt, and there are plenty of others in my shoes.

Years ago, I hit a small virgin park. I took a few dozen coins out of it, the newest 1940 in perfect shape. They are not in the ground any more. When I went back many times, I skunked out; as in nada.

Simple math, not a belief system.

Upgrade your machine then. A Garrett just isn't going to get the job done. I hunt with several Garrett users that have been detecting since the 70s. What's funny is that I once met a gti2500 user in a park. He walked up to me as I was hunting a spot he thought he had killed. He proceeded to just sit on the park bench and watch in awe as I pulled about 20 old coins out of this little spot that were too deep for him to find. He then gave me more locations that he couldn't get any more coins out of. I went to those spots and found barbers and indians.

The right machine with a confident attitude will do wonder.

I bet I could walk into that park and pull out silver and wheats.

 

[TORRERO]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I bet I could walk into that park and pull out silver and wheats.

Let me take you to some of the parks that I have been too...
I want to watch this action.

 

[bazinga]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

I bet I could walk into that park and pull out silver and wheats.

Let me take you to some of the parks that I have been too...
I want to watch this action.

Seeing that you don't have an Explorer or E-trac listed, I personally would not be afraid of this challenge provided it's an old park with a history of silver coming out of in the past and not some placed where the ground has been pushed around in every direction.

I've hunted alongside too many DFXs and V3is over the years to learn that they are severely lacking at times.

People always comment about how little they are able to pull out of their parks. And then I go in time after time and prove that it can be done. If I'm ever in that direction I would gladly stop at your pics and dig some silver. I always welcome the challenge. And I'm sure there are a number of other Minelab users that would take your challenge as well.

 

[gleaner1]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

Long, long ago.

 

[gleaner1]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

bazinga I hear you, no doubt an E-trac or Explorer gives a good advantage of finding the very last bits of silver to find, I believe you. I wish I could get you up to my favorite old park, thousands of silver pulled out of here, my bud got one this year with an old garret, 64 dime, he lucked out right in the main picnic area, totally trashed with foil, pulltabs and crowns. If I could get you up here and if you could find a silver within let's say four hours, I would get on the phone and order an E-trac that same day. Best regards to you...

 

[bazinga]

Re: Wonder When We Hit "Peak Silver"

gleaner, where are you located? I travel from time to time and take random road trips. You never know when I could be in your neck of the woods and up for a challenge.

I have helped sell a number of minelabs over the years after people have hunted me, so it certainly wouldn't be the first time.