Why Some People Find Few Old DEEP Coins

[Michigan Badger]

Here's something I just posted at another site in answer to a Tesoro Cortes owners problem with so many pops and crackles while hunting in discrimination. Maybe this will help somebody here because the basic principle holds true with all brands (Fisher, Whites, Minelab, Nautilus, Garrett, etc.).

Please add your suggestions also 8)

Here's my post:

Nearly all metal detectors crackle and pop while hunting in discrimination mode (some more than others). The discrimination doesn't always eliminate all signals; it will sometimes just deteriorate the unwanted signals more so they're easier to identify as unwanted targets.

Discrimination can be good or bad. It can be great for shallower targets (down to about 4 or 5 inches) but bad for the really deep stuff.

The deeper the target gets, the more its signal deteriorates simply because of ground mineralization. Therefore one could think a deep corroded Indian cent is really a discriminated item (follow me?).

This is one reason why some people find very few old coins and relics.

The answer is to use the machine a lot and study it. It's best to start with low discrimination and dig almost all targets at first. Then as you learn the TID readings (patterns) and sounds you can turn the discrimination up.

Hope this helps.

 

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[ernie]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

i use a cortes and i really like it but one thing i found out about it is it does pick up interference very easily so you have to know the difference.when fisher first came out with the x series i bought a 1220x and found thousands of coins with it but the cracking and popping drove me crazy.but my best friend using his could tell the difference in silver and clad just from the sound he could even tell the difference in the sound of awheat penny and new penny.i was never that good but his is a case of really mastering his machine.since he upgraded he never could do that with anyother even though he bought other fishers.i wish my hearing was that good.

 

[Michigan Badger]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

Thanks ernie. I've also known people like your friend. They can go into an old park that all the others long ago gave up on and come out with 3 or 4 old silver coins.

Your comment brings up something else known as masking.

Many good finds are masked by nearby trash. This is why sometimes a weaker machine does better than a powerhouse detector at very trashy sites.

A strong and deep detector's signal may be deteriorated or even nulled-out by nearby trash iron so that the hunter misses the target. However a weaker machine may better sound-off on the good target if it is much shallower or far enough away from the trash.

I proved this to myself by using a toy detector at a site I'd totally cleaned out with a mega deep machine. Within half an hour I found 3 or 4 coins and other keeper items my Minelab had missed. Sometimes depth and area coverage work against the objective (finding stuff).

Some THers solve this potential problem by purposely running their detectors at reduced sensitivity and/or power. They first do the deep check and then go back over the area using low power.

Others opt for a smaller search coil which means less ground coverage but good depth. This helps to eliminate nearby trash but the problem of deep trash masking is still present if they run their machines at full sensitivity.

 

[-Jones-]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

Badger,

I agree with your statement, "Use the machine alot and study it". I got an Oct treasure huntin trip planned for FL and plan to use your advise.........

 

[Dick from IA]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

Your post explains a lot, MB, Thank You

My Ace 250, for example, I run with Sens. at 4 bars {of 8} and find gobs of coins, bullet casings, tokens, etc. My Minelab X-70, if ran in the factory preset, blows right past the shallow targets (or actually masks them, I guess) and I end up getting some deeper coins, but mostly trash. I have to reduce its' Sens. way down to get the shallow targets.

Same applies in relics mode; I do just as well with the Ace as the X-70 :P

DFIU

 

[Michigan Badger]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

Thanks Ric and DFIU.

Most hunting sites are loaded with ferrous targets. If there were lots of people at a site you can bet that ground is filled with trash.

Just turn your detector to all-metal mode and notice that you can't hardly move the coil 6 inches without another target. These targets affect good target signals. They can either totally mask them out or deteriorate them so they're no longer recognizable as good targets.

I think there are still lots of great coins (some gold) out buried in those once big producing parks and fair grounds. They seem hunted out only because the targets are masked.

Some research into how things used-ta-be helps a lot. Back before garbage pickup became common practice in the U.S., many people dug holes all over their yards to bury the trash metal and they burned the paper. They often did this to get rid of small amounts of hard trash that weren't worth the trip to the local city dump.

In old real photo postcard pictures from the early 1900's you can see papers all over the ground if you magnify the image. This is due to the wind blowing the paper burning deposits all over the community. The tin and glass was too heavy to blow away so they buried it. Thus we have our nasty masking targets today.

By-the-way, back in the early 1900's many people buried their trash even in the city park.

Badger

 

[Blackjack77]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

Knowing how Your detector reacts to different targets at different depths can make all the difference in
finding or NOT finding Coins,relics ,etc your looking for. After I bought My GTI 2500 ,a friend of mine borrowed My other detector and proceeded to out hunt Me two to one!! My old detector I felt very comfortable with, whereas My New 2500 I still needed to learn alot-- and still do.
Needless to say after more Hours on it- the next time we went out He had his new Ace 250 and this time
I did better-not by much , but He was still learning His new one.
My Garrett definately gives a different tone on shallow as opposed to deep targets. Haven't tried changing sensitivity but i will next time I hunt.
Good Information Badger-- thanks!!
HH

 

[Michigan Badger]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

Thanks Blackjack77.

Today everyone thinks of more power and deeper machines. But there are times when less is more.

If there were no trash and all old coins just sat out there buried all by themselves it would be so easy. But then there'd probably be little left today.

 

[coolcash2004]

Re: Why Some People Find Few Old Coins & Relics

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!

THANKS!

-CC

 

[Michigan Badger]

The last comment should be the most obvious. Ya can't find old stuff where it isn't to be found.

Some people hunt and hunt newer sites and can't figure out why they're not digging large cents.

One good old site located where there was a lot of foot traffic 100 years ago will produce good finds for a decade or more. I have one I've hunted for 13 years now and in an area about 50x50 foot I've made over 200 finds including everything from Indian cents to horseshoes.

The value of research can never be overemphasized.

THE END

 

[-Jones-]

The last comment should be the most obvious. Ya can't find old stuff where it isn't to be found.

Some people hunt and hunt newer sites and can't figure out why they're not digging large cents.

One good old site located where there was a lot of foot traffic 100 years ago will produce good finds for a decade or more. I have one I've hunted for 13 years now and in an area about 50x50 foot I've made over 200 finds including everything from Indian cents to horseshoes.

The value of research can never be overemphasized.

THE END

AMEN

 

[Rusted_Iron]

Excellent post Badger.

A lot of it also has to do with patience. The average detectorist doesn't relish the possibility that a trip is going to turn into a chore of digging nails. To avoid this, even I sometimes get lazy and turn up the DISC. But you're right about deeper targets starting to break up.

In the place I call Nail City, I have pulled out so many coins and relics out of a 10 x 10 area that it's amazing. But for every coin there has been so many pieces of junk I can't keep track. I didn't really start finding the coins until I resigned myself to just digging everything above "FOIL" on the disc knob. This is what separates the detector fanatics from the casual hobbyists... thankfully so, or we'd have no more coins to find

Every now and then I still pull out something cool from the area I must have passed over a hundred times.

A couple of very experienced guys with White's came through there some years back and yet didn't get it all. They got all the easy stuff, but they didn't want to spend 3 out of 4 trips digging nothing but nails. Not many people can stand that. Newbies see the pics in the treasure magazines and figure every trip should yield a handful of old coins. I used to think that too. Well a lot of my trips to Nail City don't yield any coins at all, but each time I work this place, I know I got some more junk out of the ground for next time. I have learned about the unmasking effect first-hand.

The average hunter won't go to a place again after the 2nd or 3rd trip yields nothing good. That is probably a good thing for those of us who have that Unreasonable, Stubborn Persistence to keep going. Of course, like you said, you have to pick a site where there was human activity 100+ years ago. (You also have to make sure if there was something there, it wasn't buried 3 feet deep by re-landscaping.) As long as there's junk in the ground and you are getting signals, it could be hiding coins and relics.

A friend of mine wants to hunt Nail City, but I predict he is going to get extremely discouraged after just a couple hours. I can almost bet you he'll want to try a different site. He is going to go nuts when the Minelab says "silver" and it ends up being magnetite...

The old coins are all 6-10 inches deep, almost always near trash, and they give signals that are often indistinguishable from deep, rusted nails. Lately they are getting even tougher to distinguish. Sometimes they are wedged down between rocks. I know there has to be more coins there, but they're getting sparse. Yesterday I pulled a 1929 wheatie at 7-8 inches, it was a narrow 'good' signal between 2 other blips, I really had to move slow to hear it.

Incidentally, I read somewhere that the Minelab can actually miss shallow targets when the sensitivity is turned up. Other detectors can do this too.

My Tesoro finds the shallow targets even at high Sens, but what's really weird is that sometimes a good coin will become invisible to DISC mode when it's been brought up out of the hole, only to be found hiding in the dirt pile with all metal mode. I don't know why this happens, but it's already happened half a dozen times. Even with silver!

 

[Sandman]

Badger you did an excellent job of describing how things work out with detectors. Many think they just need a newer detector that they've read goes deeper or they get caught up in the cartoons on the display. Good Job.....

Sandman

 

[Michigan Badger]

Badger you did an excellent job of describing how things work out with detectors. Many think they just need a newer detector that they've read goes deeper or they get caught up in the cartoons on the display. Good Job.....

Sandman

Thanks Sandman! I just thought maybe some newer THer might find these things useful.

Keep dipping that jewelry!

Badger

 

[Michigan Badger]

Excellent post Badger.

A lot of it also has to do with patience. The average detectorist doesn't relish the possibility that a trip is going to turn into a chore of digging nails. To avoid this, even I sometimes get lazy and turn up the DISC. But you're right about deeper targets starting to break up.

In the place I call Nail City, I have pulled out so many coins and relics out of a 10 x 10 area that it's amazing. But for every coin there has been so many pieces of junk I can't keep track. I didn't really start finding the coins until I resigned myself to just digging everything above "FOIL" on the disc knob. This is what separates the detector fanatics from the casual hobbyists... thankfully so, or we'd have no more coins to find

Every now and then I still pull out something cool from the area I must have passed over a hundred times.

A couple of very experienced guys with White's came through there some years back and yet didn't get it all. They got all the easy stuff, but they didn't want to spend 3 out of 4 trips digging nothing but nails. Not many people can stand that. Newbies see the pics in the treasure magazines and figure every trip should yield a handful of old coins. I used to think that too. Well a lot of my trips to Nail City don't yield any coins at all, but each time I work this place, I know I got some more junk out of the ground for next time. I have learned about the unmasking effect first-hand.

The average hunter won't go to a place again after the 2nd or 3rd trip yields nothing good. That is probably a good thing for those of us who have that Unreasonable, Stubborn Persistence to keep going. Of course, like you said, you have to pick a site where there was human activity 100+ years ago. (You also have to make sure if there was something there, it wasn't buried 3 feet deep by re-landscaping.) As long as there's junk in the ground and you are getting signals, it could be hiding coins and relics.

A friend of mine wants to hunt Nail City, but I predict he is going to get extremely discouraged after just a couple hours. I can almost bet you he'll want to try a different site. He is going to go nuts when the Minelab says "silver" and it ends up being magnetite...

The old coins are all 6-10 inches deep, almost always near trash, and they give signals that are often indistinguishable from deep, rusted nails. Lately they are getting even tougher to distinguish. Sometimes they are wedged down between rocks. I know there has to be more coins there, but they're getting sparse. Yesterday I pulled a 1929 wheatie at 7-8 inches, it was a narrow 'good' signal between 2 other blips, I really had to move slow to hear it.

Incidentally, I read somewhere that the Minelab can actually miss shallow targets when the sensitivity is turned up. Other detectors can do this too.

My Tesoro finds the shallow targets even at high Sens, but what's really weird is that sometimes a good coin will become invisible to DISC mode when it's been brought up out of the hole, only to be found hiding in the dirt pile with all metal mode. I don't know why this happens, but it's already happened half a dozen times. Even with silver!

Thanks, I've read enough of your postings to know you're really finding what you claim. Honest reports just have a certain pattern to them.

Your post above is excellent and should prove helpful to those who will take the time to read it.

Best,

Badger

 

[galaxy51]

I have a couple of beginners type questions for you guys. You say a deep target will break up. Do you mean that with a deep target the sound loses the smoothness that it has when responding to a shallow or medium depth coin even if it is not near some metallic junk? How are sounds different for coins that are not laying flat in the ground?

 

[bazinga]

Great post Badger!

Sensitivity, coil sizes, angle you go over a target, detectors, etc. all make for different hunting conditions.

Recently I hunted an area that gave up several deep indian heads and wheats with my 15" WOT coil. Then I went back over that same area with my stock 10.5" coil and pulled out two silver coins and an old ring. One of the silver coins was an 1883 canadian dime and it was all of 9" deep. Everybody assumes that the biggest coil automatically goes the deepest. But those big coils also allow you to go over good targets if trash is nearby. The other silver coin was a silver rosie at about 5" deep that the big coil also missed.

Then two days ago I went back over that area from a different angle and found another silver rosie at about 4" deep. It didn't give a silver signal, but it did sound good enough to dig from ONE angle. All other ways it nulled out like iron. You can't hunt a place out until EVERYTHING is out of the ground. You just have to keep on digging those nails out of the ground. It just takes one nail laying over that AU 1916-D Mercury Dime to make all of those other dug nails worth it!

But I wouldn't recommend picking one day to dig every signal, haha, spread it out over time. If I picked a 10x10 area and hunted in all metal and dug out every signal in a public park or a yard it would literally be a 10x10 brown spot from so much digging!

Keep this post alive! This would be a great read for new and old hunters alike.

 

[bk]

Years ago before detectors had discrimination, I had an older TR detector (no discrimination). I could usually tell a coin from trash with a reasonable amount of certainty just by the sound. Coins (even gold rings) always had a "mellow" tone no matter how you swept the coil over the target. To find the deep targets you really had to listen closely to each barely audible signal.
With today's tone ID detectors, there is either a signal or there is not. Deep signals will usually not "lock on" and give a repeatable tone.
I have an older Fisher CZ6 and have found several coins at or near it's capability. Many times the target will read high (good) and then low (not good). Most often these will be nails, but occasionally I will find a very deep coin, or a coin on edge. It does get frustrating because even if you cut out a plug and go over the hole, the signal may sound good, but turn out to be a nail. They are almost always in the side of the plug too. If it turns out to be a coin, it usually turns up quickly.

 

[kid iowa]

I use a Tesoro Silver Sabre Umax, and all the hits sound the same to me. I've buried different coins and a gold ring and they all have the same *beep*. Is my hearing so bad that I'm missing out on some of the detectors features? I am hard of hearing to a degree (the wife can attest to that) due to time in the military, but I wear headphones and use the lowest discrimination that I can. I don't get out enough to really know my detector backwards and forwards, each time I go out I relearn it for about the first 15 minutes.

So the question is this: Does my detector have a different beep for different metals?

 

[Rusted_Iron]

Good insights coming out here.

I am not experienced enough with the Minelab to know the deep coin signals, and when I chase them I usually end up with coal, magnetite, and bent nails... but on the Tesoros I can often tell by the quality of the signal what something is... not always though.

That's for deep objects. People who hunt with me get frustrated because I go back and forth over the signal like 50 times. "Will you just dig it already??" I'm not sure if I want to! I have to decide whether I like it. I doubt I would be a good competition hunter

If something is within about 5 or 6" of the surface, I can almost always tell when it's a coin.

Digging every signal in a small area can definitely make a mess. The small patch of ground I've been working at Nail City was starting to get that way. I was cutting partially into my old plugs a lot. After laying off it for a couple weeks I've noticed it's re-greened pretty nicely.

galaxy51: deep coins do often lose their smoothness. Tilted coins can also do this. Sometimes they lose their smoothness along one axis. You'll get a good signal left to right, but if you turn 90 degrees and try it, there will be nothing. Junk does this too, especially nails. That's why you have to dig a lot of junk to get the good deep targets, any way you look at it. Also the deeper something is, the more things will probably be in the ground above it... which means there will be more junk things your coil's field will be encompassing when it also hits the 'good' target.

kid iowa: even though there is one tone, it's the quality of that tone that can tell you whether something is good. It's extremely subtle. Take for example a pulse induction detector (PI). One tone, finds all metals- terrible, right? There are experienced water hunters who can tell by the "shape" of a PI signal whether it's a coin / ring or a piece of junk. Does the signal have ragged edges? Does it ramp up slow or fast? Part of it is the sound, and part of it is the behavior of the sound when you move the coil around over the target. ( I might add, you are still going to get many junk targets that have just the right sound profile )