Early 20th (pre 1960) and late 19th century coins in Canadian parks

[metalman2024]

Gotta question, if anyone can weigh in on it? What’s the deal here, why is it that those coins are so incredibly hard to find? Is it turf rotation (though there are pulltabs of very old pedigree in those parks), or that renovations are constantly being made like adding sand, is it that certain detectorists have even more sophisticated machines more so than Minelab products or that they have cleaned them over many years? Or that indeed pulltabs are light, don’t sink into the soil but those coins just sank so deep? Or that they are too far and in between, that it is a wild Canadian goose chase? It is indeed a frustrating and perplexing question. I have checked the non-grass slopes and there is nothing on those, I think coins just roll to the bottom of the slopes if they ever did. Any suggestions are appreciated with thanks.

 

[Almy]

Good question. Must be a puzzler for everybody.

 

[metalman2024]

Good question. Must be a puzzler for everybody.

thanks but what's incredible, is that 1981, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1999 pennies and all the modern paper thin copper with zinc centre pennies, quarters, loonies and toonies come up all the time and in all parks of the exact periods in all the parks, it's as if they were all the same park - and on the Minelab Manticore, of course reads 30-31 if the target's got a tail, it's a modern pulltab like 99% of the time - silver lining is that Sunday before last, found one 1960 D US penny, oldest find of mine regarding coins when metal detecting that is

 

[xr7ator]

You can still find a 1960 penny in circulation so it could have been a very recent drop.
Metal detectors have been around since the late 60's and in the 70's and 80's the parks were a trove of silver and many were worked constantly. Around here I find some areas with wheat pennies and no silver because it was cherry picked decades ago.
Keep at it and try to think outside the box on areas to work and you will have success.

 

[TORRERO]

You can still find a 1960 penny in circulation so it could have been a very recent drop.
Metal detectors have been around since the late 60's and in the 70's and 80's the parks were a trove of silver and many were worked constantly. Around here I find some areas with wheat pennies and no silver because it was cherry picked decades ago.
Keep at it and try to think outside the box on areas to work and you will have success.

This !!

 

[metalman2024]

This !!

You can still find a 1960 penny in circulation so it could have been a very recent drop.
Metal detectors have been around since the late 60's and in the 70's and 80's the parks were a trove of silver and many were worked constantly. Around here I find some areas with wheat pennies and no silver because it was cherry picked decades ago.
Keep at it and try to think outside the box on areas to work and you will have success.

make sense, thx

 

[xr7ator]

You bet, metal. Go get 'em!

 

[cudamark]

You first need to verify that the parks you are hunting are old enough for the coins you seek. Find some old photos of the park to compare how it looked then to what it looks like today. Sometimes parks get a total makeover where old targets either get removed, or, buried too deep to detect.

 

[philber]

One possibility is that there was a strong wave of metal detecting done decades prior in your area and they cleared out the majority of coinage up to that time frame. So if detecting was super popular in your area say in 1980, they cleared out the vast majority of coinage prior to 1980. There would still be some pre 1980 coinage in peoples pockets for the next decade or three, and some of that would get lost post 1980, but the amount would be a fraction of what was lost prior to the previous detectorists "clearing out" the park and so you find way less than you would expect to find.
Don't know; just a theory. Where I am at, this area was supposedly hit very hard by two prior waves of detectorists in the 70's and then the 90's and it shows! Hunting sidewalk strips, its hard to find even a wheat penny, even though the areas being detected go back to the early/mid 1800s. Cant say Ive paid attention to what the oldest non-wheat penny dates are for the lincolns I find, but it is hard to find a wheatie, let alone a silver. We do, but its way less than what you "know" has been lost over the years; someone just beat you to it!

 

[metalman2024]

One possibility is that there was a strong wave of metal detecting done decades prior in your area and they cleared out the majority of coinage up to that time frame. So if detecting was super popular in your area say in 1980, they cleared out the vast majority of coinage prior to 1980. There would still be some pre 1980 coinage in peoples pockets for the next decade or three, and some of that would get lost post 1980, but the amount would be a fraction of what was lost prior to the previous detectorists "clearing out" the park and so you find way less than you would expect to find.
Don't know; just a theory. Where I am at, this area was supposedly hit very hard by two prior waves of detectorists in the 70's and then the 90's and it shows! Hunting sidewalk strips, its hard to find even a wheat penny, even though the areas being detected go back to the early/mid 1800s. Cant say Ive paid attention to what the oldest non-wheat penny dates are for the lincolns I find, but it is hard to find a wheatie, let alone a silver. We do, but its way less than what you "know" has been lost over the years; someone just beat you to it!

that is true, your ideas are close to the truth, I thought about it today, I remember finding as a kid in the mid 1970's in 4th grade on my school's sandy playground, I found 1930's British pennies almost every day collecting during recess hour, so the math would be 40 years plus/minus. I would come home after school with at least 4 such large copper coins per week for a year or so until I was tired of picking them up ------fast forward to today-----I check the oldest coin I am regularly finding metal detecting in the GTA is the 1982 penny, so that's 43 years, same date difference give or take from the time I was in elementary, I can say my experience as I progress in it, is that one can expect to find in the ground 40 to 45 year old coins but not older or let's say as easily