Ryedale - Detecting old wheats and indian heads

[mts]

I currently use a metal detector to sort cents. It has trouble telling the difference between Indian heads, old wheat cents, and zinc cents. This is due to the various composition differences over the years:

1859 - 1864 IH = Copper + Nickel
1864 - 1909 IH = Copper + Tin (Bronze)
1909 - 1942 Wheat = Copper + Tin (Bronze)
1944 - 1946 Wheat = Copper + Zinc (Brass)
1947 - 1962 Wheat = Copper + Tin (Bronze)

I was wondering how the Ryedale handles this? Do you basically have to try and pull these out by hand or do you rerun certain cents using a different comparator setting to pull these out?

 

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[Bigheed]

if your test coin is an 81 or proven 95% copper, the manual says that some of the older wheats and IH's might get rejected to your zincoln bin.

At which point you can put a zincoln in for your test coin and turn up the sensitivity a bit and re-run the zincolns and it will reject any old wheats or IH's with the mixed composition.

I reran a couple hundred face and found like 2 coins, definitely wasn't worth the effort for me so I have never done that.

I usually just eyeball them as I cut them and dump them in my presort bin, stir them around occassionally and watch the copper as its running, I usually find about 60% of the wheats that way. I hand sorted a couple hundred face of finished product and found the other 40% of the wheats but once again I didn't feel it was worth the effort vs. doing halves.

I know there is a little extra incremental value in the wheats but the margin/time ratio is no good. I hardly ever run my ryedale anymore either for the same reason. As long as I can be doing halves it beats un wrapping pennies.

In a perfect world I'll be able to secure a source of bagged pennies that doesn't cost more than its worth to sort them. I have been able to negotiate a few deals with armored services but the end of their bargaining point doesn't make it profitable to search and hoard.

 

[mts]

Thanks for the quick feedback Bighead!

 

[SFBayArea]

I just have a zincoln in the Ryedale as the comparison coin. All the copper and foreign coins go to one pile and zincolns on the other. The vast majority are all 95% copper cents in the non-zincoln pile. So that way even the early wheats and later wheats get in the same pile. You will find that Canadians and anything foreign go there too. I find it the easiest that way. I don't understand when I got the machine why a memorial copper cent was used as a comparison when it would reject the early wheats along with the zincolns. That setup doesn't work well if you ask me.

 

[jrf30]

I keep my eyes on the reject (zinc) side while sorting. Because yes, the older wheats go to that side often. IH's I've had go to either side. But most wheats from 1920 - 1942 go to the reject side.

Since I am constantly watching it though, I don't think I miss "Many". PLus I get a bonus. My dump bank machine acts the same way. It TOO reject wheats 1920 - 1942. So once in a great while, I"ll run a load and see a wheat in the reject slot that I missed while using the Ryedale. I still get to keep it, thanks to my dump bank.

But i don't count on that as the final answer. I still keep my eyes on the reject side all the time, as the copper side I"ll search by hand for wheats anyway, so only the zinc side needs watching. :-)

(I also do NOT run them a seocnd time witha zinc comparitor. I figure for the one or two per ten boxes I might find, I can run ten NEW boxes, and get another 80 wheats - including 3 or 4 of the old ones, instead of catching those last 1 -2 ones on the reject side. Not worth it)

Hope that helps.

John

 

[jrf30]

I just have a zincoln in the Ryedale as the comparison coin. All the copper and foreign coins go to one pile and zincolns on the other. The vast majority are all 95% copper cents in the non-zincoln pile. So that way even the early wheats and later wheats get in the same pile. You will find that Canadians and anything foreign go there too. I find it the easiest that way. I don't understand when I got the machine why a memorial copper cent was used as a comparison when it would reject the early wheats along with the zincolns. That setup doesn't work well if you ask me.

be careful with that. I think it might wear out the machine a little faster if more are accepted by being a zinc comparitor.

 

[mts]

Interesting techniques. I guess no matter what you do you are going to have to hand search for wheats. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[madwest]

I just have a zincoln in the Ryedale as the comparison coin. All the copper and foreign coins go to one pile and zincolns on the other. The vast majority are all 95% copper cents in the non-zincoln pile. So that way even the early wheats and later wheats get in the same pile. You will find that Canadians and anything foreign go there too. I find it the easiest that way. I don't understand when I got the machine why a memorial copper cent was used as a comparison when it would reject the early wheats along with the zincolns. That setup doesn't work well if you ask me.

be careful with that. I think it might wear out the machine a little faster if more are accepted by being a zinc comparitor.

In such a setup, ... The comparator is ...

In any event, the comparator is ... you can buy it for... To me, it is ... comparators cost ...

I've just started experimenting with ...



I've invested less than $x in this thing and have stacked nearly ... of ...

... setup to do bags of ... Ag. The ... is actually a ... well ... rudimentary test...

Back to OP's topic, ... The far left side ...

 

[Ryedale]

We performed some tests on old wheat pennies that were rejected with a Ryedale sorter. We used a machine called an XRF scanner, or X Ray Fluorescence. You may have seen these in use at a metal scrap yard where they need a quick way to test the customers returned alloys quickly in the yard.
The machine has a basic function that tells you the top 3 or 4 metals, but while taking it's reading it is also logging the other metals present in the coin. We downloaded the lesser metals in the coins and it's quite surprising what we found.
Keep in mind that each roll of sheet stock that the mint received over the years to punch circles out of (planchettes?) after which the artwork is added in the coining presses, could have been different from roll to roll, contributing to the wide variability in the coins.
The results are here in this JPG of an excel file.
Note that there are about 20 different metals in these old pennies, this is what throws the EMF or Electronic Signature of the coin off, and is subsequently rejected as either "Not Copper" or "Not Zinc", depending on what sample coin is in the comparator.
It's good to understand these facts to better understand why the device rejects some old coins.
Andy

 

[mts]

Andy... very interesting stuff!

 

[SFBayArea]

Very interesting Andy.. there's even silver in there? Is that common amongst coins of those years or were those rejects from the copper norm? I wonder if the 1983 cent I found that weighs 2.7 grams that gets rejected from zincolns has off metal composition. Would those be worth sending into PCGS as error coins?

 

[Ryedale]

Very interesting Andy.. there's even silver in there? Is that common amongst coins of those years or were those rejects from the copper norm? I wonder if the 1983 cent I found that weighs 2.7 grams that gets rejected from zincolns has off metal composition. Would those be worth sending into PCGS as error coins?

That's very interesting, does it get accepted with a copper reference coin in the comparitor?
I only tested coins that we're double negatives, meaning rejected with a copper standard, and when using a zinc
I'd like to do more of an exhaustive study of the old coins but the X-ray Florescence machine is not mine and they are way to expensive to buy for a forever ROI.

I was thinking of getting one to do independent testing of people's stuff (jewelry etc), but after studying it didn't make sense because so much jewelry metal content is trickery and plating, or flat out fraud.
Andy