sandman, that link is over-generalizing, IMHO. I mean, for example, in the "reason # 3" the author points out that certain civil war items (or plates that are very deep, etc...) can give a penny signal. Well duh. But that's a different ball-game altogether. In situations like that (CW hunting) a person is OBVIOUSLY going to be in relic-mindset.
And I would like to tackle the other reasons as being unique to "just a certain type hunting", but .... instead, let me give a counter-reason of how it's sometimes good to pass pennies:
We had a storm erosion belt on a beach near me earlier this year. For 5 glorious days, targets were as fast as you cared to dig. All the light stuff was washed away, so there was zero aluminum. In fact there wasn't even any zinc pennies! (since those are lighter weight coins, they were all washed out, leaving the heavier items only).
The first day, I treated it in "beach mindset" . Afterall, sometimes a real fat big man's ring can read up near the penny range, right ? Afterall "pennies and dimes add up", right ? Afterall, they might be masking a lower conductor gold ring, right ? Blah blah blah.
When I got home from the first day, and spread my 250-ish coins out on the table, naturally 80+ were memorial pennies and 80+ were clad dimes. Then nickels and quarters, etc... for a total of about 250-ish coins. And my total gold ring count was 1 or 2 (this isn't a particularly touristy beach, so the ring ratios are a tad lower). Only a few of the coins were silver or wheat pennies (and were toasted anyhow by the salt). So angling for old silver was hardly worth it, as the ratios to clad to find a silver dime were on the order of 100 to 1.
So in the ensuing days, I had to make a decision: I knew that this pocket would only last a few more days before sanding in. I knew that there was no "strip-mining" to "get them all", because you NEVER LACKED for signals to choose from, and were simply chased back out by the tide, waves, etc... Thus I realized that I could
a) spend precious digging time getting pennies/dimes. Of which VERY FEW LARGE MEN'S gold rings read as high as copper penny. Zinc? Yes perhaps. But copper penny/dime ? The ratios of actual pennies you'd dig, before EVER getting a man's ring that pegged right on copper penny, would be staggeringly poor.
or
b) Play the "Las Vegas odds" and pass penny/dime (and even quarter!). And angle strictly for zinc and downwards (since there was no zinc appearing). Hence the only copper penny/dime signals I dug were pennies/dimes worn thin, hence reading down to zinc'ish.
The results were well worth it. My coin count dropped to 100-ish (of which most were nickels, of course, + the thin dimes/pennies that read lower). And my gold ring count went up to 4 to 7 per day, for the remaining days of this pocket's existence.
So in a case like that, where you "can't have the best of both worlds", it goes to show there IS times where it's wiser to "pass pennies".
