A case for cancelling out pennies and one for digging them

[coach c]

Tonight I counted my clads and pennies for the past few months. I had 678 pennies. This almost 700 times I had to stop hunting and dig. What a waste of time.

Today I hunted a tot lot and cancelled out pennies. Several times I got a one way bell tone that would disappear or continue one way. Decided to accept the two slots I had set for pennies. Went back to the one way tones and they were clear tones each direction and they were all clad quarters......Coach

 

[slingshot]

Some nice rings that have been posted by others who said they were in the zinc penny area are good reasons, also.

 

[dahut]

Tonight I counted my clads and pennies for the past few months. I had 678 pennies. This almost 700 times I had to stop hunting and dig. What a waste of time.

Today I hunted a tot lot and cancelled out pennies. Several times I got a one way bell tone that would disappear or continue one way. Decided to accept the two slots I had set for pennies. Went back to the one way tones and they were clear tones each direction and they were all clad quarters......Coach

Ouch! That's an eye opener on how broad notch blanking can bite you in the butt.

Also, you may want to consider this while pondering the lowly cent:
It takes only 8-10 of them to offset inflation losses on one dollar.... depending on whose inflation figures you use.
Find a hundred of those same cents and you have offset the inflation on an entire sawbuck.

And as slingshot has suggested, not all penny readings are what they seem. I found a set of solid gold teeth once, that read as zinc cent. And just this weekend, I dug a zinc reading - that was actually a nickle, due to some nearby mixed trash.
Now a nickel isn't much better than a penny, until you realize how many gold rings hit dead on as nickel. If I was skipping zinc readings and that was a gold ring instead of a nickel... well, you do the math.

Being half Scotch, I cannot leave a decent coin in the ground, even if it is a one-center. I snag the penny readings.
What I'd suggest for you is to leave the cents notched in, and just trust your detectors readings. It is our greatest purpose not to eliminate targets, but to discern them.

Once that is done, if you don't want to recover one cent coins, you don't have to.

 

[TURNMASTER]

Sure are a lot of pennies worth $1 or more. I'd be willing to dig a lot of 1c pieces to hit an 1877 Indian Head Cent. There are to many that have great value for me to skip 'em.

Just a Thought
Jeff

 

[Uncle Willy]

If you're using a 1500 or 2500 they will often ID quarters as pennies until you do a little trickery with the coil. I've dug a kazillion quarters that ID'ed as cents with the GTI's.

Bill

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

on the visual display well away from where they should normally show up, both lower and higher as well as numerous ones bouncing around on the display. I have been using both my Minelab machines, so this isn't restricted to any brands!
In fact, a couple of days back, it took me a full hour to walk 40 metres 'cause I was constantly recovery targets that I'd usually just walk over. I'm hunting at my sons' former school and I normally find around $120 each time I go over the whole school. This Year I'm only 2 thirds of the way around and am up to $150 plus my highest number of pre-decimal coins. Although my finds in the bark chips were down by $20 on normal, I'm attributing the significant increase to trusting the audio and only using the visual display as a general ball park of what may be under the coil. Little wonder John and 'Bugar' do so well with the Scorpions! It's also a strong case for using broader segmented detectors lick the Ace over more fanciful detectors, 'cause the more visual information that you get, means the more targets you are going to leave behind. Or you could hunt without a meter at all, but I'm not quite there yet.
Mick Evans.

 

[TURNMASTER]

I run a Minelab and I am trying to use sound as my guide with the TID as a loose guide as to what is there. The sound is leading me to learn when a good TID is a nail or staple or when a not so good TID is a coin.

Bottom line is I dig a lot of junk to get the Buffalo.

HH
Jeff

 

[dahut]

on the visual display well away from where they should normally show up, both lower and higher as well as numerous ones bouncing around on the display. I have been using both my Minelab machines, so this isn't restricted to any brands!
In fact, a couple of days back, it took me a full hour to walk 40 metres 'cause I was constantly recovery targets that I'd usually just walk over. I'm hunting at my sons' former school and I normally find around $120 each time I go over the whole school. This Year I'm only 2 thirds of the way around and am up to $150 plus my highest number of pre-decimal coins. Although my finds in the bark chips were down by $20 on normal, I'm attributing the significant increase to trusting the audio and only using the visual display as a general ball park of what may be under the coil. Little wonder John and 'Bugar' do so well with the Scorpions! It's also a strong case for using broader segmented detectors lick the Ace over more fanciful detectors, 'cause the more visual information that you get, means the more targets you are going to leave behind. Or you could hunt without a meter at all, but I'm not quite there yet.
Mick Evans.

I've been there and back again, Mick. Today, I like metered detectors, whereas in the past I would have denounced them. I've learned that the technology has simply gotten so much better than it used to be. Many people don't realize that. There is still a body of lore today that poo-poos metered instruments, lore which is based on old information from times past. It really is akin to an "urban legend."

But I've delved into the world of high end instruments in the past few seasons and I've learned they can be relied upon - within their limits. I regularly hunt a site where I know the soil and the target suite very well, and where finds are invariably modern and not below 6". When I find a solid coin reading there, I trust it, because I have gained knowledge.

You are learning the same with your Minelab - detectors change and get better, and WE react differently to them. You have discovered this fact and are recovering items you would have called unworthy in the past, using other instruments.
So it goes.

As for digging pennies, each time I run my detector, I make it a point to dig 10 of them. This offsets the inflation loss on the dollar's worth of battery I'm using up that day. Since I'll have to buy new batteries sooner or later, I am ready to beat that loss... thanks to the pennies I find.

 

[marcomo]

A lot of good points made here.

I still get a kick out of digging all obsolete coins. And that includes the lowly wheat penny.

Another thing to remember is that a lot of older copper pennies - Indian Heads and older wheaties - will often read as zinc pennies.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

G'day Dave.
I particularly like how the Ace locks onto our $1 and $2 coins (in the first notch of the bell tone). I found just on $1200 when I had it, and only twice did a gold coin ($1 and $2) ever show up in any other notch than that. what drove that home to me was when I pulled up a $1 coin with my Explorer that had a bit of corrosion on it. It was out by 4 numbers but sounded like a coin. My X-Terra did the same thing.The Ace on the other hand, still hit in it's usual place without
batting an eyelid.If the Ace behaves like my GTI when they are both armed with a DD coil, then I'd buy one again in a heartbeat and use it as my main detector
Mick Evans.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah the IH reads low on the penny icon due to its bronze content.

Bill

 

[Furious T]

Mick, I've had exactly the same experience here in Tamworth. I'm mainly using metered detectors, but I rely more on the sound, and am digging a lot of targets a fair way outside the normal reading for that type of target. Maybe its all the dust storms we're having, I dont know if there are metaphysical factors involved, but it sure is odd. I've decided just to go with the flow.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

It's pretty hard to argue with the results.
There sure has been a few dust storms lately. We got hit again a couple on nights back. I guess you must have too.
Just curious. You haven't written any articles in Gem and Treasure mag about certain non metred detectors by chance?
Mick Evans.

 

[dahut]

G'day Dave.
I particularly like how the Ace locks onto our $1 and $2 coins (in the first notch of the bell tone). I found just on $1200 when I had it, and only twice did a gold coin ($1 and $2) ever show up in any other notch than that. what drove that home to me was when I pulled up a $1 coin with my Explorer that had a bit of corrosion on it. It was out by 4 numbers but sounded like a coin. My X-Terra did the same thing.The Ace on the other hand, still hit in it's usual place without
batting an eyelid.If the Ace behaves like my GTI when they are both armed with a DD coil, then I'd buy one again in a heartbeat and use it as my main detector
Mick Evans.

In another forum devoted the Whites line of detectors, I commented that we spend big money on these instruments - so they can tell us when NOT to recover items?? Sure seems contradictory, don't it?.

The point seems to get lost somehow that we are not actually really detectorists, but rather "recoverists". The detecting part is only the means to an end.

 

[khouse]

I always dig one way coin tones. I simply think my machine is trying to tell me something. It sees better into the ground than I can.

 

[Furious T]

Mick, I've written probably half a dozen or so articles for GG&T, only one (from memory) was written about a specific machine, and that was a few years ago...I try to keep topics specific to detecting methods etc rather than about the machines themselves. If you look for articles by Radar you're on the right track. Haven't written anything for a while,though.

 

[cwilk]

A few thoughts.

I find a lot of good targets that hit on the penny notches. Deep silver dimes. Wheats. IH cents. Small silver rings.

Did you ever wave a US $20 gold piece under your coil? On my 2500 it hits right on the copper cent notch. I found a large 22k ring that also hit just below the zinc cent notch.

At least 50 times this year a penny signal turned out to be a coin spill consisting of mixed clad coins with zinc cents and nickels. I had one recently that was over two bucks in nickels, dimes, and quarters.

I save up my pennies and when I get to 1500 I go to the coin shop and buy common US silver coins. This year I have dug over 1000 more pennies in the same number of total coins than I did last year. My wheat count is almost triple. My silver ring count is also much higher. I've made the trip to the coin shop 3 times and added almost $5 face in silver coins to my MD swag pile.

I suggest you dig them. All of them. If you skip them because you're tired at the end of a hunt go back later and dig them up.

My 5 cents. (All pennies.)

Chris