Canadian clad blues

[dfmike]

I wanted to post this for some time. I know you guys south of our border feel we are lucky with our 1$ and 2$ coins and we are BUT the rest of our clad (I could include toonies in there because they don't fare so well in the ground either) is very cheaply made nickel on a steel core. Not only does it fool many detectors into the iron ID range (which it is essentially) but it also tends to decay very rapidly. Luckily the CoRe can find them better than many other machines with a little practice. These pictures are the result of a three part hunt. The bullets (9mm and 22) were found with an F19 in the woods along with just a few clad coins. The bulk of the clad was found with the CoRe on 2 separate hunts at the same schoolyard. I'm not showing the pennies in there and I left a few nickels and dimes out of the pictures as well for lack of space. I just wanted to show how gruesome our clad can look after only a few years in the ground. The nickel plating is almost useless. It gets to the point where many coins are simply unusable. The loonies seem to fare much better although they get dark with time.

A few things I have observed about the CoRe vs Canadian clad and this might help people with other Nokta or Makro machines: DI3 works better for me than DI2, much better. I need to hear the split between the mid and high tones very clearly. The ID will usually jump from the high 40's to the 70's with a few hits in the 80's. The detector will hiccup, burp, tick, go from mid to high tone with a sound that is never pure. In other words, if I get a copper penny or old silver coin, the sound is unmistakably clean with no distortion but on the cheaper clad, it will invariably distort as if the detector is constantly trying to make its mind between mid and high tones. Headphone choice is crucial. Some headphones (XP backphones for example) will not allow me to hear the switch of tones or the distortion I talk about clearly, dropping my clad count dramatically. My Killer B's (Monte's recommendation) work much better and if I have to use a backphone when a large hat is mandatory, I have found that a cheap pair of Koss Titanium ??? worn behind the head work very well also. I don't remember the exact model name but they cost me 15$. They include a volume control.

Another thing I have noticed is that the smaller the coil, the better. All the clad I have found here was with the FC24 5 X 10 DD. The OOR 5 inch also works very well. I'm not sure why but if I use a bigger coil, I can't trust the tones or ID as well on our steel money. I keep my discrimination at 20 most of the time.

I hope this will help some users find more steel core clad. It's a challenge with any detector but with time and practice, it can be done. If you are hunting in an area dense with trash of all kinds, the challenge is greater. Along with the clad, you will invariably pickup some trash.

 

[BigTony]

I always wondered how folks detected coins in your area, knowing that some of them are magnetic.
I feel for your guys and gals, it’s really crazy that your coinage is minted with poor metals.

I wonder why the US started to mint self destructing coins as well. The US cent is only coated with copper and will self implode shortly after being in wet soil.
The dimes and nickles don’t fair much better. You can clean them up but that gets old fast.

Thanks for your post, I enjoyed reading the how to detect in Canada. Your post even helps me understand the Nokia machines more.
I know others will enjoy your observations as I have.

Best of luck,

Tony

 

[dfmike]

Thanks. Our coinage used to be as good as yours but that was a while back. The Canadian Mint still does beautiful limited coin sets in silver and gold but the common pocket money that is in circulation these days is as cheap as it gets. We have the dollar and two dollar coins to cheer us up at least. I'm hoping a 5 dollar coin will hit the streets some day.

 

[BigTony]

DF Mike, I understand completely. I was always fascinated by the designs and types of metal that made up Canadian coins. Over the years I have collected a gallon bag of Canadian coins that we received in our change.
There was a time when folks and banks excepted them over the counter for stuff. I feel those days are gone as the coin machine either private or at a bank use a magnet to cull out non US coins.

Good luck on that five dollar piece.....that would be a cool item to find in a park or sledding slope.

Here in the US folks rejected the dollar coins. Similar to how they rejected fifty cent pieces, especially the Franklin Half dollar and that was 90 % silver.
The kids love dollar coins from Gandpa as do boardwalk games of chance but still not as much as we had hoped.

Best of luck,

Tony

 

[Monte]

I have a baggie of assorted Canadian coins that I use in my seminars or when evaluating detectors. It helps show people some of the challenges detectorists face in other countries where ferrous / magnetic-based metals are used for the bulk of their coin mintage. Some detectors have a tougher time dealing with your Canadian coins but the CoRe and Relic handled them better than a lot of the other brands when I was first doing my evaluations of these models.

I do wish the USA would dump the paper $1 bill and just produce a coin to replace it .... and that more people would use them. Too many people down this way don't like to handle those coins preferring paper. I'd like to see that change. I also would hope they will continue to use better quality metals to mint our coins, like they do, and not change to some inferior metal in the future.

I really like the size of the Australian $2 coin and think that would be a better design to use for both a $1 and $2 coin. I'll cross my fingers for our future.

Monte

 

[BigTony]

Monte, when I was working full time there was a bank I visited weekly. I would get a roll of Presidential coins. I would look them over for errors and place one in a collection folder.
Then I would use the coins to buy coffee or newspapers or small stuff.
I had hoped by doing that they might catch on.

I should start this again, you never know. If more of us do it - it just might for the next generation of metal detectors.

Tony

 

[cladcanada]

Thanks for the info on the D3 program . I have been using D2 , deep and vlx2 . Hunting our clad is a challenge to say the least . Would the 5 x 10 DD coil be better than the pro packs 4 x7 ? I don't want to retire the impact from clad hunting if i don't have to .

 

[dfmike]

Thanks for the info on the D3 program . I have been using D2 , deep and vlx2 . Hunting our clad is a challenge to say the least . Would the 5 x 10 DD coil be better than the pro packs 4 x7 ? I don't want to retire the impact from clad hunting if i don't have to .

I don't have the Impact but I'm guessing the smaller coil would do better on our steel clad. The CoRe doesn't have a 4 X 7 available. As I mentioned as well, having at least 3 tones is crucial in identifying clad over other ferrous or junk non ferrous trash. It is to me anyway. I've tried 2 tones on numerous occasions and I like it a lot in certain circumstances but not when I want or expect to find clad coins. Did I mention headphone choice was also crucial ? The difference in tones between the mid tone and high tone has to be crystal clear. After trying many headphones, I find the difference in response between them to be astounding.

What do you think of the Impact for detecting Canadian coins ? Have you found anything better ?

 

[cladcanada]

Well I'm still learning the impact but this sat I found 22$ in clad with my tesoro silver with the 3 x 18 coil . so for right now it's my go to for clad until I get more time with the impact. I'd like to see how the core does in comparison to the impact on our clad . The impact is great on anything else.

 

[Stoof-tabsallday]

While your Canadian money has the downsides you mentioned, I think the US got the same idea as far as lasting in the ground.
All our modern coinage seems to disintegrate in the ground rapidly. Namely the newest pennies (no biggie there)
It makes me think that they are doing it on purpose so once in the ground for a couple years, it no longer can make it back into circulation. Coins of the past lost for years probably are considered as gone for good only to be reintoduced later. Im sure they consider a certain percentage to be lost and then they replace it on a certain timely basis. This new way, once it's "lost" in their probability percentages, it stays "lost".
Seems pretty petty, but if that percentage is as low as 3% a year amongst all coins that end up turning up later, it can have a small but important impact of amount of coins in circulation that can be compounded through the years. Since they don't have numbers that bills have, there's no way to keep track of what's out there. In that sense they have to rely on numbers probably lost or damaged beyond spendability.

I'm not saying I like it, but maybe it's a way of protecting themselves against improperly guaging the amount of currency coins currently in circulation to more accurately make more as needed to whatever numbers they deem necessary to be in circulation at one time.

Just an idea I came up with last year when sorting out rotten pennies before separating and tumbling my seasons clad.

Or it's just cheaper to make them like crap. They used to make things to last. Now things are made to fail....

But as far as rusting, ours don't do that that I've seen besides our single partial year of steel pennies. And that sucks. You shed a whole different light on how I though about the Canadian coins. Loonies and twoneys seemed awesome to find, but to give up all other change to rust and rot doesn't make it sound as good

 

[dfmike]

I must mention though that this area in particular has the worst clad I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I'm not even going there anymore since half of what I find needs to be dumped. It's too much wasted time. I suspect they use or have used fertilizer extensively at some point. Nowhere is it as bad as this. The modern clad that is in circulation keeps up pretty well with that nickel plating but as soon as it hits the ground, the plating doesn't offer any protection and the steel underneath begins to rust.

I can understand why they made the switch to cheap steel but it's hard to get used to going from noble and highly conductive metals (namely silver and to a lesser extent copper or a mix of both) to the complete opposite low conductive rust prone metal. No wonder I get all excited when I find a silver coin that still shines after 100 years in the dark ! Heck I get excited when I find a USA quarter. The plating is often almost gone but the copper underneath gives an unmistakable high ID (and a nice dark patina to boot).

I wonder what's next. Plastic coins perhaps ? Or would they cost more to produce then the steel variety. I'd rather not think about it.

 

[cladcanada]

out again today with the impact and ran in dI3 , 15 disc , o iron audio, isat 0 , in 14khz . better but Its gonna take some getting used to. i am gonna test diff headphones as well . I really hate our clad . I get a kick out of hearing how some pick coins out of the trash , here it's like sorting trash from the trash and i can't imagine how amazing the impact would be if my area had any history/silvers. wonder what the differences are with the racer or the core compared to the impact on our clad ?

 

[BigTony]

I always thought that the US made coins to last at least thirty years in circulation. Which makes sense in order to keep costs down but every year they mint almost the same numbers of coins. I haven’t looked at those numbers in a real long time and they probably mint more pennies these days because they have a very short life span.

In my opinion the coins that were made the best (besides silver coins) are the 1964 nickle and the 1965 quarter. Man when I dig those up they even shine.
Oh and I guess the pennies from late 1960s to 1978 are mostly still very good as well.


Tony

 

[dfmike]

out again today with the impact and ran in dI3 , 15 disc , o iron audio, isat 0 , in 14khz . better but Its gonna take some getting used to. i am gonna test diff headphones as well . I really hate our clad . I get a kick out of hearing how some pick coins out of the trash , here it's like sorting trash from the trash and i can't imagine how amazing the impact would be if my area had any history/silvers. wonder what the differences are with the racer or the core compared to the impact on our clad ?

What is zero iron audio on the Impact ? I don't have iron audio on the CoRe but I realized that It does better on our clad if I keep iron masking relatively low (default 20) instead of canceling it out at 40.

"Like sorting trash from the trash" That's so right LOL. There is something different about the way it goes from a low mid range ID to a momentary high coin range such as 82-89 on clad compared to most trash. The accompanying tones are different as well. The Koss KTXPRO1 Titanium that I mentioned are pretty good at clearly differentiating the highs from the lows and the distortion sounds.

I also wonder about the differences in response between Nokta/Makro detectors on CAD clad. I might get me a Makro Kruzer before the end of the year and see for myself.

 

[Sven]

The Multi-Kruzer is very very similar to the Impact. Both like Canadian clad. You can custom taylor the audio response by changing break points, and audio frequency tone of each break point. Still working on the perfect response for my tastes.