Coins found and their percentages

[BH505Man]

To date I have found 402 US coins for a total of $21.22
broken down by denomination and percentages as follows
Clad quarters - 43 10.6%
Clad dimes - 76 18.9%
Nickels - 1 .25%
Cents - 282 70.25%

of the cents 118 are zinc, 164 are copper
of the copper cents 4 of them are Wheaties's

I believe that the main reason I haven't found but 1 nickel is that not as many nickels are lost as other denominations plus the fact that nickels ring in the lower pull tab range and I use discrimination modes while detecting. Even in the auto notch mode I believe that I'm missing most nickels.
I've got a Pioneer 505 with 4", 8" and 11"DD coils. What are your denomination percentages and what works best for finding more nickels?

Walt

 

[mudpuppy]

I would agree with you on the rarety of nickels vs other denominations...Nickels are tough to find good amounts of, but every once in a while you will hit a schoolyard that some other person has high graded for the D's and Q's and you will get a pile of nickels! Practice is important for finding nickels, remembering their tone so that when you hear it you will stop...some other machines have the capability of assigning a high tone to nickels, so they sound like a Q instead of a tab. If you want to ever find gold, you have to learn how to hear foil and nickel signals...bummer, lots of foil and tabs out there, but thats where the gold hides...so what a fellow does is to pay attention to certain locations and look at every one with the eye of "wheres the gold here", and then get real good on quick retrieval methods so its also a matter of odds.

I run mid to low sens for finding things, very important! ....you got some good gear, you are finding coins, so I think you will be OK Cruise around some of the other forums and see what the others are doing, you can learn a lot from the success of others..I sure have.
Mud.

 

[mwaynebennett]

Since you have found but one nickel, my guess is that you ignore pull tabs and other signals in that range. That is fine if you don't care to find gold.

I have found many many many nickles but 100x as many pull tabs and screw caps and even a gold ring!

Mark

 

[BH505Man]

Just to get you up to date, a few days ago I found my 2nd and 3rd nickels. I'm also digging up more iron and pulltabs in hopes of finding the gold. Instead of notch or autonotch modes, I set my 505 in disc mode now when searching.

 

[Leonard]

Disc Mode and back the disc knob off to where your comfortable with it I usually turn back a 1/4 turn , this works for me very well , but when I use the 10 " coil I set the sensitivity at about 2-2:30 and run the disc knob clean to the left and hit the disc button and that works very darn good too , I have played with this thing with all the coils and noted what works n what doesn't ,,, Nickels seem tricky to me but once you have got the tone down for them you will dig them for sure , sometimes I get them hitting in the mid silver tone n range ,,,,

 

[BH505Man]

Thanks for you input Leonard. I'll give those settings a try & see how it works. I don't like to think that I'm missing any good stuff like the buffalo or V nickels because my settings are discriminating them out & I also want to find my first gold ring too.
Walt

 

[BH505Man]

Went out detecting for a few hours yesterday and found 4 clad US dimes, 1 US nickel, 3 US copper memorial cents, 3 US zinc cents and of coarse the usual assortment of pulltabs, scaps, foil and other iron and aluminum junk. I used disc mode with disc/notch set fully ccw and sensitivity set anywhere from 9 to 12 o'clock (I started out @ 12 o'clock and gradually reduced it to 9 o'clock). Anyway, I've been experimenting using different settings in my quest to find more nickels (and hopefully my first gold find).

 

[mudpuppy]

Yeah, I was thinking about your post all week and decided to really focus on nickels and all targets in that spectrum, this past weekend, I got 24 of the little buggers in places I've hunted in the past. Including a 3 nickel spill with a few pennys mixed in, a trashy no account signal for sure...The guys that water hunt find lots of gold, they do not EVER pass up a foil, nickel, tab signal, and thats why they find so much gold...land hunters pass up a lot of these signals, myself included, since the coins are the primary target...you keep thinking about nickels and gold and specifically target gold, and you WILL find it...Good Luck!
Mud