Elusive, Evasive, Nickles New Findings

[MarkCZ]

I posted the below in the Teknetics forum and I decided to pass it on to this area of the forum. I would like for some others to do some testing along the same lines as I've done.
Get a cup of coffee,
Some snacks,
Maybe an Asprin!
If this proves out by others my question would be, how come the people that design these detectors didn't know this?
How could it have taken all these years to be found out?

Enjoy the read!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

As far as I know I'm the first to write this about nickles, but I have found them to be more of a problem then just falling into single populated junk zone!

Ready!
Story time.

Me and my brother both have Fisher 1266's and in trying to increase our nickle finds we starting working on a way to get the nickles to fall in between the two discrimination controls, well one thing led to another.
I started air testing the nickle and I found that the farther from the coil the more discrimination it took to reject the nickle

So then I decided to make a nickle test garden, which would be added to my one year old coin gardens. My coin garden's go's like this,
3" garden, has a clad dime, a nickle, and a clad quarter.
6" garden, has a copper penny, a nickle, and a silver quarter.

Now the added nickle garden goes like this,
Nickle @ 4"
Nickle @ 5"
Nickle @ 6"

So, out I go with the 1266 to see if in the ground at different depths if I could adjust the nickles within the two disc controls. Well I did but it took a much wider range of the two controls My first thought was that it had something to do with the old electronics of the 1266's.

Well, I got to thinking???? if the nickles at depth move up in discrimination level then wouldn't they move up into higher ID levels on another detector?

Now it gets interesting!

I take my Coinstrike out with the Sunray CS-5 coil thinking a nickle was a nickle at any depth that the detector would get a good report on, right?
Not so! here is the numbers I got, (the Coinstrike's numeric range for nickles is 9-11)
Nickel's
3" ID= 10
4" ID= 12
5" ID= 20
6" ID= 26-27 (and a bit jumpy) (Clad dimes and copper cents come in around 2

Now that's two detectors! but I'm not done!

I got out my Whites 5900 Di Pro/sl and tried it!
The nickles went right up the scale just like the the other two detectors.

Then I thought maybe its because they are fresh buried??
So then I decided to do some more test, I looked at what I had in my coin gardens,
The 3"had a one year buried nickle and the 6" had a nickle buried at the same time! Well I tried both of those and got the same results

Now, I was thinking that the same thing should happen to other coins right? Wrong!

My 3" garden also has a quarter and so does the 6" garden, so I did the test on the two different quarters. (the coinstrike's range for quarters is 30-34)

the 3" quarter ID= 33
the 6" quarter ID= 35 (a little jumpy) (Nothing like the spread as the nickles)

Okay, were almost up to date (where I'm at now)

Lets look at the 5" nickle at a meter reading of 20, at first I couldn't get any audio report on it at all?? so then I studied that problem for awhile and then it hit me,
The Zinc range for the coinstrike is!!! ?? you got it 20-22, I had Zinc's notched out!

Now the 6" nickle with meter reading of 26-27 that's the edge of the high tone range for copper pennies and dimes and it was a bit jumpy, so a 6" plus nickle can read like a penny!

That's why cherry picking nickles is pretty easy down to around 3" or so, they read like nickles, but they get more evasive the deeper they get. And if you work through the different depths down to about 5.5" they pass though several other junk zones

Now, my thinking at this point about finding more nickles gets a little difficult.
Nickles down to 3" will ID @ nickles. But at 5" they come in more like a Zinc, that means for me I would have to ID the target, then read the depth, if its a 20 and 5" deep then its a little more likely to be a nickle because Zinc's are not that deep around here.

So, go bury some nickles and get some numbers and let us know what you find. An early test is to just do some air testing at different measured points from the coil and see if the nickles don't go up the scale?

I'm still looking at some more testing of nickles,
WV62 (one of my brothers) has a Fisher F75 and I want to get him to see how the F75 respones to my nickle garden. Also, my other brother has my CZ-7a Pro on loan and I want to try it out on the nickles as well.

The Elusive,
The Evasive,
Nickles

Mark

 

[JimGilmore]

now you know that while some detectors have a notch function I use the regular discrimination and dig everything !

 

[MarkCZ]

now you know that while some detectors have a notch function I use the regular discrimination and dig everything !

What if your in a place where "Digging Everything" means three hours of digging to cover a 10'x10' area and yelds you a 55gal trash can of trash?
OR digging everything means 3000 small rusty nails to every 5 wheat pennies?
I've tried the "Everything" digging and in some places I'll pass! unless your a relic hunter and like large piles of barn door hinges. You go to our local park and dig "Everything" you wan't get very far, but you will have an amazing amount of pull & Toss tabs! they're is a 3" to 5" bed of them, millions of them! From 1965 to 1975 everybody that had a soft drink in the park tossed those tabs on the ground and NOBODY ever picked one of them up.
It's, a great place for nickles, the odds of a getting a nickle would be like 650 tabs to 1.

Now, I have a 1266 beep and dig and I like it, but there is some places that it just drives you crazy with all the audio reports. One thing it is really good for is cleaning out a place for a coin garden! it doesn't miss anything from BB's to tiny meteorites, nails, pipe, can slaw, to buck-shot and even lawnmower sliced slivers of pennies! it don't miss nothing! but good grief to dig it all I can't do it in most places anyway.

Mark

 

[john4840]

I usually dig the deeper signals with my Quattro. I had pulled a few nickles from 7 inches without digging a lot pull tabs. To tell you the truth the Quattro will lock on a nickle with the same TID numbers no matter what depth it is. I can tell the difference from a beaver tail and foil from a nickle by the sound of the signal. I have done very well with nickles this year in very trashy areas.

John

 

[MarkCZ]

I have four detectors that the nickles go up the discrimination scale on, but other coins don't or don't near as much (nothing like nickles).
I have two more that I wnat to try out.

So, your saying that your nickle finds are near as much as your quarters and dimes, right?
If you are your pretty much by yourself! because I've seen pictures of lots of peoples finds and have been out with others and went through oour pockets full of coins and NEVER does the nickle take come close to the quarters or dimes, I do believe that the nickles lost is near the same.

Mark

 

[leroy1937]

nickles are hard to detect you have 2 know your machine real good to not pass them up

 

[JimGilmore]

I do not belive that nickel finds wll match or even should match finds of other coins.
I think you will always be able to find by quantity in this order...of US coins
#1. Pennies
#2.Quarters
#3. Dimes close to quarters but fewer in numbers due to size I think.
#4 .Nickles roughly 1/5 as many as dime,
#5. dollar coins roughly 1 for every hundred coins I find.
#6 1/2 dollar coins very few and far between.

My list is basically all modern coin counts. I am talking about.

 

[MarkCZ]

I do not belive that nickel finds wll match or even should match finds of other coins.
I think you will always be able to find by quantity in this order...of US coins
#1. Pennies
#2.Quarters
#3. Dimes close to quarters but fewer in numbers due to size I think.
#4 .Nickles roughly 1/5 as many as dime,
#5. dollar coins roughly 1 for every hundred coins I find.
#6 1/2 dollar coins very few and far between.

My list is basically all modern coin counts. I am talking about.

So, the problem with them reading different at different depths doesn't have anything to do with making them harder to find, right?

In your list of coins I don't see any reason for more quarters being found than nickles?
Now finding more quarters than half dollars and more half dollars than the full size dollars I see!
Pennies more than dimes I see!
But every time I look at my pocket full of change I find more nickles than quarters!

Now, I'm sure that they are some that think the reason they don't find no more nickles than they do is just because they're not lost as much! But, I'm not sure about that and with the testing I've done so far I'm even less certain of that. I mean, out of four detectors a nickle at 5" is to the detector more like a Zinc penny, and at 4" they fall into just litter of some sort!
Now if your running your disc to just above foil and digging everything above that then I would think the nickle finds would increase a lot!

I was really shocked with the nickle testing and what it's showed so far!

Now what would be interesting to find out if other stuff like gold rings, or other jewelry would act the same way?

Mark

 

[BarberBill]

I don't have the detectors you mention, but have pretty good results with nickles as long as my discrimination is set a bit below nickle rejection. The rub comes when I turn up the disc a bit to see if the target drops out at the nickle setting. 1-2 times out of 5, give or take, if it drops out, it's a nickle. However, some tabs, foil pieces, broken tabs etc. will drop off about the same so I end up retrieving lots of those. If it weren't for the possibility of finding older, buffalo nickles or small gold jewelry that responds in the same range, I probably wouldn't bother with nickles. I have the same thought about zinc pennies. They are so often cruddy that I don't care to retrieve them but every so often a true goodie responds as a zinc penny and the only way to know is to dig - so I end up with a jar of corroded nasty pennies after a detecting season with one or two good targets to show for it.
BB

 

[JB(MS)]

The major reason fewer nickels are found are because there are far fewer in circulation than there are quarters and dimes. The photo shows the number of nickels, dimes and quarters minted from 2000 through 2009. We discussed the lack of nickels on another forum awhile back and some of us checked our change for a few days to see how many nickels we got and most of the time it was either none or one. I do dig all nickel signals at least 95 percent of the time, probably closer to 99 percent, and also dig a lot of tabs and other nickel range trash. I turn the tabs in at a collection center to be sent to the Ronald McDonald Foundation to be sold to help provide medical care for under privileged kids, and so should everyone else who hunts coins. The last time I cleaned the dirty coins I found I had 198 nickels, 260 quarters and 512 dimes, also cleaned over 6,200 dirty pennies that I had let pile up. I found that many nickels, and pennies, because most who detect for coins here disc out everything below copper pennies.

[attachment 211471 mintnumbers.jpg]

 

[Cliff KS]

I hunted a freshwater beach on a small natural lake today for 5 1/2 hours. Found lots of shotgun brass, bullets, sinkers, aluminum cans and pieces of such, beavertail tabs and modern rectangular tabs, 2 clad quarters, 2 zincolns, 2 memorial cents, 2 clad dimes, 1 merc, no nickles.

I was using a CZ70 with a Sunray FZ12. I was getting hard hits lighting up the nickle icon. I dug them all and all of them were the modern rectangular tabs. I usually hunt old farms and find many more pennies and dimes than nickels or quarters. I'm about equal on nickels and quarters.

 

[Jerry-Wi]

Not sure what it is about the At Pro but I seem to find a lot of nickels with it. Found 102 coins yesterday and 15 of them were nickels.

Jerry

 

[Tom Slick]

I just tested a White's IDX Pro and found the same thing. The further the coin is from the coil, the lower the discrimination must be set to pick it up. This would equate to the nickel have a higher VDI the further it is from the coil. Not the case with other coins. I also believe that fewer nickels are lost than pennies, dimes, or quarters.

 

[JimGilmore]

I did not give a reason for the percentages. But after doing this for years and hunting and counting loads of coins it does often fall pretty consistantly as I posted.
Quarters and pennies are the most commonly used coins and nickles and dimes are only there to fill out the mix when giving change.