Neil in West Jersey
New member
I finally got out for a bit last week for about 2 hours at a spot that I have not detected in more than a year. It was not the best time of year for the site; it is overgrown with poison ivy and there are many mosquitoes. In the past it has turned up a few tombac and a nice silver spoon, but I never found any old coins there.
I found a spot where the vegetation was not too dense and immediately got many iron signals. I used a slow sweep ( I kept my recovery delay at the relic default of 85 which was not the smartest thing, but I was pressed for time). I dug a questionable signal and found what seemed to be a mangled piece of bronze. Then, about 2 feet away, I got an iron signal mixed with a fairly high VDI, bouncing around in the mid-high 50's at a depth of 5.75". This VDI is a bit high for an IH and a bit low for a Wheatie, so I was hoping for a button. I dug my second hole for the day, but the coin was still in the hole. About 7 inches down I found my target, a large, heavy copper disk, which really surprised me because of the relatively low VDI. I put the coin on the ground and swept over it to verify my VDI and it locked in at 59-60, about 25 digits lower than I would expect for this type of coin. I double checked to make sure I was in Best Data and not a single frequency with Normalization "Off", which could drive down VDI numbers.
After another hour of fighting off the bugs and the underbrush, I decided to call it quits. (I could have quit after 10 minutes of detecting with the same result). In the bright sun I was able to make out the profile of the left-facing bust, which told me it was either a state copper or an older King George II, the latter of which is what it turned out to be. I cannot read the date, but it is a KG II Copper 1740-1754.
It cleaned up fairly nicely, and looks pretty good for a 250 year old coin!
My theory for the low VDI for a coin of this size and weight is that it is a cast counterfeit. A high lead content would explain the lower VDI.
I found a spot where the vegetation was not too dense and immediately got many iron signals. I used a slow sweep ( I kept my recovery delay at the relic default of 85 which was not the smartest thing, but I was pressed for time). I dug a questionable signal and found what seemed to be a mangled piece of bronze. Then, about 2 feet away, I got an iron signal mixed with a fairly high VDI, bouncing around in the mid-high 50's at a depth of 5.75". This VDI is a bit high for an IH and a bit low for a Wheatie, so I was hoping for a button. I dug my second hole for the day, but the coin was still in the hole. About 7 inches down I found my target, a large, heavy copper disk, which really surprised me because of the relatively low VDI. I put the coin on the ground and swept over it to verify my VDI and it locked in at 59-60, about 25 digits lower than I would expect for this type of coin. I double checked to make sure I was in Best Data and not a single frequency with Normalization "Off", which could drive down VDI numbers.
After another hour of fighting off the bugs and the underbrush, I decided to call it quits. (I could have quit after 10 minutes of detecting with the same result). In the bright sun I was able to make out the profile of the left-facing bust, which told me it was either a state copper or an older King George II, the latter of which is what it turned out to be. I cannot read the date, but it is a KG II Copper 1740-1754.
It cleaned up fairly nicely, and looks pretty good for a 250 year old coin!
My theory for the low VDI for a coin of this size and weight is that it is a cast counterfeit. A high lead content would explain the lower VDI.
