Looks like my nickel tally is pretty much the same as most everyone else. It depends on how trashy the ground is whether or not I notch out nickels, tab tops and such. At a modern-day fairgrounds there's just too much trash to try and go through every scrap to see if it's a nickel or possibly gold, while on the other hand a bark-chip tot lot will be much cleaner and I go for whatever rings up in jewelry mode. One of the last playgrounds I tried to clean out gave up 28 nickels out of 364 coins (plus a 14k white gold pendant), another playground gave up 12 nickels out of 92 coins (along with 2 silver rings). A lake resort I hit in September with a different machine gave up 14 nickels in 143 coins. Those are the high numbers, my nickel take is usually much lower than that and it's not unusual for me to pull none at all in high trash areas.
Basically I just try to use the discrimination as little as possible, but I'm not going to dig tons of tabs, foil, wrappers and junk out of a very trashy area when I could just bump up the discrimination, cover a much larger area in less time, and spend less time on my knees finding junk. It's a personal decision everyone has to make on their own, balancing how much junk they're willing to dig against the potential payoff in gold. Or nickels.
Steve
Basically I just try to use the discrimination as little as possible, but I'm not going to dig tons of tabs, foil, wrappers and junk out of a very trashy area when I could just bump up the discrimination, cover a much larger area in less time, and spend less time on my knees finding junk. It's a personal decision everyone has to make on their own, balancing how much junk they're willing to dig against the potential payoff in gold. Or nickels.
Steve
