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Need some Help from some Beach Experts!

I have hunted almost exclusively yards, parks, schools, vacant lots ect... I really dont care to hunt clad. What I really like to find is old coins. I used to think beach hunting was mostly for jewelry and clad. I have noticed several hunters finding old US coins at the beach.

Can I get some tips on how to find old coins (particularly silver coins) at the beach?
 
Porschephile said:
I have hunted almost exclusively yards, parks, schools, vacant lots ect... I really dont care to hunt clad. What I really like to find is old coins. I used to think beach hunting was mostly for jewelry and clad. I have noticed several hunters finding old US coins at the beach.

Can I get some tips on how to find old coins (particularly silver coins) at the beach?

after doing research and finding one, you need to hunt an "old" beach.
chuck.
 
If you hunt dry sand, you will almost always only find modern clad. That's not a bad thing, mind you, because any time you get enough "targets" on the beach (whether dry or wet sand), there's the chance at jewelry, which .... of course.... beaches make "condusive" conditions for jewelry losses.

If you hunt the wet sand (like looking for the tell-tale formations where hopefully mother nature groups heavier targets), you will .... again .... mostly get modern targets. HOWEVER, the old coins you've heard of being found on the beach, are usually almost always persons who get on to certain beaches, after high swells, on-shore winds, and high tides coincide to produce severe beach erosion. If it goes down into zones/stratas where older coins are, then presto, you get older coins.

But there's a lot of other factors though: Some beaches don't fluctuate too much annually (like protected inner-harbor beaches, or beaches against cliffs where it erodes annually down to bedrock over and over, etc... Obviously flukes occur, and sometimes a silver coin is found amidst a pattern of recent losses out on the wet. This occurs because targets come back in during the spring/summer buildup of sand, where sand comes back on-shore to rebuild the beaches, during the natural "in and out" action of the sand. But those are usually just random, with no rhyme or reason.

The best opportunity for old coins, is when the over-night erosion has occured all-at-once, turning the beach into a giant riffle-board/sluice-box action. Ideally perhaps cutting back into dry dunes that haven't seen waves reach that high in decades. Or down to bed-rock layer beyond which no targets can sink any further than (so the old coins are stuck in a moon-scape bedrock layer).

But if your particular beach was hit at some time in the past decades by a SUPER storm that ALREADY scoured down to insane depths and pulled the targets WAY out (like major hurricanes back in the 1960s, etc...), then there are some beaches where .... it seems that no one has ever found an old coin ever again. I've seen this phenomenom here on the west coast, where some storms in the winter of 1982-83 were SO SEVERE (and we got SO much silver off them during that time), that we saw perpendicular cuts 10 to 15 ft. high on some beaches! Naturally no one got "all the silver coins" back then, but what DID happen, it seems, is that when the sand finally came back in on a few that following summer, that apparently the older coins stayed out in the ocean. Who knows? Because I know of one beach where ........ to this day ........ no one's ever found an old coin again (barring a few flukes), even in big storms since then.

So some would say that you need a storm that exceeds all previous ones, to get down *further* than those previous ones. However, you can't say that uniformly. Because certain storms, although fierce, will affect beaches only at certain points. You know, like "burrs in mother nature's bonnet", were certain spots get giant scallops and cuts, while a mere 1/2 mile south of north of there, was less affected. Or one storm erodes "down", while the next goes further "back", and so forth.

Anyhow, sorry for the long answer, but the short answer is: storm erosion increases your chances at oldies :)
 
research...internet is a great source, and ask the old hunters and locals, then get to know these beachs..my research for the Cheasapeake Bay is finished now all I need is time.
77 old beach's and POI....
 
Tom in Ca-Great Post, Its been over 20 years since we have had a Great Erosion on the Beach-Hurricane Hugo and then alot of NEastern Storms during the Winter-Currently Myrtle Beach,South Carolina (Sucks ) goldnugget-Charlotte,North Carolina-I always check the Dunes where the 1890 Coins show up at Myrtle Beach. The sands need to be cut down 75 feet toward the dunes and down about 8 feet, It doesn't help when they re-nourish the Beaches
 
You just got some powerful advice from Tom and OBN...go out and give any old beach a whirl to see if you like that sand work..its really a brutal way to hunt..there was a guy named Norm Garnush who did a writing called "the Golden Olde" about beach hunting, specifically how to "read" a beach is what you want to learn...One of these fellows turned me on to it a long time ago..it was probably OBN...watched all his vids I could handle too...OBN's that is...anyway, beach hunting is brutal, and every old guy with a coil and a sifter is out there! You want old silver coins, stay on the dirt, or else get some tanks and start diving fresh water lakes and whatnot...just my 2c from some sand work...HH! :detecting:
Mud
 
Not knowing where you are from, are you talking salt water or fresh? If its salt and you do find a beach that produces you will do like some of the Conn. guys and just have a pile of melt silver. Salt water beaches my require a multi freq detector as well and you may need a scoop. Silver is soft metal and will pit and rub away with water movement. Freshwater look for places with a good hard bottom or rocks to keep the coins from rapidly sinking. Most machine now days have water proof coils, but if its not a waterproof machine you have to take special precautions .... like never riasing a wet coil above the box. I love old coins..... but there are better places than a beach to find them because most wont be keepers. Coins are floaters when there are storms they move.

Dew
 
mudpuppy said:
...there was a guy named Norm Garnush who did a writing called "the Golden Olde" about beach hunting, specifically how to "read" a beach is what you want to learn...
Mud

Many old timers who beach hunt (and surf the web) will tell you that "Norm Garnush" was a very pleasant and knowlegable detectorists who took the time to give something back to the hobby.

I had the opportunity to visit the The Golden Olde regularly and I thought that Norm's site was a beach hunters heaven. So much could be learned about detectors and hunting beaches. If Norm didn't have an article about a particular topic... all one had to do is ask and he would research & write one. Unfortunatley for all of us... Norm is no longer with us... but his memories and web site The Golden Olde still live on and can be viewed here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080202045558/http://thegoldenolde.com/


-NEBeachcomber
 
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