Pennies becoming the new trash , in my area.

[Dancer]

Parks, schoolyards, sports fields. Slowly the tabs, and aluminum slaw is becoming less and less. Mostly due to plastic bottles, I guess. Of course some old places will never come clean. Going back 3years my dug pennies have increased from 35% to 38 and this year running at 43% of my dug coins. Quarter's keep dropping, dimes are holding about the same. Nickels my target coin stays around 11% . Used to cherry pick around those pennies, but now on some machines they are pretty close to a dime. So far I've had 3penny spills from 34 to 54 cents. The Big one had a 2008 dollar coin hiding in it. Some I think just get tossed. How's it going where you hunt?

 

[still looking 52]

Here in WV things are about the same except the silver is getting rare. We've changed our hunting style to look for deeper coins (6" to 9") range so our total finds are down but we are eeking out some silver. The pennies we do find are often reading the same range as the dimes, somewhere between 70 and 75.

 

[MarkCZ]

Here in WV things are about the same except the silver is getting rare. We've changed our hunting style to look for deeper coins (6" to 9") range so our total finds are down but we are eeking out some silver. The pennies we do find are often reading the same range as the dimes, somewhere between 70 and 75.

Yea, but I'm thinking trash pennies as zink'ers not copper right?

Mark

 

[JimmyCT]

Stinkin' Zinc Lincolns register at 75 on my AT Max. Real copper pennies hit @ 82.

Ironic you make this post. When I got home this evening I had about $3.00 in clad ($2.25 in quarters alone) I don't ever hit this many in an outing. This was a very rare hunt for me with so many quarters. Although I am not going to disclose how much time I spent to get that $3.00.

Many of the areas I hunt are severely drained out of old coins and clad. Some hunts I can go for 4 hours and be lucky to find a copper penny. Never mind silver. Yesterday I was out for 4 hours and my take was very slim. The bonus: I found a Buffalo Nickel which totally surprised me for the area I was hunting. I guess one never knows what the ground holds. There is one place I hunt quite often and from time to time I have to check my detector to see if its working. That is how quiet the ground is. Not much left to be desired. Its still nice to get out, but I don't want to spend 4,5,6 hours in the field and find one Lincoln penny either.

 

[Dancer]

Stinkin' Zinc Lincolns register at 75 on my AT Max. Real copper pennies hit @ 82.

Ironic you make this post. When I got home this evening I had about $3.00 in clad ($2.25 in quarters alone) I don't ever hit this many in an outing. This was a very rare hunt for me with so many quarters. Although I am not going to disclose how much time I spent to get that $3.00.

Many of the areas I hunt are severely drained out of old coins and clad. Some hunts I can go for 4 hours and be lucky to find a copper penny. Never mind silver. Yesterday I was out for 4 hours and my take was very slim. The bonus: I found a Buffalo Nickel which totally surprised me for the area I was hunting. I guess one never knows what the ground holds. There is one place I hunt quite often and from time to time I have to check my detector to see if its working. That is how quiet the ground is. Not much left to be desired. Its still nice to get out, but I don't want to spend 4,5,6 hours in the field and find one Lincoln penny either.

Potluck, The first Clad quarter's were minted in 1965, that makes them 52 yrs old. They made a zillion of em cause all the silver was going to be hoarded. Get a Q from the 60's check out their smoothness from being worn. Oh and still only worth 25 cent.
Dancer

 

[Sanderling]

Hey there Dancer. Always lots of pennies on the beach where I hunt. Been coming across more and more washers lately. Guess some yahoo thinks it is funny to throw them around. Still getting a fair share of clad though. Very few jewelry items and those items found are usually junk jewelry.

 

[MarkCZ]

Potluck, The first Clad quarter's were minted in 1965, that makes them 52 yrs old. They made a zillion of em cause all the silver was going to be hoarded. Get a Q from the 60's check out their smoothness from being worn. Oh and still only worth 25 cent.
Dancer

"Hoarded" isn't actually what happened to the silver, gold, and solid copper coins!
Take Gold, just before they stopped production you could go to a bank pay face value for them, melt them down for a HUGE profit!
Then, the same thing happened with silver, you could go to the bank pay $5.00 for a roll of dimes for example and the melt value was around $20.00!
Copper cents was the same way, the melt value exceeded their face value!
So, in the end they were a vast number of people that did hoard them in hope of a HIGHER melt value on there return, even a lot of coin collectors pull there common date silvers out of their coin books and sold them!

Now there is a big problem with the Zinc cent, its production cost per cent is way WAY more than its face value!
So it cost to much just to make, not that its alloy content is worth anything. They want to drop production of the cent, then do a cash roundup for anyone paying CASH on every ITEM YOU BUY!
The only reason it hasn't already happened is the bill (Law) to do so has been turned down at lest twice that I know of!

 

[still looking 52]

Yeah, I remember way back in the late seventies I pulled 45$ worth of silver coins from my coin collection and sold them for 1100$. Back then that was a lot of money, probably take 3000$ to equal that now. I'm thinking it was going for around 22$ for every 1$ dollar worth of silver.

 

[GeorgeinSC]

I sold a batch of silver coins that I had collected. I think I got 18 times face back then. A Hunt brothers were trying to buy up all the available silver to drive the price up and then sell at the higher price. They lost many millions of dollars as the price dropped like a rock when they ran out of money to purchase more silver.

 

[slingshot]

A lot of class rings fall in the zinc/screwcap area. Just thought I'd make your day.

 

[IDXMonster]

The zincs are still around here,and they are kind of the "new trash"! Once in awhile I'll pop one if it's deep in hopes of something weird and good but invariably it's just a zinc. Once in awhile I'll pop an Indian but not often!

 

[Dancer]

The zincs are still around here,and they are kind of the "new trash"! Once in awhile I'll pop one if it's deep in hopes of something weird and good but invariably it's just a zinc. Once in awhile I'll pop an Indian but not often!

Man IDX, I've dug thousands of pennies. Get maybe 5 to dozen Wheats a year. Never have I dug a I.Head.
Good fer you.

Dancer

 

[amberjack]

here they took 1 & 2 cents (Composition: 97% Copper - 2.5% Zinc - 0.5% Tin) (so they come in with some silver coins) out of circulation in 1992 and our lowest coin is 5 cents so when paying in cash the rounding down & up applies so 52 cents pay 50 cents, 53 cents pay 55 cents evens out in the wash I think, 5 cents is probably next on the hit list when not sure..

just some fun facts from across the pond.

and yep don't like digging them either but at least there is no more being dropped so feel for ya's.

AJ