Pulltab Education

[mudpuppy]

Hey all...back on Dec 9th, on Todays Finds, msareborn did a cool post titled 'Pulltab Education 101' you might find of interest...its on page 4...it got last comment on Dec 24th

Especially if you want to try to get the 'age' on a place and set up for the right targets/depth of that particular patch of dirt...pulltabs can be helpful especially if they are THERE...meaning nobody hunted those here before....gotta believe theres some masked silver under some of the 60's ones?
Mud

 

[MarkCZ]

"Mud" I had also posted this information in the F4 F5 F70 thread.

At the conception of the beaver tail tabs they were called "Pull & Toss Tabs" and that's exactly what everybody did with them, they were small, harmless and people just pitched them on the ground, I doubt that 1% of them when the product was opened ended up in the trash. I still find these things sometimes hooked together to form short chains. On canned beverages the pull & toss were in use from 1965 until 1975, then came the square tabs.

At the conception of the square tabs they were called "Stay Tabs" someone finely figured out that the pull & toss tabs had become a MAJOR litter problem, so hey! they made the "Stay Tab" litter problem solved!! NOT! most folks were so used to pull and toss that they had a habit of tossing the older tabs, so they opened the can and then broke the stay tab off and tossed it on the ground. On canned beverages the stay tab came to be right after 1975 and are still in use today.

Both tabs in there existence took on several design changes, the early pull & toss was a little dinkier and often times the ring would come lose from the tab before it pulled the tab off the can. So, a little later on the tab was beefed up a good bit and functioned much better. and yes! I've heard the same thing about some alloy changes in them over the years. The most problematic of the tabs is the tail of the pull & toss tabs, when left attached to the ring they would curl up, well of course each curl is as different as my finger prints vs HighPlainsHunter's" . These tails messes with the detection field coming off the coil in sometimes very strange ways, some common problems I have them is,
Throwing the pinpoint off,
ID'in much higher than they should for a tab,
And they normally have an excellent audio report that makes it very difficult to hunt the lower conductive range and work around them.

And don't confuse the modern pull rings from a planters peanut can with one that is from the MUCH older beverage cans, most of the time the peanut pull rings will stay attached to the lid so they are pretty easy to tell. The reason why I mentioned this is because identifying the early pull & toss tabs is one way I judge depth and age of an area. Those dinky pull & toss tabs at a 5" (any average depth you find them) average speaks "1965 to maybe 1967" If I know the area has had public use back to 1935 then I can get an idea of the depth of the silver and the depth of the oldest fresh drops.
Example, a 1935 dime dropped in 1935 would have very little wear on it, making it a 1935 fresh drop, the more wear it has the more upward towards the pull & toss tabs it will be.

Mark

 

[MarkCZ]

A picture is worth a thousand words!
age from left to right.
The far left would be the earliest tab, 1965. This version didn't have the rivet to allow the ring to hinge or pivot at the tab and were just bad to tare lose from the tail and not open the can at all!
The one on the far right would be more towards 1975.

Also notice how the shape of the rings changed over the years, with the latter being an easy grab with the two little crimps keeping it slightly raised up from the top of the can, then it also has two feet at the base of the ring to help properly lever and start tab.

I'm sure they're is other styles of the tabs not pictured as well.

Most all detectors will get and report a excellent signal from all of these tabs The bent, twisted, or separated parts of the tabs can cause ID reports to be at a much wider range then a perfectly laid out flat tab. Hunting for Gold rings in areas where these coexist puts a true meaning to "looking for a needle in hay stack" and its the same problem trying to find nickels were these are at.
And those daisy-chained tabs are even more of a problem and are pretty common to find as well.

Mark

 

[Coin Rescue Inc]

I was a kid back then. I remember the knock on the removable tabs was "some kid may swallow that". Allot broke off and you needed a can opener anyway.
Also in college some kids would make chains to show off how much beer they drank. There were also reports of people stepping on them at the beach and cutting their feet.
I also remember dropping them in the empty can to get rid of them. If you did not have a can opener a screw driver would do the job. Two tiny slots were made.

 

[mudpuppy]

This is really important for a person to digest...!

A guy never looks at a pulltab the same anymore...Funny thing about those modern 'staytabs' ever notice how kids and women like to tear them off? Most guys have too much respect for the engineering and purpose behind the design to tear them off...and a guy would never make a 'daisy chain' out of the old ones either! So when we find them, you know a kid or a lady did it! Kids mean coins/clad, and ladies mean maybe a chain or small 2gr gold ring is what I figure, so a fellow can sort of 'sharpen up' on those small gold tones when 'statabs' are encountered...sorta like when a guy finds a bobby pin on the beach..same deal, they say, 'there was a lady here'... Good stuff here Mark!
Mud

 

[Hombre]

if the site has pull tabs...it is too modern to hunt...lol

 

[Elton]

That just wears a guy out ................................. X 500 ............... LOL

 

[mudpuppy]

I know right, Hombre and Elton? Its just that REVIER and Tabman knock down lotsa gold hunting the tab and zinc signals, Why, BH Landstar hit a 24k ring that hit like a Q!.......the thought of missing any gold drives me absolutely stark raving insane! Are we are destined to walk the earth popping 1000's of tabs and can shards?....Yes, unless some Poindexter figures out some unique circuitry..wish somebody would have told me this before I ever got into this Sport! I may just have taken up stamp collecting, scrapbooking, or heaven forbid, Golf!!

Heres a couple of 'tab signals' for your enjoyment...
Mud

 

[MarkCZ]

if the site has pull tabs...it is too modern to hunt...lol

Well our city park has been around sense 1920 fresh drops in the 20's are around three inches or so below the bed of ten years of pull tabs, I would say at lest a million or more, then from 1975 on the beaver tail bed is well salted over with 40 years of the stay tabs.
I got the quarter below with my Omega right at eight inches in that park.
The beaver tail tabs run at 3.5" to about 5" deep where the ground hasn't been disturbed. Having tabs for me isn't so much of a judgment of the age of the area as it is the depth of the targets in the ground.
I know how old the park is, I know the date range of the beaver tail tabs, I know how deep that layer of tabs are, so I know what I'm faced with to get to the 50's, 40's, 30,s and the 20's stuff. Now the other way this date stamp can work is this, if your hunting an area and there is NO beaver tail tabs in the area and its a public place then its doubtful that its been in use by the public long enough to have been seeded with any silver coins, most every coin hunter uses the Wheat pennies for this judgment call as well.

Elton your right about the maybe even thousands of tabs to one ring in these areas, my big brother Ron, will sometimes go to our park and dig nail aprons full of tabs and not find anything good. He keeps hoping that if he (we) remove enough tabs then the good stuff under them will be exposed, it sounds good in theory but its not worked out that way yet.

Mark

 

[metalfun]

I know right, Hombre and Elton? Its just that REVIER and Tabman knock down lotsa gold hunting the tab and zinc signals, Why, BH Landstar hit a 24k ring that hit like a Q!.......the thought of missing any gold drives me absolutely stark raving insane! Are we are destined to walk the earth popping 1000's of tabs and can shards?....Yes, unless some Poindexter figures out some unique circuitry..wish somebody would have told me this before I ever got into this Sport! I may just have taken up stamp collecting, scrapbooking, or heaven forbid, Golf!!

Heres a couple of 'tab signals' for your enjoyment...
Mud

I know you didn't say Golf I'd rather watch somebody play checkers!!!

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

There were also reports of people stepping on them at the beach and cutting their feet.

And launched a career:

"Blew out my flip flop, stepped on a poptop
Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,
But there's booze in the blender,
And soon it will render,
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.

Wasting away again in Margaritaville,
Searching for my lost shaker of salt,
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame,
But I know, it's my own damn fault."

 

[amberjack]

wish I lived in a place where people have gold I would dig those tabs but as others have said there sure is a lot of tabs between the gold but you never know right !!

I dug a square tab pocket spill the other night like 5 tabs in one hole, never seen that before hope I never see it again !!

but your right Mud I have never pulled a square tab off a can and I don't understand why people do it leaves a bit that could be dangerous, so women and kids hey no wonder I don't have any what the hell is wrong with them

my plan is to dig low conductive numbers that I don't see a lot of and yes it has worked not every day that's for sure but it has worked to find some gold. also found a lot of strange looking bits of crap

if it was easy everyone would be doing it right

nice gold and coin and thanks everyone for making me think

AJ

 

[88junior]

Well tabs in my local schools grounds have been greatly declining since they cut out soft drinks for sale in the schools!! Boy am I thankful about that!!

 

[still looking 52]

Yes I'm a golf-aholic and just like metal hunting you think something good is going to happen but rarely does. You've got to be resilient in both hobbies to get better and have fun .There's been days I swore I'm giving them both up but then I'm right back out there swinging away .

 

[Coin Rescue Inc]

Yes I'm a golf-aholic and just like metal hunting you think something good is going to happen but rarely does. You've got to be resilient in both hobbies to get better and have fun .There's been days I swore I'm giving them both up but then I'm right back out there swinging away .

It would be great to sneak a detector on to an old Golf course. Would it fit in your Bag? How about a pin pointer on the end of a golf shaft? Dimes were used allot to spot balls.

 

[MarkCZ]

Yes I'm a golf-aholic and just like metal hunting you think something good is going to happen but rarely does. You've got to be resilient in both hobbies to get better and have fun .There's been days I swore I'm giving them both up but then I'm right back out there swinging away .

It would be great to sneak a detector on to an old Golf course. Would it fit in your Bag? How about a pin pointer on the end of a golf shaft? Dimes were used allot to spot balls.

Well me and my brother "SL52" (Still Looking 52) was able to do just that! The Golf Course was one that started out in the 20's and both my brothers caddied there when they were growing up, and even later SL52 actually played golf there and he knows every inch of the place. In recent years they closed it down, Oh, and it was a really nice Country Club as well. So we went in and was able to do some detecting but we didn't rake in the loot like we thought we would. We did find a few silver coins but no large silver and we found a fair amount of Wheat's, I would like to go back in there but the property is now posted all around it and its up for sell.

The picture is what I got from the Golf Course, the one off colored quarter is clad, most of the pennies were Wheat Cents.

One thing that was exciting was when we started hunting we could see some of those 65-75 pull tabs laying around on the ground, so the wheat's where less than two inches in the ground.

Mark

 

[Coin Rescue Inc]

Nice haul.
I can think of a couple I would like to try but they are still in use.