Silver..... Opinions wanted.

[tabman]

The older parks have been cherry picked to death. Most of the silver that's left at those parks is being masked. Those expensive, high dollar detectors with all the bells and whistles are telling the users that a seated silver dime that's closely adjacent to a pull tab is a worthless piece of junk. When the going gets rough, I grab a Tesoro.

tabman

 

[ironsight]

For a shallow or moderately deep dime for example, my eTRAC and i can't tell the difference between a clad dime and a silver dime.
Some claim they can tell the difference by subtle tone differences. Me, my hearing these days ain't what it used to be so i dig all potential silver signals.

There is another way to cherry pick however.
My old detecting buddy who got me started back in the 70s hated and i mean hated finding pennies.
Back then even wheats were common in circulation. When he found a penny he'd rebury or toss it and just keep the higher coin denominations and Indian pennys.

Off the top of my head i typically have somewhere around an average 12:1 wheat to silver ratio. Some places a little higher and othe places a little lower.

Here's some reasons i think why there's usually a high wheat penny to silver coin ratio or little to no silver:
-A fresh dropped silver coin in the sunlight is much more easier for a passerby to spot than a penny.
-A penny bought a lot more back in the olden days, the change people kept probably included much more pennies than silver.
-A lot of people were dirt poor back then and likely kept a close eye on whatever money they had (see below).
-Kids if they carried any change at all likely included all pennies. Kids lose money, a lot!

In general, the best places to find silver coins in my experience are turn of the century sites where there were large gatherings of people,
......AND where alcohol flowed freely!

 

[Patriot 1776]

Sunday I hunted a pretty old park in downtown Memphis. It was a little over a 5 hour hunt. I probably pulled close to 15 modern quarters and 10 modern dimes out of the ground, but no silver.
Plenty of 1965 and younger, but no silver whatsoever. My question is, with all these quarters in the ground from varying depths of 2 to 7 inches, why is there no silver? Which leads me
to my next question. Do people who have detected this park, (and I'm sure its been hunted to death), bypass clad quarters and dimes, to go after silver only? The signals are so close
to silver, I would be surprised if people actually pass up these signals, thinking its just clad. But, I'm the greenhorn, and would love your opinions.

Thanks,

Zip.

Zippy,
Do some research on the area's your detecting on or better yet . Do some cold calling; find a old house thats not been hit. Get permission from the home owner and split your finds , you will find silver. Don't get discourage, if they so no,go to the nest old house on the block.
good luck