Tell Us About Your "Trash" Signal That Turned Out To Be A Good Coin

[Critterhunter]

I thought it would be interesting to read the stories of others who have also dug "iffy" or "trashy" signals that turned out to be a good coin for one reason or another. We all know that no site is ever hunted out. Besides working the area slowly and looking for those good coin signals that still exist that are deep and soft or right next to trash, or going out and buying a new machine or coil to get deeper, there is also one other very productive method to produce good finds at "worked out" spots. That's digging out the trash in the hopes of finding a coin being masked by it.

This is a favorite method of mine in areas that have been hit hard but should contain some really nice older coins. In the process of doing this I often find a good coin that gave a really trashy or iffy signal for one reason or another. Perhaps the mineralization in that particular spot around the coin is bad; perhaps the coin was standing slightly on end and not providing a strong signal; perhaps the coin was sitting with another coin that caused it to register at a different than "normal" place on your visual ID; or perhaps there simply was a piece of trash like a rusty nail or piece of metal laying with the coin.

Any one of the above circumstances can and do cause a coin to visual ID in the wrong spot, sound scratchy, or act like a piece of iron with a coin spike in a certain spot. We've all learned various tell tale signs on specific machines that can indicate that there just might be a coin mixed in the signal and not just a false coin spike. However, we all know that no matter how good we get at deciphering a signal or how advanced our metal detector is, there simply is only one way to tell just what the object(s) is under the coil.

These are the stories I'd like to hear about. To give hope to those among us who think there are no good spots left to go to, who have given up on a site that once produced some great but easy finds, to encourage people to dig "anything above iron" in the hopes of pulling a coin out of the hole. When telling your story please let us know what type of detector you have and the size of coil you were using. A little history on the spot you've hunted might also prove of interest to others. I've got a story or two to share myself to get things started.

Yesterday I was hunting the woods in no particular area of interest when I noticed a slightly higher and flatter spot than it's surroundings. While it showed no signs of being an old homestead it did look to be a perfect picnic spot or hunting camp. Right away I popped three wheat pennies out of the ground. For this reason I decided to grid the area and dig anything above iron. More wheats surfaced and then at one spot I got a scratchy coin signal. Nine out of ten times I would pass this signal in a real trashy park but here in the woods where there aren't as many signals my tolerance level goes all the way down to the foil range. :') I was nicely surprised to see a 1920 merc come out of the ground at about four inches deep but curious as to why it had sounded so bad. Another check of the hole revealed an old rusty short nail that had been laying near if not on it.

At another spot a few months ago a friend had dug two large cents out of the side of a slope coming down off a ridge top. Since I hadn't done lately and had warned him prior to this that I might just push him off the ridge top with his next good find (after all, this was a spot I had found!) , he invited me over to sweep the hole that had given birth to the two large pennies. About six inches away from the hole I was getting a signal acting much like the numerous 22 shell casings we often find by the handfulls in certain spots of the woods, in that the ID would jump from coin, to round tab, to foil, to nickle, and variously back to penny or coin again. I've only got a certain tolerance level for these signals too after I'd dug enough to fill a pants pocket in a day and start to skip those. Of course I wasn't about to pass over this one, though, since it was right next to the plug that produced those 185x large cents. Out it pops- an 1858 silver 3 cent piece in perfect condition and not a trace of wear! It was roughly 4 to 5" deep and once again this confirmed to me that it's worth digging those "worthless" signals.

So, let's hear your stories to inspire others. Again, please list your machine, coil, and a little general information about the spot you were hunting such as it's history or what others have dug there in the past. No matter how hard a place is hit by others you can work that same spot for the rest of your life and keep producing keepers, provided you are willing to dig "anything above iron".

 

[Hombre]

OK Critterhunter

In your story you did'nt mention your detector, but I am guessing a QXT on your past posts.

My story is about a couple of hunts with my IDX Pro with Mr. Bills mod ( adjustable threshold & ground balance ) with 6 inch Bullseye coil. I just got back from a hunt today, and found an 1891 indian head penny, nothing special about the recovery except that it was shallow and sounded loud. It responded just like the many zinc pennies I found today, gotta dig them zincs. Then I found a silver dime about 5 inches deep, I could tell from the sound of the signal that it had iron in the hole with it. I had a friend come over with his detector and check the signal before I dug it, and he could only get a signal from one direction of sweep. I then dug a plug and told him that if the signal got louder after taking a plug out then it was usually a good target. I then run my coil over the hole and the signal did not get louder, but sounded the same. My friend run his detector back over the hole and said it was not a dig'able signal on his machine. I then dug a couple of inches deeper and came out with a 1957 silver rosie, nothing spectacular, but at least it was silver.

The hunt before this one was about a month ago (I can't get out much, you know job, family etc.) I was in a yard that had produced lots of coins from the 1890's, but was pretty much cleaned out. My only coin that I found that day was an 1880 indian head, and it was masked real good. From one direction of sweep my meter read zinc penny, the from another direction it read pulltab. and the audio signal was two beeps only inches apart. The first target dug was a little old lead sinker that was shaped like a bomb, the next target out of the same hole was a small piece of aluminum, I run my coil over the hole one more time and got a zinc penny signal and out came the indian head at about 6 inches deep. I'm get'n the oldies one at a time it seems. Later..........Hombre

 

[BarberBill]

This find wasn't a coin, but did involve a trash type signal. Was detecting in a park and had worked over to the swings and had nabbed a couple pennies and dimes just under the surface. Swung the coil over the area rubbed by feet in front of one swing and got a scratchy, different sounding signal. Walked a few steps away, thought about it for a moment, went back, pinpointed and dug. Up came a tiny scotty dog from a charm bracelet. When I got home and checked it with a magnifier, it turned out to be marked .975 silver. Another of many examples of why we shouldn't ignore signals that sound a "little off".

HH
BB

 

[flash5153]

This was Not really a trash signal but at a old house that was turning up some coins. I had a one way signal for a quarter and would not give anything from the other direction. It was reading deep and would give this same ID every time I passed the coil over it.
I went over it many times debating wheather to dig. Quarter one way, and 8 plus inches. Well It was a 1832 large cent at about 10 inches. Not sure why it only picked up from one direction, I did not find anything in the hole with it.May have been the depth,or on a angle.

One other time as I was cleaning out a different yard that was also giving up the good coins. I had a reading that was all over the boards. Different every pass it seemed. Stuck my digger in the ground and it stopped at about 3". Moved over a little and it went down.I could see something blue in the slot. It was a old plastic wallet, type with snapped change compartments. There was a Standing Liberty Quarter,2 mercs and a buffalo in one of the compartments.

Good Luck

 

[GRAY GHOST]

awww man. i got a good one for ya! lord, it was a HOT day about four summers ago - and i mean HOT. didn't really have any business being out to begin with. i had been pounding a known confederate camp across the creek from my house for months, but now the finds were becoming scarce. the handle on my old whites coinmaster was slippery from all the sweat, the mayflies were divebombing me constantly, mosquitoes were terrible, the ground was rock hard, and i was getting in a foul mood, not getting ANY signals. i wasn't properly prepared, either. man, this sucks, i thought, i'm gettin' outta here! so down the old dirt road i walked on the way out, swinging as i went.

i got a faint hit, thinking it was small deep iron. it wouldn't hit but from one direction. i reluctantly dug the hole, went about 6", but nothing. i kept chiseling away at the hard ground, when out popped a sweet 1773 spanish 2 reales on it's edge. i just sat there for a minute, reflecting on everything, including my own folly. i re - learned a lot that day. sometimes i need to put myself in check too.

1. always take water with you, no matter where you go, or how long you will be.
2. never give up. there's plenty of good stuff still out there, waiting to be found.
3. don't forget the bug spray. ever.
4. being impatient or in a bad mood can easily spoil a hunt.
5. and don't forget the ol' cellphone like i did!

i still have that old coinmaster; it served me well for many years. as i said before, i re - learned a lot that hot summer day, and i haven't forgotten it since! thanks for reading, and hh!

 

[bboy522000]

I was detecting an old home site using my M6 for many months and thought I had cleaned it out, but never found an old coin. One day I was wanting to go to a new spot but couldn't at the last moment, so I went back to this place. I was hardly getting any signal when I stumbled across a very loud vdi of about +10. I didn't want to dig it, but due to the lack of signals, I went ahead and dug. I thought for sure it was a small piece of tin, but I couldn't find it at 2in. So I kept diggin and it was at about 5 inches that a silver 1899 Barber dime!!! It was my first old coin!

 

[Sven]

How about a silver dime signal located with the White's MXT out in the woods that turned out to be iron----a 6 pound War of 1812 cannonball.

 

[Hombre]

How about a silver dime signal located with the White's MXT out in the woods that turned out to be iron----a 6 pound War of 1812 cannonball.

Hello Sven

I'm not familiar with the MXT series of White's, what does a dime signal VDI at? I Know big iron will read up scale on almost all detectors, silver dimes will read down scale on the VDI sometimes, depending on whether they are on edge, how deep they are and if they have small iron around them. I'm currious , because this has happened to me before, as well as the above poster (bboy522000) with his silver dime that read +10 on his M6. I'm always trying to learn something.

I think this has been an interesting thread, I'm hoping that this will generate a lot of interest on this forum, and I thank Critterhunter for starting this interesting post. Nice find Sven, it must be nice to hunt historical ground.

Hombre

 

[Elton]

I having seen many of your finds posted over the years.I admire you Sir.

You are an asset in the detecting world, and I'm sure in what ever else you partake in.

Let me tell about a bad signal that turned out good.

I was invited to detect an old Farm House site. In fact I was looking for what was an old family tale of buried "RICHES" by a great grandfather.
Not mine by the way. Just an Friend/Acquaintance, who inherited the land.

I got a terrible broke up sound, and said Na it's junk. I went on and detected for a few hours not finding much. But each and every time I came back over the junk sound spot it always hit hard but broken and trashy sounding.

I though I might as well dig this and get rid of the beep if nothing else. I dug down about 10".

To my surprise I hit a rusted lid...it was almost totally decayed except a bit of the center and the outer edge. I guess it was 5" round at one time.
I dug it out and thought now I know..

I rescanned the hole and now the signal pegged far right and sounded great. I dug down a little more and found a piece of Glass about 1/8 inch thick. The top
part of a vessel.. Still getting the signal pegged right and good sound I dug some more.

Further digging found the side of the glass jar..Kept digging around the side and it was big..about 12" down. I got my shovel and dug it out.
Inside the partial jar "TOP BROKEN OFF" covered and mixed with dirt were many, many silver coins that I could see.

My "Friend" or rather( acquaintance) grabbed that jar and ran in the house. 20 minutes later He returned, said thanks..and told me no more digging..he was going to buy a detector and do it himself. In fact he asked me to leave..............."GREED IN HIS EYES" LOL

LOL, I should have had an agreement but didn't. I never laid eyes on any of those coins again. Wasn't offered any of them, and he actually avoids me to this day ..LOL Lesson learned............... It was fun finding it, but a big let down to see someone act like he did. That's my true life experience Good/Bad one.

I might add..I have never found another jar of money.

 

[Hombre]

Hi Elton

Good story about the silver coin stash! You sould be glad that you found one as most people in this hobby only wish to find something like that. It is lesson in human nature, too bad he was'nt willing to share the riches with you, but it did not surprise me in the final outcome. If you could have gotten digital pictures of the stash, that would have been worth the experience.

 

[Elton]

or before we thought about recording finds. I expect more people have found caches than we know in years past.
Didn't even think about it being a cache truthfully. I was tecting for a friend looking for his great grandpas riches.

To this day I wonder if he found more, or that was the great wealth that was folklore in his family.

 

[Critterhunter]

Some very good posts. Thanks for sharing and I hope to hear more stories of "worthless" signals that turned out to be worth digging. Yes, I'm using a QXT Pro and the 9.5" coil. Forgot to mention that, and hope that others will also let us know what machine they were using to add to their stories so that others with the same machine might learn something.

That jar of coins story was great...up until the end when the guy ran off with the coins. The few guys I choose to hunt with and I have a standing agreement in the field. If we are together and one of us finds a cache then it's evenly split among us. Much like those who pool their money for the lottery, we figure it doubles or triples our chances of finding something like that. It also makes us all dig those bigger signals once in a while, particularly if they are near some kind of marker like a large rock, tree, or old post. For those who are interested in hunting caches one thing you can do is put a bunch of silver coins in various containers and see how the detector reacts. A glass jar with a glass lid should give a large coin signal. One with a metal lid might only read as iron, etc.

I've got another story from a few months back. We were hunting an old school when I was getting a somewhat scratchy penny signal at about 7" deep or so. Swinging the other way the signal would read mostly as iron. A friend checked the target with his 6000 pro xl and I think he said it was only nulling out as iron for him. Anyway, dug out an indian head penny. The soil had a high amount of iron in it and this caused the coin to give such a bad reading. Not a nail or other junk, just heavy iron mineralization. If I'm not getting easy and clean deep target signals at a site that should hold some old coins then I'll start digging the "iffy" stuff. Sometimes you find that certain soil conditions will only produce low grade signals.

Another nice thing to experiment with is a silver dime laying on edge. On many machines the signal will only sound off one direction and not the other. You might also get a "mirror" image type of two signals. Practice with what these sound and look like and dig those targets that act the same in the field. I'm willing to bet there are many more coins standing on end out there than people think.

A trick I some times use to try to isolate a coin "spike" next to a piece of trash is to check the depth of what I think is a coin and then slowly move the coil toward to trash signal. Watch the depth meter as you do this. If it goes deeper as you move away from what you suspect is a coin and then gets shallower as you move over the trash then chances are good you do have a coin next to trash. If the depth stays the same as you move from the coin spot to the trash spot then the odds are lower, but as always a good coin signal is always worth digging just in case.

Keep the trash to treasure stories coming!

 

[GRAY GHOST]

thanks for the kind words, el. the feelings are mutual, sir. i remember a couple of years ago when you first told us about that! it made my face burn then, as it does now. wow. the things money does to people. pure, unadulterated greed. but, that's ok... for what it's worth, we're still crediting you with the discovery. just awesome. i've had similar things [tho not as big] happen to me too.

like the time that old man snatched the silver ring out of my hand...the time when a soon to be ex girlfriend stole two valuable cw buttons from me....[worth thousands now]... or the time when the lady took the returned diamond/14k ring from me, only to slam the door in my face, no hellos, goodbyes, or thankyous, ...or the time when... oh well, you get my gist. sometimes it's hard to be us, el. but, we'll keep on trying. thanks, and hh!

 

[Sven]

How about a silver dime signal located with the White's MXT out in the woods that turned out to be iron----a 6 pound War of 1812 cannonball.

Hello Sven

I'm not familiar with the MXT series of White's, what does a dime signal VDI at? I Know big iron will read up scale on almost all detectors, silver dimes will read down scale on the VDI sometimes, depending on whether they are on edge, how deep they are and if they have small iron around them. I'm currious , because this has happened to me before, as well as the above poster (bboy522000) with his silver dime that read +10 on his M6. I'm always trying to learn something.

I think this has been an interesting thread, I'm hoping that this will generate a lot of interest on this forum, and I thank Critterhunter for starting this interesting post. Nice find Sven, it must be nice to hunt historical ground.

Hombre

It's been about 7 years ago, just after he snow melted and ground thawed. I do recall it locked on at silver dime, tone short short like a coin would and think it read depth at 7". So I dug into the ground which was filling up with water, still kept on pulling dirt and mud out and still got a good signal. Then hit a rock, figured I would scoop the rock out and keep on looking for that dime. As I pulled the muddy rock out of the water, the rock turned out to be a cannonball. I still went after that silver dime. But, the signal was no longer there. I was so hoping to find the silver dime.......I set the cannonball by a tree with my muddy gloves hanging in the branches as a marker. Damn to heavy to drag around in my goodie bag.

 

[Neil]

Found this quite a few years ago while hunting a drained out lake. it was a foil signal on my Sov and I was only digging those sounds because it was a lake and the possibility of gold rings was on my mind. I remember when I found it I didnt think it was real but I later took it to a coin shop and had it looked at and its real all right. The guy told me gold love tokens are rare, offered me a couple of hundred for it and I declined and think I will hold on to it forever.

Neil

 

[Cal_Cobra]

I don't typically dig foil signals (except at the beach), but I do dig nickel bouncers (nickel to foil, pull-tab, etc) and pull-tabs depending on the area, and they've found me some nice jewelery:

hh,
Brian

 

[Hombre]

Found this quite a few years ago while hunting a drained out lake. it was a foil signal on my Sov and I was only digging those sounds because it was a lake and the possibility of gold rings was on my mind. I remember when I found it I didnt think it was real but I later took it to a coin shop and had it looked at and its real all right. The guy told me gold love tokens are rare, offered me a couple of hundred for it and I declined and think I will hold on to it forever.

Neil

Hi Neil

That is just the neatest love token I have ever seen posted. I recognized the coin as a one dollar gold piece, so I looked it up in the red book. It is a Indian Head Type, large head, minted from1856 to 1889. It appears to be period engraved from this time span. It is just an amazing discovery, and my hat is off to you.

 

[Critterhunter]

WOW! That's one heck of a love token. Still looking for my first gold coin. You guys probably already know this but a study was done of several hundred gold rings. Most rang in the foil to nickle range regardless of size. Most rings that read in the round tab or penny range are made from junk metal. I've tested this myself and am amazed at the various size of woman's and man's rings that keep bouncing between foil and nickle as you sweep over them. If you play with the way they sound versus a square tab you can often hear that the ring will sound more "round and smooth", while the tab will tend to be a bit more harsh sounding.

On digging out the trash to find the coin...Remember once digging about three screwcaps out of the same hole before popping a v-nickle out. I wasn't hearing a good coin signal here, I just had decided to dig every trash signal above iron out of the ground for a while and see what might be under or in it.

Just the other day I was getting a deep COIN signal in between two large pieces of trash. The coin signal sounded thin in that it might be a dime on edge or something. It could have been a spike from the area between the two trash signals but I figured I'd dig it as the depth was about right for silver...6 or so inches. Out pops a buffalo. I check the hold again and the exact same coin signal was still present even after this plug was dug and the coin removed. Nothing else was further down in the hole despite careful checking. I was in fact just picking up a spike between the two pieces of trash and never was picking up that buffalo! Just was lucky enough to dig one signal and there just happened to be a coin mixed in there with it.

 

[Hombre]

Try this next time Critter

Dig out the trash signals first, as this will mess with your better signal. A lot of the time I'll get a good signal next to louder trash signal, I will dig the trash out to find the goody next to it.

 

[Neil]

Found this quite a few years ago while hunting a drained out lake. it was a foil signal on my Sov and I was only digging those sounds because it was a lake and the possibility of gold rings was on my mind. I remember when I found it I didnt think it was real but I later took it to a coin shop and had it looked at and its real all right. The guy told me gold love tokens are rare, offered me a couple of hundred for it and I declined and think I will hold on to it forever.

Neil

Hi Neil

That is just the neatest love token I have ever seen posted. I recognized the coin as a one dollar gold piece, so I looked it up in the red book. It is a Indian Head Type, large head, minted from1856 to 1889. It appears to be period engraved from this time span. It is just an amazing discovery, and my hat is off to you.

Thanks Hombre,
Thats what the coin dealer told me also, about the engraving. He said he would guess the chain to be early 1900s, still pretty old. When I first looked it up I thought it might be a $3 gold piece but indeed it measures out as a $1 gold piece. It came out of pitch black mud and Ive never cleaned it, it is as it was found.
I would love to find another one
Neil