Wheat to silver ratio - Final tally :tesoro:

[marcomo]

Several months ago I went through a period where I was finding a lot of wheat pennies but no silver.

It seemed to me that my ratio was much higher than Michael Chaplan's 6-1 ratio that he suggested was the average in his excellent book, the Urban Treasure Hunter.

When I actually counted my ratio was 7.06 to 1.

I started by asking on a couple forums I frequent what ratio others were finding.

Then I expanded it to several other forums.

Below is the average ratio from each forum I asked the question on. The total number of responses is in parenthesis.

I tried to use my best judgement on less than concrete responses. If someone said 7 or 8 to 1, I averaged it to 7.5 to 1. And I only tallied reponses where actual numbers were given.

This is by no means a scientific survey, since a lot of people, most people actually, were just making a best guess. And I didn't ask in every forum. But the final results were kind of interesting.

I put these in order with the forums with the most responses on top and the least on the bottom.



Minelab Explorer - 6.6 to 1 (10 responses)

Tesoro - 9.22 to 1 (9)

White's Main Forum - 6.9 to 1 (5)

Fisher F Series - 6.75 to 1 (4)

Teknetics - 10.3 to 1 (3)

Minelab E-Trac - 5.25 to 1 (2)

White's Spectra V3 - 7 to 1 (2)

White's MXT - 2.2 to 1 (1)

Garrett - no reponses

Bounty Hunter - no responses



When you put them all together the aggregate average of all responses is 7.41 to 1. Not too far off from Chapman's book, and real close to my own average.

 

[just-dig]

I've wondered if maybe silver is more easily masked by other targets than copper based coins or if maybe it's just the fact that silver was more easily spotted on the ground after loss than a copper penny would have been? I also wonder if the statistics you've posted would be affected by how they were hunting as far as settings go? For instance were the people with the lower ratio cherry picking, rather than digging everything above iron or foil?
In my mothers yard I've dug 14 wheats, 1 indian, and five silver coins. In another yard close to hers I've dug nine wheats and only one silver coin. The biggest difference I can see in the two yards is the amount of trash in the ground. The yard with only one silver is loaded with iron and rusty tin. It's almost a solid blanket of trash where my mothers yard is much less trashy.
So is it silver is more easily masked by trash than copper? Or is it location, or was silver more easily spotted and picked up after loss or a combination of all three?

 

[bhcarl]

n/t

 

[bhcarl]

More cent coins in circulation than silver coins, so more are lost, just my thoughts

 

[GaryF]

Good list.

I would also take into account where the users of each machine fall into as far as style of hunting. You don't often find Minelab users in tot lots with those two ton tanks attached to their arm....there are always exceptions. I believe that if you are going to spend a ton on a machine with that much depth and that much information at your disposal "AND learn how to use it" you will soon cherry pick the good signals and your silver recovery ration will go down.

But I would like to add that if the MXT users are getting the ratio that you posted..... I want one....lol

Good post man.