Wheat to silver ratio?

[marcomo]

In Michael Chaplan's excellent book, The Urban Treasure Hunter, he said the expected wheat to silver ratio when detecting is 6 to 1.

My wheat to silver ratio is way higher than that. I haven't actually counted, but I'd say it's at least twice that if not a little more.

Chaplan's book came out in the early 90's so maybe it's changed since then? Wheat pennies were in circulation many years after silver disappeared.

I'm curious as to what ratio others are finding.

 

[Ron from Michigan]

Marcomo,my wheat to silver ratio depends on which detector I use.With the Minelab Sovereign 12 to 1 the Explorer ll 7 to 1 or better.HH Ron

 

[marcomo]

That's a really interesting post, Ron.

Is that different ratio between the detectors because your Explorer is better at sniffing silver out of the trash than the Sovereign?

Is it because the Explorer is deeper?

Is your Explorer finding less copper than the Sovereign, or is the better ratio just because the Explorer is that much better at finding silver?

 

[fwcrawford]

I have only been detecting for 3 years and in that time, I have found 140 wheat pennies and 35 silver coins.
This comes out to 1 silver coin to every 4 wheat pennies.
I was surprised that the ratio was this close.... thought it would be much higher until I figured the results.
I guess I'm doing pretty good!
Felix

 

[Ron from Michigan]

Marcomo,I think that's a good question that I haven't figures out.I think the Explorer is much easier to cherry pick silver,and is one of the best silver detectors.The Sovereign finds early wheat's best of all detectors I've used also this detector will find very deep silver.Anyway my opinion the Sovereign has an advantage with wheat's and the Explorer is better with silver.I have noticed a lot of user's on the Explorer Forum that their ratios are low.HH Ron

 

[edjcox]

Coin Values

Thought people might enjoy seeing what some of what you fid is worth



http://www.coinstudy.com/index.html

 

[marcomo]

OK, I must have had one too many of glasses of iced tea at dinner tonight so I'm still up and I actually counted.

And my wheat to silver ratio was lower than I originally thought: 7.06:1

I think I might have misjudged because at the time I originally posted this I was hitting an old site hard where I found about 25-30 wheaties, mostly in the teens and 20's. Also a couple Buffs, Indians, a Liberty Nickel and various other interesting old stuff - but no silver.

 

[Brokensignal]

12 to 1. And i have noted over the years that the silver that is found would likely be a dime.I believe people lost dimes easier because they are very thin and smaller round than a penny,making them harder to hold on to.

 

[Byron (TX)]

5.5 to 1 for me, hunting mostly urban sites too.

Calculated from a lot of hunt since October 2008 , I included Indian pennies in this count some of the silver coins were Barber and Seated coins, silver war nickels, and foreign silver coins in this count:

256 wheats

8 indians

48 silver coins

Lost 5 years of my finds database in a computer hard drive crash back then. I'd been logging my finds in it since 1978, had a backup before 2003.