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I would have to say 6 to 1 is about average- that would probably take into account all aspects of each hunt: site, ground, depth of finds, machine and its settings, hunting speed, my ears (not so great now). I have found as many as 20 wheats and no silver on a hunt, then a month or so ago 4 silvers and 1 wheat (all 1940s). Somebody could've beat you there and cherry picked the silver. Taller grass one day.
Honestly, good question, I don't know. Anyone else?
From my personal experience, if I dropped a dime or a quarter even a nickel these days I'd wait for it to stop rolling and snatch that sucker back up, but a penny probably not. Maybe folks kept a closer eye on that silver back then, maybe some of the cough, cough older folks have some insight on that theory.
that 6 to 1 ratio might have been true 20 years ago, but these days it is much higher for me at least. wheat pennies are common finds but silver coins are getting harder to find.
back in the early 80's it wasn't uncommon to bring home 6-10 silver coins each hunt. of course this was was from yards that had never been hunted before and were loaded with all kinds of coins. today if a couple silver coins show up during a hunt it was a good day for me............roger
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.
I have a woods near my home that formerly had a large housing project on it during WWII and I am pretty certain it was never hunted before. I will have to count to be exact but by guessing, I have found 200-300 wheat pennies and 20-30 silver coins. If you count war nickles it would be a bit more.
So, roughly 10-1
Roughly 12-1.I have noted over the years that the silver that is found,a very large percent of the time it would be a dime.My thinking on that is that dimes are very hard to hold on to especially the heavier silver dimes.Being smaller than a penny and thinner.Anyway i have found a greater percentage of silver dimes compared to other silver coins.
One other twist to this issue and a question. Can you discriminate out(knock out) Wheats and still get good signals on Silver Dimes on your Tesoro(or other) machines?? OR are they too close together on the discrimination scale and it cannot be done?
On my Musketeer Advantage it cannot be done, because at the very highest discrimination setting possible, pennies are still detected, along with dimes of course.
No david i have never heard of this being done on any metal detector.By the way i to have a Musketeer and think a lot of it as being a great detector.If you are finding wheat's there is a good chance you are about to hit silver so i love finding wheat's!.
Why would you eliminate wheats? Besides the fact that (as brokensignal stated) silver coins are usually mixed in, there are some good wheats to be found. In an earlier post I showed the 1914D wheatie I dug (red book $150- $200 penny). In a post about a month ago i dug a 1914S wheat ($20- $25 penny). If you must leave em' there, I'll dig 'em.
I have a woods near my home that formerly had a large housing project on it during WWII and I am pretty certain it was never hunted before. I will have to count to be exact but by guessing, I have found 200-300 wheat pennies and 20-30 silver coins. If you count war nickles it would be a bit more.
So, roughly 10-1
I just did a hard count for the last year and was right on. 304 wheat pennies. 30 silver coins. 10-1
If you count war nickles, 42 silver coins. 7-1.
Dimes are definitely more common. My rundown of silver for the past year:
26 Mercs and Rosies
12 War Nickels
1 Barber Quarter
1 Barber Dime
2 Washington Quarters
1 Standing Liberty Quarter
1 Walker Half
