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.

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.

It's 7.06:1 which is lower than I would have guessed before I counted.

I'm curious as to what ratio folks are finding with the V3?

 

[BHNugget]

As of right now,my wheat/silver ratio is 4:1 Now,my clad to pre-1960s coin ratio is something else entirely.It would be safe to call it astronomical.
Seriously,I'll need more finds to get a more realistic ratio.I know that the places I try to hunt the most,it was more likely for a kid to lose a penny than a silver coin.

 

[OregonMike]

My finds so far with the V3--

78 wheat cents
6 silver dimes
2 war nickels

for an average of almost 10 to 1.

Some people don't count war nickels as silver coins, since they're just 35% silver. In that case, the ratio is over 12:1.

However, 27 of those wheats, and 1 war nickel, were all found in the same yard, so I guess that skews things a bit. If you take that one yard out of the mix, there are 51 wheats and 6 silver dimes, for a ration between 8 and 9 to 1.

No matter how you slice it, that is too high and I want some more silver!!!!

Mike

 

[Monte]

Well, perhaps a combination of location, technique, and patience/persistence. Also, I don't count "silver war nickels" as part of my silver coinage. Only the good 90 silver coins fit that category with me. I don't think there is a hard, fast rule that you can apply, and I'll share an example or two.

First, we can't really ask about "wheat-to-silver" ratio because "wheat-backs" only date from 1909 thru 1958, where as common US silver coins were minted for six years after that, and some silver coins date well before wheaties, such as Barber 10