Wheaties by the dozens but no silver

[BilldaCat]

Hello..

I have been detecting for about a year and seem to have a problem. I find pennies and clad all over the place, including many wheaties but I don't seem to be able to find silver coins -even in places where there almost has to be some available.

I have found a whopping one silver dime and one silver war nickle in my hunts which amount to at least a hundred or so hours of hunting.

I own a garrett gtp 1350 so I am sure my detector is sufficient, but can anyone clue me in to why I may be missing the silver?

This topic may be covered to some extent but I have never seen a very thorough discussion of this and my brother, who has been searching for a few years isn't finding much of any either. He has found more than I, but the places we are going are bound to have some silver and possibly gold rings, but we aren't hardly finding anything besides pennies(including many old wheaties) and some clad. It seems the silver is being elusive and we're wondering if we're missing something ... any ideas?


The places we are looking are not likely to have been hunted out and even if they had been hunted to some extent, I would expect a few silver coins and rings because of the size of the areas we're searching.

 

[BigCatDaddy]

You're probably not missing it, it's just not there more than likely. You don't say where you are located or what types of places you are hunting, but most of the silver in a lot of places have been scooped up already. Also, if you think about it, back in the, let's say the 50's, a quarter could get you a lot of stuff, so if you lost one, you went back and searched till you found it, I know I did!!(Oops, let the age cat out of the bag!!) I've been 'tectin 7 yrs. now and have only a handful of silvers, they're just not that many around here in Texas. As for rings, you should get a few. It was almost 2 yrs. before I got my first one. Once you figure out where to hunt them, they will start coming. Try to hunt grassy areas around swimming pools, swim beaches, soccer field sidelines to name just a few. Just keep that coil to the soil and goodies will come your way.

 

[Farnum]

Bill,

Like you I have been hunting with a GTP1350 but only for less than a year. I have found close to 1500 coins with a dozen or two being Wheaties. I have found only one silver dime, a Silver Open Heart Pendent from Tiffany's on a silver chain, one buffalo nickle, and several older nickles. As far as rings I have found nine this year but none like the first one I found with another detector. It was 10K with twelve small diamonds and a blue Sphere in the center real nice. The wife now wears it most of the time.

I think the Silver may have been hunted out and others just did not dig up the pennies. As for the nickles a great deal of people notch them out and as they say check your pants pocket I would bet the smallest number of coins of any type is the nickle. The largest a penny then a dime then a quarter. At least that is what is normally in my pocket.

Farnum

 

[Uncle Willy]

First of all metal detectors have been around since 1933 When Gerard Fisher invented them. Silver hasn't been minted since 1964. In the old days silver was the same as our folding money today and people didn't carry it in their pockets but in coin purses because it was to valuable to lose. When I was a kid my ma would give me a quarter and that would pay my way into a real movie, buy me a candy bar, box of popcorn, and a coke. Try that today. Most of the silver got cleaned out in the sixties and seventies when there were about a 100 detector manufacturers in this country peddling metal detectors from $18.95 on up. Belive me the area you speak of has been covered before.

Friends of mine who originated D&K Detectors here in Portland had a wooden milk crate heaping full of silver coins they had pulled out of the parks and schools here in Portland. This was back in the seventies.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Private property and old homes is about the only places where silver still abounds. Yeah a quarter back then would buy about what five bucks buys now. I remember during WWII the people working in the defense plants made a whopping forty cents an hour - so a quarter was quite valuable then and people were very careful with their money. Back then you could buy a real decent used car for $75. Same one today costs you several thousand.

Bill

 

[John-Edmonton]

The same thing happens to me too. I can hunt areas and pull many coins in the 40's and 50's, yet the silver seems to be missing. Strange isn't it. But, you got to keep digging. Sooner or later your number will come up.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah that's about it. You got some nice old goodies there. When I first started in this hobby you could practically scoop the coins up with a shovel but those days are gone forever and pickings will get slimmer with each passing year. I just hope the public stops hoarding the SAC dollars and starts carrying and spending them. They minted over a billion and that would help to be able to find those like we now find quarters.

Bill

 

[Dang]

n/t

 

[BilldaCat]

This will probably end up being long winded but gives an idea of the type of hunting and why I might expect a few more silver coins in the mix...


We are hunting in Ohio. The city I live in originated in the late 1700's. A lot of coins were lost that people didn't realize when they lost them. I too would have picked up a lost silver dime in the late 60's-early 70's but I know I lost some and would have had no clue where to look after the baseball game or wherever else I had lost coins. My lunch money was silver and who knows how much of the stuff I lost because I spent just about every waking hour outside playing some sort of sport.

In the search for silver, we have searched at places that don't appear to have much recent use...

A woods- next to where a school existed about 90 years ago.. no school there now. It's now a land lab for a school. The High school is now across a very busy street from this woods and the school has another woods next to it that actually gets used now as opposed to the old school's woods that was probably popular when the old high school was open. I found a camp shovel, several axe heads, a set of keys in a rotted away leather case, dozens of shotgun shell ends, musket balls, cans that were corroded away except for the tops and 100 year old bottles laying on the ground. Also .. several clad coins and a few wheats. Only silver found there so far was a war nickle. Best find was my brother's V nickle.. pretty neat find but I expected silver and possibly a class ring or two from the kids that went to the school there in the early 1900's. Yes, I generally dig up just about everything in places that are old and have a lot of metal because it didn't appear to have been searched before and certainly not thoroughly. Oh also .. about the 50th pull tab was one I decided not to dig as everything that day that said pull tab was.. a pull tab. So my brother dug it up and it was a kid's ring. Go figure.

Another odd place and odd finds... another wooded area that apparently once had a home or two (probably log cabins) in it next to a creek. The place coughed up two silver dimes from around 1910 to my brother. Other than that.. a bit of clad, maybe 5 wheats and a few various clad coins. Also.. a civil war army jacket button, many musket balls, and of course shot gun shell tops where no one would have been allowed to shoot a gun in quite a number of decades. Roofing nails ... also a possible dump area where there is glass/trash galore. Two dimes from the early 1900's and no other silver???

A hundred year old private home : about 15 wheat pennies ranging back to the 30's. a Musket flint lock striker mechanism, maybe 10 clad coins.. pennies,dimes, and quarters and of course one nickle. This one seemed like a sure bet for some silver and yet there has been none found there so far.

A private property lake... hundred or so clad coins. One silver roosevelt dime. Several fishing lures. Several pieces of fishing reels, A knife and sheath.. hundreds of bullet casings. A batting cage token ..

A park: a couple of non-precious metal rings, a bit of clad, and a wheat penny.

A school field. Shallow clad all around a soccer field.


I tried a beach at a state park lake and didn't find much of anything beyond a few clad coins. Apparently, the place gets scraped on a regular basis and I was using a Ace 250 at the time and it seemed to have problems with the sand/ground there. This was the place that helped me to decide to get a more advanced detector.


All in all.. very interesting finds.. but, in the end, a surprising lack of silver finds in my opinion. I did try burying a merc dime and checked it out with my gtp1350 and found that if it wasn't laying fairly flat or shallow, it didn't seem to be distinguishable from potential junk. I would guess that would partially be due to there being no "halo" effect from being in the ground over any period of time(maybe someone will find it one day as I left it there). This also made me wonder if my technique is lacking. For those thinking a detector makes all the difference, my brother was using a 40$ detector he got off of ebay to find the 2 1910 dimes while I didn't find anything of value in that particular place with a gtp1350.. it doesn't seem to be as much about the detector as the location and persistance above all else. Unfortunately, I'm still wondering.. where is the silver?

My brother has recently upgraded to a GTI 2500 but is definitely in the learning process as he seems to actually be finding less than with his old $40 detector ..but I borrowed it and found a few pennies within about 20 feet of where I borrowed it.. nice detector! Looks to be more confusing than my gtp 1350 but it locked onto several pennies right off that my detector hadn't recognized.

Anyway.. thanks for people's valuable insights .. had hoped for some magical ideas but I guess I'll just have to find better places to look and be more persistent.

 

[Mike T]

Wouldn't it be nice if you could open your front door , go to the nearest park and start finding Barbers and antique farmers gold rings? I also have wondered what was going on until I got on the internet and looked up Salem:Oregonarks on a search engine, and found most of the parks I frequented were built after 1960, so the chances became slim of finding silver.
I hated school but it seems if you're gonna find good stuff your gonna hafta study, not just the machine, but historical maps, topographical maps,etc. Its like Uncle Willy said alot of the easy stuff has been found, but by far not all.
The detectors they used then were crude and reckless compared to todays precise standards. for $215 you can buy a machine like the ace 250 that is a better detector than you could get for $700 back in the seventies.
Add to that the research capabilities of the internet and GPS, google earth, and anything is possible.
Its part of human nature to try for the easiest way of doing things(going to the same local spots) and I hate asking permission to detect but if you want results?
Your sucess in finding treasure will be limited only by your inability to use your imagination.
Make it personal, where did your grandparents shop, swim, where did your grandfather go to boy scout camp? ask the oldest person you know where did he watch fireworks as a boy?
I absolutley believe only 10% of the good stuff has been found, the simple stuff, the obvious.
I really believe you can set yourself up for failure by thinking your chances are slim,try and keep the overall viewpoint about just the easy stuff being found and remember luck is a wildcard in the race.
Anyways my 2cents. Mike T

 

[Uncle Willy]

I used a lot of those old, crude, detectors and many went quite deep, especially if you were in mild soil. I had a Fisher 441 straight VLF that picked up a nail head at 14 inches. Ain't many new machines will do that. Detectors haven't really come that far - just more bells and whistles. I used to have a Compass Relic Magnum 7 that I would put up against anything out there today. Wish I still had it.

Bill

 

[Mike T]

I started out with a Fisher 441, and a chest mount get up. I used to live then in Venice Beach and used to slowly walk the high tide line digging a coin every 5 or 6 feet, with other guys everywhere
I can do the Garrett thumb roll with my Freedom ace # and have a pretty good indication of the target, but I'm getting older and I'd like as much information as possible to base my decision to dig or not.
I still think in terms of what it cost back then to buy a decent rig compared to todays prices its no comparison ,I went out yesterday with my $109 radio shack 3300, found 3 mercs and other goodies.

from the State Capitol of Oregon, Mike

 

[Neil in West Jersey]

Just one word...RESEARCH...

You want silver...dont waste time at old schools. They have usually been hunted, and usually will produce mostly pennies.

go to the public library and find out where people with money went. I found a book called "THE HISTORY OF AMUSEMENT PARKS IN [my area]". I went the next day to the first park listed. It was an amusement park in the 1890's to 1911. The first thing I found was a barber quarter.

Do the research.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Go to the library and check out the entertainment sections of old newspapers to see where carnivals set up, where old drive-in movies used to be, outdoor skating rinks, etc.. Then check the religious sections to see where old tent revivals set up and church socials and rummage sales were held. Where Fourth of July celebrations and similar events were held, sites of old race tracks and sporting events.

Bill