Another factor is if your hunting on a slope that is constantly getting the top layer washed away with every heavy rain. I have found 4 Colonial coppers from the early 1700's on a slope, that were only 3" deep. You could tell that the dirt road was being washed out with the rains due to all the smaller rocls exposed on the slope.
ABOUT COIN DEPTHS
- Thread starter Carol K
- Start date
YARDBYRD
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2006
- Messages
- 408
I think like everything else with metal detecting we have so many things to consider about coin depths. I notice that i find pennies deeper in soil where the ground is bare. Just wondering if the lack of a typical grass root system is the reason i find them deeper there. Do the roots of the grass effect how the coins sink?
Once I found two wheaties in the same hole at 8" with the eclipse 5.3 coil on the mxt and the signal rang out loud and clear. These coins could have been this deep because of their age (1911 and1913) and time in the ground or it could have been fill dirt.
The reason I mention fill dirt is because i remember back in the early seventies when a lot of folks had fill dirt put in their yards to level them out. I know my Dad had a bunch brought in, i would say a foot or so which after settling i'm sure ended up being 4 or five inches. Still that would put whatever was already there that much deeper.
So much work has been done on grounds in towns and cities (dirt brought in, dirt removed) that it is hard to figure why coins are found where the are but it could explain why i have found Mercs at 1" and Zlincons at 7". All i know is I would love to have all the silver and gold that has been scooped up in a backhoe or endloader bucket and dumped in a dump truck and hauled of to who knows where. Yet another reason for a detectorist not to own that type of construction company. The sing would read "ALL Dirt loads to be brought back to shop to be carefully sifted through before continued to destination".
Once I found two wheaties in the same hole at 8" with the eclipse 5.3 coil on the mxt and the signal rang out loud and clear. These coins could have been this deep because of their age (1911 and1913) and time in the ground or it could have been fill dirt.
The reason I mention fill dirt is because i remember back in the early seventies when a lot of folks had fill dirt put in their yards to level them out. I know my Dad had a bunch brought in, i would say a foot or so which after settling i'm sure ended up being 4 or five inches. Still that would put whatever was already there that much deeper.
So much work has been done on grounds in towns and cities (dirt brought in, dirt removed) that it is hard to figure why coins are found where the are but it could explain why i have found Mercs at 1" and Zlincons at 7". All i know is I would love to have all the silver and gold that has been scooped up in a backhoe or endloader bucket and dumped in a dump truck and hauled of to who knows where. Yet another reason for a detectorist not to own that type of construction company. The sing would read "ALL Dirt loads to be brought back to shop to be carefully sifted through before continued to destination".
I enjoyed reading all the comments and theories, all based on common observations by experienced detectorists. This collective knowledge is nowhere else on the Internet, I think.
Soil is so variable from area to area and even within a smaller given area, and people's activities that have changed and/or altered soil conditions by filling, scraping, mulching, and so forth, along with the wide variety of weather conditions depending upon where you live, animal activity, and the slope of the soil surface all enter into the effects documented by coinshooters. That is what makes it both fun and challenging to detect for coins and artifacts, in my humble opinion.
Soil is so variable from area to area and even within a smaller given area, and people's activities that have changed and/or altered soil conditions by filling, scraping, mulching, and so forth, along with the wide variety of weather conditions depending upon where you live, animal activity, and the slope of the soil surface all enter into the effects documented by coinshooters. That is what makes it both fun and challenging to detect for coins and artifacts, in my humble opinion.
Quicksho57
Junior Member
That is so true. 35 years ago I borrowed a friends radio shack detector and used it in my front lawn. In a 20 square foot patch, I found 3 silver dollars just under the grass. In that same patch I also found 2 clad pennies and a clad nickel. On the same lawn I also found a bracelet that my mom gave to my dad just before going overseas to join the war in england. The clad and the bracelet were app 6 to 8 inches down. Go Figure....
buttugly74
New Member
thanks for all the numbers and all the info
Surf Master
Forum Supporter
15dd/coin depth/delay
I thought i would tell all The F75 users that digging at new depths is going to be delayed for a few more weeks,I called 1st Texas today and they told me the 15dd coils, now will be sent out to the sellers the beginning of May,with no set date,Happy Hunting Earl Update i recieved mine 4/28/2011,i was the 1st in line,preordered,some dealers only recieved a small amount,mine 5 out of 50 ordered,the next batch will be sent out around the 15th of May,1st impression,its's Hudge,Heavy,White,i hope the performance is a 10 +
I thought i would tell all The F75 users that digging at new depths is going to be delayed for a few more weeks,I called 1st Texas today and they told me the 15dd coils, now will be sent out to the sellers the beginning of May,with no set date,Happy Hunting Earl Update i recieved mine 4/28/2011,i was the 1st in line,preordered,some dealers only recieved a small amount,mine 5 out of 50 ordered,the next batch will be sent out around the 15th of May,1st impression,its's Hudge,Heavy,White,i hope the performance is a 10 +
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pulltabMiner
Forum Supporter
Gophers and Moles
Funny, just this morning as I was hunting my local park, I stepped in a gopher condominium and as I sank into the holes it occurred to me that recently dropped coins would also sink as the gophers dug around and loosened the soil. Just a theory!
Funny, just this morning as I was hunting my local park, I stepped in a gopher condominium and as I sank into the holes it occurred to me that recently dropped coins would also sink as the gophers dug around and loosened the soil. Just a theory!
ohiochris
Elite Member
Take a bowl of dry sand , place a coin on top of the sand , then stick in on your washing machine as its running. The coin will eventually sink to the bottom. Its hard to think of soil being that fluid but it is , just less so and it takes longer for the coin to displace the soil around it. But it does , and at different rates depending on location and soil content. When you look at the ground it dont appear to be moving but there are tiny vibrations in the soil all the time not visible to the human eye. If you could watch time laps photography , close up , of a section of ground you would probably be able to see some of the movement.
PhotoRob06
Forum Supporter
Midasmulligan
Forum Supporter
I used to own a demolition and excavation business and over the years encountered a wide variety of interesting conditions and circumstances.
The basic physics involved with any hill or slope is always that whats on top is steadily working its way toward the bottom. Wind and water erosion formed the Grand Canyon, so it's not hard to understand the forces at work. The Dust Bowl was responsible for stripping as much as 75% of some Midwestern States' topsoil and redepositing it from Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean.
Then we have the actions of man, and over the centuries they have been incredibly significant in altering our landscape. A quick look at the earliest maps of New York and Washington D.C. should make that clear. D.C. was essentially just a huge swamp and home to a multitude of skunks (well alright so maybe it hasn't really changed that much).
Pittsburgh made most of the steel that built America's Industrial Revolution and yet today you couldn't find a mill anywhere. Years ago there was a slag heap south of town that was probably one of the largest man made objects on the continent. I can remember seeing the giant Euclid prime movers like so many ants climbing and descending the slopes for years. The last time I was in Pittsburgh the entire mound was gone. It was as if an entire mountain had just been dug up and moved.
Here in Baltimore the changes to the city's waterfront are so drastic over the last 50 years that you wouldn't recognize it as the same town. Between subway tunnels and Interstate construction there's not much below ground that hasn't been rearranged. Just like Chicago, Baltimore had a great fire. While doing some renovation work on some buildings on the west side we discovered that the block we were in had been destroyed. The new buildings were simply built right on top of the old. The burn debris had just been shoveled in to fill the basements.
During the city's renaissance in the 70's I worked on some of the first urban homesteads, 9' wide row houses that dated back almost two hundred years. After spending days peeling up layers of old linoleum (they were separated by perfectly preserved newspapers roughly a decade or two apart and we couldn't stop reading) we finally pulled up the old floor boards. The floors were just planks nailed across timbers laid in dirt. The really interesting part was the collection of marbles and coins that the rats had sequestered down below. Several of the coins went back as far as the early 1800's.
An old friend's family owns one of the oldest and most beautiful homes in our county. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger and could never figure out why their basement looked so strange. Years later we learned that the old wooden shed out back had actually been a carriage house, and that the basement had housed a horse stable. The original drive wrapped completely around the house and was at a level some 6' below the front porch. Today there's no evidence of the round-about drive and the porch is only a 2' step up from the drive.
We tore up the slab under a school built in the late 30's. The concrete had been poured right on top of top soil rather than stone or compacted fill. As a result over the years the organics continued to decompose and lost significant volume. So much so that when we tried to cut strips of the floor out it all started to collapse because there was a two foot void formed underneath. Not 20' away we had to dig a pit for a new elevator and it was solid yellow clay that tormented us for a couple of weeks. That I assure you had not budged since Christ was a child.
Part of my family is from the farmland where the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam was fought. A lot of the farms stayed in the family over the years and even today spring plowing continues to bring up everything from bones to buckles to bayonets. If stuff's sinkin' it ain't exactly been in a big hurry over the last 170 years.
To sum it up, the more ya think ya know the less ya know. Sometimes I'm sure the back ground helps, but the circumstances are so varied that it's impossible to develop any hard and fast rules on this. It's all very interesting, but you just can't possibly account for all of the variables.
The basic physics involved with any hill or slope is always that whats on top is steadily working its way toward the bottom. Wind and water erosion formed the Grand Canyon, so it's not hard to understand the forces at work. The Dust Bowl was responsible for stripping as much as 75% of some Midwestern States' topsoil and redepositing it from Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean.
Then we have the actions of man, and over the centuries they have been incredibly significant in altering our landscape. A quick look at the earliest maps of New York and Washington D.C. should make that clear. D.C. was essentially just a huge swamp and home to a multitude of skunks (well alright so maybe it hasn't really changed that much).
Pittsburgh made most of the steel that built America's Industrial Revolution and yet today you couldn't find a mill anywhere. Years ago there was a slag heap south of town that was probably one of the largest man made objects on the continent. I can remember seeing the giant Euclid prime movers like so many ants climbing and descending the slopes for years. The last time I was in Pittsburgh the entire mound was gone. It was as if an entire mountain had just been dug up and moved.
Here in Baltimore the changes to the city's waterfront are so drastic over the last 50 years that you wouldn't recognize it as the same town. Between subway tunnels and Interstate construction there's not much below ground that hasn't been rearranged. Just like Chicago, Baltimore had a great fire. While doing some renovation work on some buildings on the west side we discovered that the block we were in had been destroyed. The new buildings were simply built right on top of the old. The burn debris had just been shoveled in to fill the basements.
During the city's renaissance in the 70's I worked on some of the first urban homesteads, 9' wide row houses that dated back almost two hundred years. After spending days peeling up layers of old linoleum (they were separated by perfectly preserved newspapers roughly a decade or two apart and we couldn't stop reading) we finally pulled up the old floor boards. The floors were just planks nailed across timbers laid in dirt. The really interesting part was the collection of marbles and coins that the rats had sequestered down below. Several of the coins went back as far as the early 1800's.
An old friend's family owns one of the oldest and most beautiful homes in our county. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger and could never figure out why their basement looked so strange. Years later we learned that the old wooden shed out back had actually been a carriage house, and that the basement had housed a horse stable. The original drive wrapped completely around the house and was at a level some 6' below the front porch. Today there's no evidence of the round-about drive and the porch is only a 2' step up from the drive.
We tore up the slab under a school built in the late 30's. The concrete had been poured right on top of top soil rather than stone or compacted fill. As a result over the years the organics continued to decompose and lost significant volume. So much so that when we tried to cut strips of the floor out it all started to collapse because there was a two foot void formed underneath. Not 20' away we had to dig a pit for a new elevator and it was solid yellow clay that tormented us for a couple of weeks. That I assure you had not budged since Christ was a child.
Part of my family is from the farmland where the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam was fought. A lot of the farms stayed in the family over the years and even today spring plowing continues to bring up everything from bones to buckles to bayonets. If stuff's sinkin' it ain't exactly been in a big hurry over the last 170 years.
To sum it up, the more ya think ya know the less ya know. Sometimes I'm sure the back ground helps, but the circumstances are so varied that it's impossible to develop any hard and fast rules on this. It's all very interesting, but you just can't possibly account for all of the variables.
mr_hippie
Senior Member
Very interesting read! I live in an area that was settled in the 1600's but 99% + of everything you see was built in the last 75 years. And even looking at 200 year old houses and trying to imagine what the land immediateley surrounding those houses looked like is about impossible.
Midasmulligan
Forum Supporter
If ya get a chance visit Petersburg Battlefield. It's immense, as the ultimate battle lines stretched for miles and miles all over the surrounding countryside. This early example of trench warfare left little or nothing standing between the lines and yet what isn't now houses and roads is secondary forest growth so huge you couldn't hardly imagine the scene without it. Most of the old earth works are now nothing more than little bumps in the ground. I don't recall the particulars of the great crater that was blasted by the Union in one underground assault, but I don't believe there's any evidence of it remaining at all...and that was a blast that was heard for hundreds of miles.
It's difficult to appreciate just how efficient the incessant forces of wind and water are at moving mountains. When I was in the military we trained in a really cool literal sand desert that I think was called Juniper National Park or something (Washington or Oregon I believe). We used it to practice celestial navigation, among other things, because topographical maps and charts were useless. There would be a hundred foot high sand hill to your east when you bivouacked and it would be nearly gone 12 hours later.
I have a pretty serious slope on part of my property (about 30%) and have actually measured an increase in the elevation of the land at the base of the slope of nearly a foot in the last 12 years. Part of it is just me being lazy and trying to dump topsoil on top of compacted clay, but the point is that the actions are impressively cumulative in relative short order. Hence the uselessness of any "General Rule".
It's difficult to appreciate just how efficient the incessant forces of wind and water are at moving mountains. When I was in the military we trained in a really cool literal sand desert that I think was called Juniper National Park or something (Washington or Oregon I believe). We used it to practice celestial navigation, among other things, because topographical maps and charts were useless. There would be a hundred foot high sand hill to your east when you bivouacked and it would be nearly gone 12 hours later.
I have a pretty serious slope on part of my property (about 30%) and have actually measured an increase in the elevation of the land at the base of the slope of nearly a foot in the last 12 years. Part of it is just me being lazy and trying to dump topsoil on top of compacted clay, but the point is that the actions are impressively cumulative in relative short order. Hence the uselessness of any "General Rule".
dgaines400
Full Member
why does my metal detector go off when Im on top of a old burn pile where I can find any metal?
woodstock
Elite Member
Years back I read that the sinkage equals about a 1/16" per year and it's not really sinkage at all, it's coverage over the coin from weather, leaves, dead grass and such. That's why sometimes you'll find old grass under a coin or bottle cap. I really don't think the psyical weight or densitity has any effect on pushing a coin down deeper. If that were true then a half dollar would sink faster and deeper than a dime or penny and it doesn't. I base this on real finds where you dig a half at 4" and a IH at 8" in the same lot. And it's easier to push a smaller object down than a larger object because theres less mass below it.
And it's easier for a small round object to sink farther than a larger one, it's the total mass getting covered by debris causing it to appear to sink. The bigger the object the larger the mass under it making it harder to be pushed down. I think that why coins on edge seem to be deeper, less mass to stop the sinkage. Weather helps it way as well.
And some disagree about "halo" effect. But I know it happens after years of the coin sitting in the same spot and it sweats it's minerial content around it making it a larger target. Just my two IH cents worth on this subject. Happy Trails, Woodstock
And it's easier for a small round object to sink farther than a larger one, it's the total mass getting covered by debris causing it to appear to sink. The bigger the object the larger the mass under it making it harder to be pushed down. I think that why coins on edge seem to be deeper, less mass to stop the sinkage. Weather helps it way as well.
And some disagree about "halo" effect. But I know it happens after years of the coin sitting in the same spot and it sweats it's minerial content around it making it a larger target. Just my two IH cents worth on this subject. Happy Trails, Woodstock
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horseman918
New Member
I assume you mean "Can't" find any metal. It happens. Sometimes there's iron-rich soil. Iron oxide (rust) can do the same. Happens to me a lot when I go out.
Mortifercain
New Member
thats great info
thanks im new and that explains allot for me.
thanks im new and that explains allot for me.
PhotoRob06
Forum Supporter
On a related note, my house is sinking at about the same rate I would imagine many coins I've dug have sunk. 6 inches give or take, and not at all uniform. The whole structure is out of square to the point that custom window frames needed to be made.
It has a stone foundation (1876?) that's been sinking at different rates at any given spot. However, last week I found a 1901 indian ON TOP of the ground outside one of the windows next to a bush. I only picked it up to remove a pesky zinc signal from the garden, and only then discovered what it was.
So sometimes coins don't sink at all. Does this mean that larger objects (house) sink faster? That would go against all I've learned from finding dimes so much deeper than quarters.
I just don't know - but finding that IH completely changed my outlook regarding coin depths. There have been other cases of very old surface finds also, which seem to be the exception - but why? I have no idea.
It has a stone foundation (1876?) that's been sinking at different rates at any given spot. However, last week I found a 1901 indian ON TOP of the ground outside one of the windows next to a bush. I only picked it up to remove a pesky zinc signal from the garden, and only then discovered what it was.
So sometimes coins don't sink at all. Does this mean that larger objects (house) sink faster? That would go against all I've learned from finding dimes so much deeper than quarters.
I just don't know - but finding that IH completely changed my outlook regarding coin depths. There have been other cases of very old surface finds also, which seem to be the exception - but why? I have no idea.
dan
Elite Member
There have been other cases of very old surface finds also, which seem to be the exception - but why? I have no idea.
I once found three Indian head pennies just 1/4-inch deep, in an often-hunted park.
Granted, I found them after a drought in a spot normally wet and mushy, but still - NOBODY had ever swung a detector there before?
Weird.
