coins...how deep?

Coin_Master

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i have been laughing reading reviews on the web of somebody having a 1500 dollar detector finding coins where someone used a 1000 dollar detector. This leaves me to thinking, how deep are coins? I have never found anything over 6 inches deep.

I going to buy a new detector this spring. But im not shooting for something with a lot of bells and whistles. I just want something that can find most coins, has a numerical TID, and pinpointing.

I have done soil tests with my bounty hunter 202 and found it can go about 8inches for a quarter, so is there really anything deeper then this?
 
to many factors comes into play to be able to give you a solid answer on coin depth.
and if you are finding coins at 8" what more could you ask for? some of my best finds have been less that 4" deep and 4-6" seems to be the "sweet spot"

also the price of the machine means nothing. give a guy who knows what he is doing a $200 machine and then take a new guy off the streets and hand him a $1500 machine I will guarantee you the guy with the cheap machine will find more.
my advice to you is stick with what you have until you fully understand it and then if you fill you need to upgrade look for a machine that has the features you want that your current machine lacks.
to many people enter this hobby{or up grade to soon} thinking if they start out/"upgrade" with/to a $1000 machine with all the bells and whistles they will find the good stuff there very first time out it and quickly realize they bit off more than they can chew...all them bells and whistles mean nothing at all if you dont know what they do and when to use them.
 
Without a doubt coins can be deeper than 8". Without a doubt it takes an experienced hunter with a very good detector to get below 8" consistently. Without a doubt "bells & whistles" when used right can help find coins deeper than 8"

That being said, the vast majority of the coins I find are 8" or less.
 
I agree with Relichound, the depth of most coins is under 6in. There are deeper coins of course but even a coin at 6in is easy to miss if you don't overlap your sweeps enough. Target masking can also be a problem. Knowing how to get the most out of your machine is the most important thing. I'll give you a good example.. I had been detecting a year or so and up-graded to a Fisher CZ-5 which was a top of the line machine and a very deep seeking detector. I met up with a fella that had a little 2 knob Tesoro, a pretty basic model. We were going to hunt a little clad at the park and I kinda felt sorry for the old fella. After all I had a new top of the line detector that did everything but dig the coin as far as I was concerned. After about 45 minutes of detecting we met up and I was anxious to show the old guy just how well I'd done. When I showed him my dozen coins he told me that I'd done pretty good so I asked him if he'd found anything. I really didn't want to embarass him too bad.:lol: The old guy reached into his pocket and struggled to get his hand back out. When he did I saw that he had about 3 coins for every one I'd found. He didn't just clean my clock, he left me in his dust.:lol: I learned a valuable lesson that day. A top of the line detector doesn't guarantee success if you don't know how to use it well. That old fart knew his detector well and it showed in his finds.
 
Someone had pointed out to me that sometimes it depends on the angle the coin is in the ground. For example, if it is flat, it is a larger target. If it is up and down, or at an angle, it is a smaller target and easier to miss. I often try another angle when I get a short signal, that reminds me of how the coin might be lying. Second sweeps from a different direction could be helpful :)

There are deeper coins of course but even a coin at 6in is easy to miss if you don't overlap your sweeps enough.
 
I too learned a valuable lesson some years back.

I had used my Tesoro for many years and was confident I was getting the very best my Tesoro had to offer. I had taken it to our local park many many times and found the occasional wheat, but that was pretty much it. I decided it was time to buy a new detector and liked what I was seeing with the White's, so I bought the top of the line.

My first hunt was at that local city park, and the new top of the line was finding old coins on almost every swing. I recovered over 2000 old coins in the next years in a park my old trusty could not touch. As I gained more experienced with the new detector my depth ability also increased as did my finds. I am now getting depth my older detector could never have achieved.

The depth ability of detectors hasn't increased all that much in several years, but the ability to separate and discriminate has.
 
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The depth ability of detectors hasn't increased all that much in several years, but the ability to separate and discriminate has.

Forgive my ignorance, but is this what you mean?
Your old detector would read the same deep coin, but not give you a clear signal that it was a coin? Is that what you mean.
 
I think what he means is that some of the newer coils can pinpoint coins that are closer together that may have been masked by multiple targets. I know that my DD coil for my fisher can pinpoint targets that are pretty close to one another.
 
I think what he means is that some of the newer coils can pinpoint coins that are closer together that may have been masked by multiple targets. I know that my DD coil for my fisher can pinpoint targets that are pretty close to one another.

We probably have a similar coil, my T2 has a 11" elliptical Double D coil.

So what you are saying is older coils would give off a bad signal instead of separating them?
 
I was really trying to point out that there has been some major advancements in a detectors ability to find coins in other areas than depth. I do believe detector technology has made deep coins within the range of the novice user. That is to say a very experienced person could get very good depth out of the older detectors, but todays top of the line detectors give the ability for even a novice to find very deep coins.

Give that same experience to the user of a top of the line detector, and they will get even deeper. But then depth is only one part of a successful hunt. Very trashy areas have become hunt-able thanks to better technology, which generally is better on the high end detectors.
 
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The depth ability of detectors hasn't increased all that much in several years, but the ability to separate and discriminate has.
I have thought the same thing. With use of the DD coil and The ability of a detector to NOT be confused of deep targets. I always find deep targets but the deeper I go and or smaller the target the more the ID wavers.
 
I re-read a bit of Chaplan's "Urban Treasure Hunter" this morning and if I recall correctly, he suggests that most coins are less than 6 inches, unless in an area of heavy sediment activity.

What I'm interested in knowing is to what extents coins are buried by incoming sediment vs. to the extent that they actually "sink" in-place. Some ramifications here:

1) Coins buried by new sediment (driven rain/melt water for instance) may be more common at lower hunting spots. And for every inch of sediment laid on the coin, it may well be that nearby higher/sloped ground has lost a bit. Could be shallower pickings above? But they may be sparser hunting also, since those coins would never have been as deeply/quickly buried, and the odds that someone surface-collected them shortly after being lost would be higher.

2) I read an interesting book "Reaching for the Sun: How Plants Work" (King): http://www.amazon.com/Reaching-Sun-How-Plants-Work/dp/0521587387. I came away with the feeling that plants, particularly trees, are basically mineral pumps. They suck minerals out of the soil below and re-deposit some of them on the surface (decaying leaves and other organic matter). It would be fascinating to see a sped-up cross-section of coins under trees, over a period of a century. How far down do they go, as the tree pulls out a minute amount of minerals/soil from below and moves them upward? What forces (roots) also work on the coin, in the opposite direction?

3) I've wondered about the extent to which coins "sink" in place. Even without incoming sediment or burial-by-organics, periodic rain storms + loose soil would seem to sink a coin a certain amount.

Would be interesting to perform experiments here. Soils with better drainage would probably sink a coin deeper, whereas tighly compacted soil might cause them to remain closer to the surface over the decades of seasons.

My Garrett GTAx 550 is one of the cheaper detectors with notch-discrimination and fairly reliable target ID. It would be nice to have a detector which is more accurate in judging trash from jewelry, before I bother digging. I'm not sure how the high-end detectors perform. How readily do they distinguish between a crushed aluminum can, bottlecap, pull-tab, and other junk -- vs. jewelry? I'm fairly happy with the depth on my unit, it's mainly target ID I'd like improved.
 
I think the expected standard, all things being equal, a coin sinks about 1/4" every 10 years. Of course this can vary depending on climate and conditions. What I have found in actual experience is that very few places meet that standard scenario.

Yards that have been rototill-ed can be very confusing places to someone new to detecting, but you learn to know the signs. One of those signs is recovering a clad at 6" and a wheat at 2" in the same yard. Another is vegetation. In a park full of old oak trees, coins can get covered deep pretty quick.

One of my favorite situations is the flood plain. Our city park is next to the Arkansas river which used to flood on an average of every 30-40 years. Each flood would leave a layer of mud from 3-6" deep. This park is over 125 years old and has seen many floods, but you would never know it by looking at it. There are still many many old coins laying at a depth beyond the detectors I have used ability. At 10", which is about the limits of my detector, I am only getting coins from the 30's and 40's. I know the old coins are there because I've dug them back to the 1880's from locations where the floods have not deposited as much.

This park has also served very well as a testbed for a detectors ability.
 
I am a firm believer that the man or woman operating the machine is way more important than the machine itself.

The human factors or experience, persistence and ability to find good places
simply crushes the add on value of a high end machine.

Simply put if you are no good with a cheap detector you will probably be no good with an expensive one.

On the flip side if you are awesome with a cheap detector you will have no need of an expensive one- though it certainly wouldn't hurt:lol::
 
I don't think anyone doubts that the person behind the detector is a major factor, but to believe a top of the line detector doesn't factor in is to believe there is no difference between a $50 detector and a $1,700 detector. I just don't believe that is the case. There are also too many variables involved to make it a simple call.

LOCATION:
Give a $50 detector to a novice and put them in a place where no detector has gone before, and chance are they would make some great finds. Put that novice in an area that gets hunted frequently, and chance are they will be very disappointed. We see that quite often. Take that same novice with a top of the line detector, and the chances increase quite a bit that they will make some good finds.

EXPERIENCE:
Give that veteran a $50 detector and put them in an area frequently hunted, and chance are they would be disappointed. Odds are better that they would make some finds, but in the end the detector is the weak link.

My experience I posted above is the perfect example. I had years on my old trusty detector, and was very sure that there was little I had missed. I had no experience on my new top of the line and it turned my old "hunted out" sites into new virgin territory in one day. All I'm trying to say is don't underestimate the value of a "better" detector. I did, and I learned a valuable lesson from it. I will now always know new technology WILL bring me more finds.

If you're fortunate enough to live in an area where any fair detector does you good, then I say great, but just remember this. Even that garden of eden will dry up over time as mind did, and then you'll need more than just experience. After 30 years of hunting our city park I can say with confidence, if you plan on coming to Dodge City and hunting my park, you had better bring more than experience. :D
 
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I'm going to throw in my two Wheaties and be brutally honest:

I owned a Bounty Hunter Land Star for a year. I only dug a single silver Rosie at about four inches from my Grandmother-in-law's back yard. I got frustrated and bought a White's MXT. I hunted the same parks and schools I did with the Land Star. Since January 1st of this year, I have dug 55 silver coins. Mind you these where in the same "hunted out" parks and schools. Only about a third of the silver coins I dug were beyond six inches.

I sold my Land Star and I am a happy man... :yes:
 
While old coins are a non-renewable resource in parks, there are places where people drop new jewelry and other valuables on an ongoing basis. Only exception to the rule of coin non-renewability I can think of is the astronomically low chance that a coin collector with a pocket full of goodies -- and a hole in the pocket -- visits the park. Otherwise, any newly dropped coin will be clad.

At this stage for me, my $500 detector still has about $350 to go until it pays for itself. Then I might consider upgrading. But I don't live in an area with gold, or a much longer (east coast) colonial history behind it. So it may take me awhile longer.
 
I appreciate it when posters tell how deep their finds were. It teaches me about what to expect.
 
I'm going to throw in my two Wheaties and be brutally honest:

I owned a Bounty Hunter Land Star for a year. I only dug a single silver Rosie at about four inches from my Grandmother-in-law's back yard. I got frustrated and bought a White's MXT. I hunted the same parks and schools I did with the Land Star. Since January 1st of this year, I have dug 55 silver coins. Mind you these where in the same "hunted out" parks and schools. Only about a third of the silver coins I dug were beyond six inches.

I sold my Land Star and I am a happy man... :yes:


I had a similar experience with my first detector Whites Classic I.D. Used it for the first year of the hobby & the only old coin I found was a Indian Head penny, It was about 1/4 inch deep..
 
While old coins are a non-renewable resource in parks, there are places where people drop new jewelry and other valuables on an ongoing basis.

True enough Land Fisher, but although clad is OK for some, it just doesn't do much for me any more. I rely heavily on the jewelry to carry me while I search for those virgin sites. That is just one of the reasons I choose to have all the bells & whistles.

I'm planning on an upgrade very soon to either the E-Trac or V3 I just haven't made up my mind. Right now I'm leaning toward the E-Trac, because I know Minelab does deep very well for all but gold. The V3, on the other hand, is a killer for gold and from what I have seen very good for deep silver as well. I'm quite sure that either detector will bring new life back to my old hunting spots.
 
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