Too many pennies

Definitely! Get all the shallow targets out of the area so that the masked deeper coins will be able to be heard. Just go slow, at least you're finding coins! HH
NC

Hey coins are coins and all money spends the same ...

I just hope that your removing the trail of pennies does not cause someone to lose their way and get lost ... ... LOL ...

Best Regards,
Silver Hawk

NCBounty15 said:

Definitely! Get all the shallow targets out of the area so that the masked deeper coins will be able to be heard. Just go slow, at least you're finding coins! HH
NC

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Agreed ...

Best Regards,
Silver Hawk

Dig them all.... the good stuff is there... RickO

Yeah, I'll keep working the area -- can't figure out why the pennies all trended in a line. When I find a mixed group of coins in the same hole (couple quarters, pennies, dimes, etc.) I assume someone lost the contents of his pocket in one fell swoop.

But a fairly linear line of pennies is pretty odd... Must have been deliberate behavior. Though if it was a child, etc. it may not have been particularly rationalized.

Follow that line! Who knows some old timer millionaire could have made a trail of pennies leading to his hidden fortune! Or it could just be the work of a bored hobo or child, but who knows, mabey you'll get lucky!

I dont know what dectector you use but when I had my DFX I always just blocked them out. Using block or Disc edit the detector will glide over them and you wont even know they are there and you wont miss anything worth while. Most silver hits above +80 my using the Disc edit you may lose a small silver ring at best but it sure beats pulling those pennies. When I started doing this I was able to cover more ground and in the end find more. Still not sure you can always open the detector back up and hit the field again

Jamie

Maybe it's just me but I don't mind digging pennies at all. Beats pulltabs and foil all day long. I don't know how anyone can disc zinc pennies out without missing smaller silver items. On quite a few occasions I have set out to dig what I was 99.99% sure was another cruddy zinc only to be so very pleasantly surprised to find a small silver ring, earing, or chain.

z118 said:

Maybe it's just me but I don't mind digging pennies at all. Beats pulltabs and foil all day long. I don't know how anyone can disc zinc pennies out without missing smaller silver items. On quite a few occasions I have set out to dig what I was 99.99% sure was another cruddy zinc only to be so very pleasantly surprised to find a small silver ring, earing, or chain.

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Well here's a few good reasons why you block pennies I would have never ended up with all the silver I pulled with out doing it. Each 1 oz bar or coin is aprox 15-20rings rings I dont think I missed much at all. There has always been a deiscussion about blocking out ranges and losing a silver ring or two but I'll take the loss if in the end I can end up with this....

Jamie

jcham said:

Well here's a few good reasons why you block pennies I would have never ended up with all the silver I pulled with out doing it. Each 1 oz bar or coin is aprox 15-20rings rings I dont think I missed much at all. There has always been a deiscussion about blocking out ranges and losing a silver ring or two but I'll take the loss if in the end I can end up with this....

Jamie

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Can't argue with your results I suppose, but for me I still wouldn't want to disc out pennies. It's all about what's fun for you. If cherry picking is fun for you, great! If digging up pennies and loving the moment when you are sure you have another one and instead something unexpected and nice pops out, that's great too.

I do however remain absolutely convinced that using as little discrimination as possible will ultimately pay off, and that conversely, discriminating out any range will mean good items being missed.

I went back there again this morning and pulled another couple dozen zinc pennies. There's still many more, and I found a roughly 3-4' radius beeping like mad near the "line" of pennies. Found a Webelos neckerchief slide in the general area as well. Maybe there was a scouting event at some point there.

My detector is a Garrett GTAx 550.

But I think I'll hit a different area of that park, since if I'm going to dig clad or pennies, it may as well be quarters. I've pulled $10 or so in clad from that park and I know there's much more. It's a good Midwestern city park to search: about a century old, mature trees, not too trashy, surrounded by well-to-do $400K+ homes, good neighborhood.

I have to agree with Z on this. I have no problem at all digging pennies. They are worth money and can be converted quite easily. That in turn can be spent on silver coins or bars. I even dig all the old military brass I come across. Heck at $1.10 a pound it is worth scrapping them out.

To dig or not to Dig that is the Question.....

I don’t think I was agreeing or disagreeing on using discrimination. It's all in personal choice but all that silver was pulled in a year and a half and all that silver was pulled after I was shown how to use my discrimination. Before I was taught how to use my detector I dug everything that beeped and I'm sorry to say I found very little.

I think without discrimination my best day was about $11 in clad and when I started using discrimination I went well over $40 in just a matter of a few hours. Let’s face it 99% of all silver falls above +80VDI I’ve proven that.

I think the beauty of this whole thing is that Land Fisher found himself caught in a penny nightmare and having the ability to discriminate a penny would be in his benefit. After everything else is cleaned out and he still feels he may have missed some small silver then he can always go back over the park.

I remember discriminating a park to death pulling what I wanted and after that there was nothing left to do but open the detector up. I remember being not in a penny nightmare but rather a dime nightmare. I must have pulled about $5 in dimes and I was beat. Towards the end of my hunt I hit a silver ring and all the pain of digging those dimes went away.

Now that I have the Vision I find I am using the graph more and more instead of using discrimination. I don’t know I didn’t pay over $1000 to pull pennies and that goes for any of my detectors not only does pulling rotten pennies take away valuable hunting time it also takes away ground coverage.

Please don’t take my post the wrong way. Just a quick recap I was hunting with my XLT some 6 years ago and like I said I pulled everything and found very little. All proud and chest puffed out I rolled up 1300 pennies and decided to turn them in at the bank. $13.00 not a great amount but sure a lot of digging well the bank wouldn’t take them and back then I cleaned everything with a fine tooth comb. After that and all that work only to get told to send them to the mint, forget it. Not only have I found a better way to hunt but also a more profitable both in $$ and personal satisfaction.

Jamie

My Garrett GTAx 550 will discriminate a penny target, in general, but won't differentiate the kind of penny (Indianhead, copper, post-81 zinc) reliably. The crux of my problem is that I found an 1886 Indianhead in the same general area, and suspect there's more there -- but I have all these zinc pennies polluting the hunting ground.

Maybe I need to look into a higher-end White's model that provides VDI display, etc. Not sure I want to spend the big bucks just yet though.

Why the debate? Different people like to find different things. That's up to each individual. Personally, I keep it all. I'm also collecting all those bottle caps to see how many different kinds I can dig up.

kspharmboy said:

Why the debate? Different people like to find different things. That's up to each individual. Personally, I keep it all. I'm also collecting all those bottle caps to see how many different kinds I can dig up.

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Like I posted, it's all about what's fun for you. But if I were Land Fisher I'd dig all those pennies in the hopes something good came up with them, especially since an Indian head was found in the area.

Now I see your bottle caps and raise you some buttons and zippers....

kspharmboy said:

Why the debate? Different people like to find different things. That's up to each individual. Personally, I keep it all. I'm also collecting all those bottle caps to see how many different kinds I can dig up.

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I don’t know if it's a debate but I do know that after 4 years of struggling with exactly a topic like this one I would have liked for someone to tell me there's was a better way.

For four years not one person helped me with my detectors either I got misinformation or no information at all and would have loved to have heard here this is how it’s done. I sold my XLT because it really wasn’t producing and it was more valuable to me on the auction block than the detecting block.

Only back then I thought it was the detector now I know for a fact it was me. That’s why I was so adamant about the XLT vs. the DFX even though I didn’t find nearly as much with the XLT as I did with the DFX it wasn’t because the XLT couldn’t do the job my lack of knowledge proved I couldn’t do the job. Now I know for a fact if properly used the XLT will do the same thing as the DFX.

I know I really don’t like digging garbage or pennies I mean what’s the point if the banks won’t even take them and they jam in coinstar so debate there isn’t one. The fact is that time and ground coverage makes for good finds and while I'm pulling pennies the other guy who is spending his time like a true hunter is pulling silver and gold. Personally I got into this hobby because I liked it and the thrill of the hunt is very appealing to me. Hunter’s use a variety of methods to bring home the game, different ammo, riffles, camouflage, sound, sent, stands, anything and everything to get the job done. So I believe metal detecting is no different if you can’t go through the pennies you go around them.

Now the IH is a different matter both IH on my VISION and my DFX are worlds apart from the average Lincoln cent and are very easily identified. I don’t know what you’re going to do about that. I guess when I hear the words high end detectors I don’t think they are that high end anymore not when you can get a used XLT or DFX relatively cheap and again if used properly can be paid for in one season.

Look at Bruce completely happy with his eagle and he wasn’t going to spend the money on another detector. When he broke down and purchased the DFX he had it for about a month when he found a 14k ring with enough diamonds to pay for three of them. When I bought my Excalibur my wife was a little upset that I spent that kind of money on a metal detector. However inside four months I made almost four thousand dollars with it so when I bought my new Vision all my wife had to say was enjoy your self. So I don’t really know about high end detectors anymore they seem at first to be a cost but after a season or two issues like we have here with the IH and pennies become a none issue.

Jamie

Well, I went back to my park today after work -- about the 10th time I've been there. I went a bit to the west of the dreaded penny zone and didn't "butterfly" around. Instead, I worked out a grid like I was mowing the lawn and covered maybe 2,500 square feet. Found a few pennies and clad.

Then I went to the penny zone. All told, together with what I pulled before work, I yanked about 50 (!!) pennies out of the ground. They ranged from 1970's to 2002 or so in date. There's still more.

Also pulled out a Webelos neckerchief slide, and one of the flattened/impressioned pennies of the Science Museum of Minnesota's "Iggy" sculpture. Nothing astounding, though I remember it as a kid in the 1970's. A welded sculpture made of the tops of railroad spikes. I doubt the machine dies that produced these impressions is still around.

Then I began a random walk near the penny zone and hit a signal which could have been another penny, but could have been a ring also. Yanked out a sterling Taxco Mexico ring, TM-177. Silver and 5 inlays, including turquoise and onyx. Did some research (http://www.925-1000.com/mexican_marks.html) and learned it is 1979+. Found a matching bracelet on eBay also marked TM-177 (same silversmith) and they're asking $109. Bottom-line, I guess it's sometimes worth it to stick with it.

z118 said:

Maybe it's just me but I don't mind digging pennies at all. Beats pulltabs and foil all day long. I don't know how anyone can disc zinc pennies out without missing smaller silver items. On quite a few occasions I have set out to dig what I was 99.99% sure was another cruddy zinc only to be so very pleasantly surprised to find a small silver ring, earing, or chain.

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I agree with you. Of course I am just new and maybe this will change (I hope not), but I have fun just digging and seeing what I can find, it is a thrill. I enjoy the process as well as what I find.