CarsonChris
Elite Member
I’m into my 3rd month of detecting and have yet to find silver. I’ve found clad down to 8”. Has the silver been found in the areas I’m looking or is it deeper? Yesterday’s clad at 8” was all from 1973.
Coin depth Silver vs clad?
- Thread starter CarsonChris
- Start date
sgabrie8544
Full Member
Took me 1 year to find a silver coin. Location is everything.
longbow62
Forum Supporter
Depends entirely on location. One place can be shallow silver and next door it can be deep. I do gauge how deep silver will be by the depth of clad coins I am finding. If you are finding clad that deep on a site old enough for silver it's a bad sign in my opinion. I have hunted many yards typically large old homes where evidently fill dirt was hauled in making any old silver out of reach. We find deep clad in these places and seldom find silver if the clad is deep. Finding deep clad is always a let down.
Martin_V3i
Elite Member
My very first silver was under silt on top of the ground. Generally, 90 percent of my silver find after that were no deeper than 6 inches.
diggin4clad
Elite Member
Silver is all over the place regarding depth. Ditto for clad. I've found many shallow silver coins.....2-4 inches deep and I've dug many "deep" clads 5 inches or more. Not many silver coins around any more so keep trying.
CarsonChris
Elite Member
Hit a site yesterday that dates from mid 1880’s -1900. Large location with a lot of nail beds. I’m going to go back there. So much area to work. We didn’t find any coins. Did find some sprite cans buried 10” deep. Wondering if a detectorist cleaned it out and left the cans? Not very much modern trash.
Scooterjim
Elite Member
The depth of silver probably has more to do with the coin just having more chances to have a mole or groundhog dig under it or to get stepped on by a cow or covered with fill dirt than any actual sinking.
georgeinsc
Elite Member
The vast majority of silver that I have found has been relatively shallow compared to the depth that I have dug clad and wheat pennies. I had one yard that I dug 17 wheat pennies out of a small area. They were all down 5 to 7 inches deep and not to far from them my first silver quarter came out of the dirt and it was only 3 inches deep
Tom_in_CA
Elite Member
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2013
- Messages
- 20,748
Chris, I feel your pain. And I know this sounds bass-ackwards, but : You need to find a really rip-roaring good site, with back-to-back oldies, and then the "lights will go on" in your head.
Otherwise, anytime you DO find an oldie, it will be too random to develop any pattern in your brain.
And as the others have said: There is no "rule" to the depth of old coins. I've found old coins (seateds, etc...) in your area of Nevada that were so shallow, I could hear them with my sunray probe before I even started to dig. That would be desert floor hardpan ghost-town type conditions. And in other places (turfed parks in Sacramento, for instance) I might pass anything less than 6" deep, in my quest to avoid clad.
If there's a site were soda cans are a foot down, that's a bad sign. I'm probably going to "leave to greener grounds".
On another note: Is there still snow on the ground in Carson NV ?
Similar threads
