Myers Depot Metal Detectors

Noob asks: Do you skip over nickel and penny signals?

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BanjoBobby

New Member
Joined
May 29, 2019
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15
Location
Finger Lakes, NY
I've been detecting for a few months now and I've been digging tons of coins from parks, yards, etc. Mostly I find 1940s and more recent. I recently upgraded to an Equinox 800 and I've gotten better at distinguishing coin types.

At my usual sites I can easily spend hours digging penny after penny after penny. And when I go for nickel signals 75% of the time I get trash.

I am wondering how many of you skip over nickel and penny signals...? Is there any really good stuff I might be missing below EQ800 30s? I mostly want to find old (pre WWII) and/or silver coins.
 
Silver coins ring up in the dime range and up
I try to reject pennies.
I dig 12,13,14 in hopes of a gold ring.
Good luck out there!
 
Gold,platinum, lead, brass, copper items and silver next to or under lower conductive metal.
 
The "Nox" is my backup machine and I am not the most experience person that uses this tool. That being said, I have had some success using it. If you can distinguish between the Copper Pennies and the Zincoln's do so. At least I do. Finding coins back to the 1940's says your on old enough dirt. With my "Nox" I dig a lot of Nickel's but restrict myself to solid 2 way signals with readings of 12 or 12-13. I sometimes will dig shallow 13's but only when no more than a couple of inches from the surface. Sometimes you have to remove the top layer of targets to hear the deeper signals from below. As far as Silver signals the numbers I have seen have range from 25 up to 34. Hope this helps a bit. Oh and welcome to the hobby and to the forum. Trapper
 
On most machines, gold shows up in the nickel/foil range so… no! If i was to ignore any signal it might be pennies but i still dig them because, well, you never know.
 
I notch out the zincs and totally ignore them. I don't want to waste my time digging worthless, chewed up zincs. I dig the nickel signals but if you're getting only 75% junk on them you're doing good. I dig the copper penny signals because with those signals you're going to get clad dimes, silver dimes, sterling jewelry, and possibly a large cent.
 
Junkminer said:
I used to skip penny signals until turned out to be the biggest 14K gold class ring I've ever held!
Click to expand...

Yep. This was a penny signal. $3300 diamond and 320$ gold weight. 15 min hunt next to an old pond at a park waiting for a kid's birthday party to start.
 

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At parks, I always skip zinc signals unless they are deep. I'm hit or miss on low conductors in parks. Some sound better than others. Depends on my energy level.

In curbstrips, I dig the zinc and mid/low tones. I have better luck in curbstrips.
 
A few months ago I was hunting in a corn field before planting. I wasn't hearing much except for iron. I got a solid but quiet 19 or 20 on my 600, 6 inches down was my first Barber quarter. It was worn and very thin, contributing to the lower numbers. I get tired of digging modern pennies, but sometimes you can get lucky.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk
 
jack&jill said:
The "Nox" is my backup machine and I am not the most experience person that uses this tool. That being said, I have had some success using it. If you can distinguish between the Copper Pennies and the Zincoln's do so. At least I do. Finding coins back to the 1940's says your on old enough dirt. With my "Nox" I dig a lot of Nickel's but restrict myself to solid 2 way signals with readings of 12 or 12-13. I sometimes will dig shallow 13's but only when no more than a couple of inches from the surface. Sometimes you have to remove the top layer of targets to hear the deeper signals from below. As far as Silver signals the numbers I have seen have range from 25 up to 34. Hope this helps a bit. Oh and welcome to the hobby and to the forum. Trapper
Click to expand...

This is also coming from a guy who could be swinging a cabbage on a broom handle and find silver, so take it FWIW...;)
 
War nickels, buffalo nickels, and Indian Head pennies are some of the more common older coins you can hope to find. You won't find them skipping nickel and zinc signals. They're not always deep either.

I was at an 1800s house over the weekend with about half a dozen shallow zinc pennies in my bag. I hit another similar signal, almost didn't dig it, and it was an inch deep 1875 penny.

Add tokens to the list along with the jewelry others have mentioned. I'll take an old token over a lot of other coins.

But, hopefully you can get on some properties where there aren't so many zinc pennies that it's a hassle to just dig them. I'd be lying if I said I always dig them, because it really depends on the property and how long I have access to it.

Lastly, the 800 is fantastic on nickels. Being able to ID them 25% of the time is pretty good and it's possible to do even better even in areas full of pull tabs. It be a shame to not utilize that strong point of the Nox.
 
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Just another thought.

If you do go high conductor hunting, then don't just notch out (turn off) everything below 25 or whatever you choose. Use the 800s ability to adjust the tone and volume of the tone regions. If you just notch out everything under your high conductor cutoff, you'll have no problem hitting obvious targets. But, it'll be hard to differentiate between a possibly good medium depth masked target, a very good deep target giving off a peep or a high tone, and sketchy junk/iron throwing off a high tone. You'll find yourself needing to turn the iron audio on repeatedly to get a better listen.

Instead, set up 5 tones and make tone 5 (super high conductor) loud and high pitched, and then make tones 4,3,2,1 progressively and noticeably quieter. Or, just really simplify things and hunt in two tones and make the lower tone quieter.
 
Around here it seems that a lot of detectorists skip over the nickel/gold/pull tab range, leaving a lot of great targets behind. There are times when I will only dig the 11-14 range, usually 3 bars or deeper.

In my area old nickels often give a bouncing 11-12 VDI. My oldest coin, an 1887 V nickel was a solid 13 at about 3 inches deep. All of my war nickels this year have been in the 13 to 15 range. I also got a sweet 1911 Boy Scout pin that rang at 14-15 at four bars deep. That same lawn gave me two war nickels, a buffalo nickel and three Jefferson nickels from the 1950s.


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Around here, we have heavily acidic, non-draining soil, so old nickels and indian heads come out so corroded that they might as well be trash, so I don't waste time on them too often.

The only value to me is as tells that the site may have old silver. I also don't dig many wheaties either, cuz, at the end of day, they are still just pennies due to the corrosion. Value as tells and the skill with which the site has been previously worked.

I don't notch anything out, however; even if I don't dig it, I want to know the "texture of the site", for lack of a better phrase, and I want to make a real time decision to dig any target. I dig all non-ferrous targets 5 inches or deeper, regardless of id. Even ferrous targets if I think there is a chance it is silver (I don't know the Nox, but on the E-Trac silvers can live at 35-50 if very deep, which is typically a ferrous id. I go by the size of the object in these cases). My bust half was very deep, and I could not tell between silver and ferrous when I dug it, and I'm glad I did dig. It has what I call on the E-Trac "ferrous with fight", and it is hard to describe unless you know that machine well.

That said, the big risk is missing half dimes. They tend to come in in the zinc penny range. My best find, 1800 half dime, in a modern park, came in as a zinc penny. It is blind luck that I dug it, really. Get that signal in a field or old property rather than a park, and I dig it every time.

As for war nickels, they come in a notch or two higher (at least on the E-Trac), so it is pretty easy to tell the difference from corroded nickels. I've found them at a very wide range (using E-Trac numbers: CO 15 to CO 25).

HTH
 
Heck no I don’t skip nickel signals!! I found a ton of gold in the nickel range and other cool things. I’ve even found small silver kiddie gem rings in the nickel range


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I call my 800 the nickle killer. If I get a 12-13 back an forth signal, Im DIGGIN. But I have found nickles at a solid 13 VDI on the surface, and once in awhile a 12 will produce a nickle. I have found more nickles with the 800 than any other machine Ive owned.

Digging zinc signals (19-21) depends on where Im hunting. If theyre surface, Ill sometimes pass, but if theyre deeper, Ill dig. Ive had IH's that ring up as zincs, and Ive had silver jewelry do the same. Coins ring up at a higher tone. 22-23 are usually twist on bottle caps, and 24 is usually brass, although Ive found dimes and pennies there too.

25 and above and its usually dug, but then junk also lives within that realm. Thats when experience and the items sound take over. If its scratchy, Im skeptical.
 
I realize you are going for coins so take this the way you want but at every park site especially and most other sites I come at everything from a coin AND jewelry hunter position.
If I didn't dig nickel or zinc signals I wouldn't have these.
Not shown are 4 out of 5 big gold class rings that all came in just like a zincoln.
The 3 rings are all gold with real ice and were dead on nickel signals and the thick sterling bracelet was an exactly like a lowely zincoln.
All of them shocked me because I was 100% sure they were something else...then I dug them.
 

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It depends on location for me. If hunting in a park where there may be lots of zinc pennys dropped, I usually pass those signals by unless it's a solid "one number" signal on my 800 nox. Those may be a big class ring or small silver ring. If I'm hunting an older house yard I dig all zinc signals. I always dig nickel signals of 12-13.
 
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