You are setting yourself up for disappointment Matt. Although a silver coin might ID a couple of numbers higher when there is no wear on the coin, you will most likely find silver coins with some wear and will ID the same as a clad. If you are looking for some older dimes, Barbers and Seateds, you will often encounter the expression of "one thin dime" where an older coin saw a LOT of hands in it's useful life. Those oldies will often ID 10-15 #'s less than what you would expect. Then we get into masked coins, multiples in the same hole, angled coins and especially the deep silver that sounds nothing like the surface coins, sometimes no ID at all.
If you like silver or gold or collectible coins, dig all of the clad you can and at the end of the year buy something nice that you would love to have found. That is your little reward for digging all of that clad and your silver coin finds will go way up too if you don't get too selective in the VDI's.
This is my clad from this year so far and I just got done tumbling them and took to the bank, over $330...........that will buy a lot of silver dimes my friend. There were some years Nancy and I found over $1000 in clad, one year $1,200. PLUS a lot of silver and some gold too.
Bells and whistles are nice, but nothing will substitute for the basic understanding of the hobby.
CTX 3030,
V3i,
Pro XL
M6 W/Bigfoot coil,
Cibola/modified
