Any tips on seperating copper penny and dime

[DirtAngler]

Hunting an abandoned club grounds. The place is loaded with clad but also has produced a couple silver rings and silver dimes. Any tips on narrowing down the difference between copper pennies and dimes? Seems a reading of 88 and sometimes a 89 can be both although usually if I can get it to hit 89 it's been a dime but not always. The place is full of copper memorial pennies although we have dug quite a few wheats too. Running at 12KHZ.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

No way to know except to dig it!

 

[MHirschmann]

I have to agree with Bart. In 12Khz, most pennies come up around "80" for me, however, there are some "jumpers" with different values. Pennies come up with different TID's on every detector that i know of so this is not a "Deus Issue" by any means. My CTX 3030 does the same thing and so has every other detector I have ever owned. As Bart said, you never know until you dig it.

Sorry, I am sure you wanted a definite answer but there isn't one that I know of. -Marc

 

[DrJoeprime]

A certain percentage ( 35 to 40%?) of copper cents will ID the same as clad/silver dimes....sorry.

I'm actually much more interested in separating the sound of gold rings from pulltab or nickel.


Regards, Joe (California)

 

[NYNURSE]

Had to laugh when I read the post. Just went through the same thing this weekend. Was wondering if ground mineralization has something to do with it or just that the park was loaded with memorials.
Could offer 3 suggestions; 1) don't dig '88's, 2) you could just clean them out, or 3) change frequencies before digging and see if there is a difference. Personaly, I don't have an issue with digging a 2" memorial in soft dirt. It's those 7 inchers in the semi rock stuff that gets me.

 

[DirtAngler]

Thanks for the replies and verification as to what I thought from trying the different frequencies and through use of other machines, that most copper pennies and clad dimes cannot be differentiated. It's just that I read posts from some people on varying machines that say they can tell the difference between copper pennies and clad dimes and thought maybe I'm missing some technique to try that might help. Yes, I agree, would rather find a way to differentiate between pull tabs, nickels, and gold rings...lol.

 

[old lobo]

Reading other peoples posts, a number of people are saving those copper pennies, including me. No, they don't have any value yet, but the last full year of production was 1981 (there were some made in 1982 then they switched to copper plated zinc, so they could be either way that year). So it's been 31, almost 32 years since they were made. Just like people used to find silver coins all over the place years ago, and now they are getting very hard to find for most of us, that same thing is going to happen to the copper penny. As I said, many people are saving them, so there are less to get lost, and less to give as change, so they will become scarce and eventually increase in value.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Yes, I agree, would rather find a way to differentiate between pull tabs, nickels, and gold rings...lol.

MEEEEEE TOOOO!!! lol

That would be a 10,000 machine if someone ever makes one that can tell the difference!

 

[robo99]

I have no problem digging copper penny signals, you never know what copper penny it may turn out to be! I have not found a way to differentiate pennies and dimes in tones or numbers on a consistent level, and that goes for all 4 machines I have owned. I will gladly take my chances digging an iffy copper as opposed to an iffy zincoln, even though I know worn, small silver can come in like a zinc. It's all in what I'm finding that day and the mood I'm in I guess.

 

[Schultzie]

I have found a way to do it but not on this machine.

 

[Tenspeed]

My last silver dime (37 Merc, silver coin #95 for the year, Oh how I want to hit 100!), which I found Friday at a hunted out spot, came up as an 88 and I thought it was going to be a penny when I dug it. What a surprise to see a silver rim in the hole!

I usually see copper pennies at 88, but I have seen them as low as 80 in some soil types.

Pennies are already worth about 3 cents in copper value alone, so I dig them.

I agree with the tone telling the truth, I just have to learn what my Deus is telling me.

 

[Ism]

The footprint is tighter on a dime vs penny. Enough so that I can tell the difference for depths down to around 6 inches about 90% of the time.
The difficult ID' are on edge or angle. Hope that helps.

 

[DirtAngler]

Yeah, it's really strange. The spot we're hitting has copper pennies reading all over in the 80's. 83, 84, 86, 88 and even 89. Clad dimes are usually 88, 89 or 92. The place is just loaded with 83 thru 88 reading targets. My buddy again dug 90 coins in a 3.5 hr. hunt within a 80 sq. ft. area. I did pull a '37 merc dime at 5" reading 95 though. I was cherry picking after the 2nd hour.

 

[Schultzie]

Both of the silver dimes I dug were bouncing between 88 + 91, the clad dimes were a solid 88. They were not very deep (4" & 4.5") and I am not sure how being deeper would effect the readings. Also, the ground was very dry, almost like powder.