IDENTIFING PULL TAB AGE

[Dwayne2010]

Hi all, I found a school ground near me with pull tabs that I think must be decades old. I should have photographed them. They were large like a ring, six inches down in the sod. Some of them were smaller then your typical coke can pull tab.Some had a circle with a beaver tail. I am wondering if there is a way to determine age of the different pull tabs? This would give me a good idea of what year of coins that I can expect.

 

[MarkCZ]

Okay, I can help a little but my memory on the exact dates is a little foggy.
There is at lest two styles of the beaver tail tabs, not sizes but styles.

The pull & toss tab came into existence in 1965, yep, the year after the US stopped silver coin production. (that's a key point)

So, version one had the tail formed as part of the ring, these were bad to fail to open because the narrow area where the ring transitioned to the tab would break away from the tab.
Version two had a tab attached to the ring with a rivet, this allowed some side to side movement of the ring without as much stress and damaging the tab before it was completely free of the can.

The pull & toss tab was phased out in 1975 and started being replaced with the current sta-stab.

And two your point, an undisturbed area can prospected for silver coins if there is Pull & Toss tabs in the area. And to some degree in these undisturbed areas depth vs age can be determined by different things at different layers.
Sta-Tabs closely mixed in near the same layer would likely mean your finding version two of the pull & toss, means your around the mid 70's.
Now if you go a little deeper in that same area and your finding version one's of the pull & toss tabs then your nearing the silver age.

We found a closed down area in our local city park that's been closed for decades now where there is whole empty pull & toss cans (not crushed) still thrown about on top of the ground. Its a VERY trashy area because the area had open fire pits spaced out in the area
and so there is LOTS of foil, cans, nails, screws, and just metal junk in the everywhere! BUT! the ratio of silver coins vs clad coins is very close in numbers. I think us three bothers has gotten something like four or maybe five silver half dollars
out of the area. The entire park dates back to the 20's and in the main still used areas of the park the early silver is at rest at around the 8" range and the pull & toss tabs are at rest at the 3-1/2" to 5" range. Now, we've found really OLD coins pretty shallow but that would be
at the base of some very LARGE old oak trees. Now, every area will be different, but if you take our city park and judge the age of common things and their depth and can get an idea of different periods in time and then determined if there is silver likely in the area and the general depth
of it.
Last but not least, pull rings are still in use on some canned food items like, Potted Meet, Vienna Sausages, and the likes of. These rings are larger than the ones that were used on beverage cans, plus they don't have a tab, if you find the whole thing it will have an actual lid,
these also have a much larger rivet attaching it to the lid.

Happy Hunting
Mark

 

[MarkCZ]

UPDATE!
When the Pull & Toss tab had its 50th birthday it became an "Official Artifact" REALLY!

Mark

 

[MarkCZ]

Here are a few pictures from that closed down and forgotten area in our city park. There is several open fire pits circled about along the hillside.
There is an old closed down blacktop road that you could drive up in behind with a large turnaround near the top, along the way there is large sets
of steps that led down to the different fire pits. Below the fire pit was a foot trail that was used by the kids to travel down to the main flat areas of the
park to play field games, the adults could stay back at their pick out fire pit and get drunk!.
Notice the cans in the pictures, notice the tab of tab that was on them, YEP! pull & toss tabs (beaver tail tabs)

Mark