Need some help here...:huh:

[Aaron]

I only have around 35 hrs on my SE (I know thats not much) and have learned alot lately...however I am still not finding nickels. I have learned to find old pennies in the same hole as nails and bottle caps, but to me the pull tab and nickel all look and sound the same.
This is a great forum..thanks for all the help so far.
HH! Aaron

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Some pull tabs, especially folded beaver tails, can hit exactly like nickels. Deeper nickel signals or nickels near trash will bounce around, just like silver/copper signals, the problem is they can bounce in a lot more different ways then silver/copper because they are a lower conductive target.

Basically do some air testing on nickels and see where the target icon hits. On shallow testing it should be pretty consistent. Note this location. Out in the field when you are swinging over a target and it bounces to this location and also bounces left and upwards there is a good chance it is a nickel. Pull tabs tend to jump around more randomly. The problem is this is not 100% consistent. I've dug lots of nickels that surprised me because of where they hit, and I'm sure I've left many thousands more in the ground because I didn't bother to dig based on what I heard and saw. This is very much an experience and gut feeling situation. For now digs lots of targets that hit in the general nickel area on most swings. You will get a ton of pull tabs and other junk, plus some surprising goodies. Later you can decide whether you want to play the odds and dig everything. This will also be location dependent: Parks and picnic areas full of tabs- no. Cleaner sites- what the heck.

Chris

 

[dewcon4414]

I dig my share of nickels..... BUT they really arent worth much and in fact may be time wasters. Ive found old or deeper ones are like Chris said kind of bouncy. Ive dug a lot of old ones in the lower right corner. Those beaver tails will fool you thou. I started by checking my digital screen.... what i found on my machine the cond numbers seemed to be fairly consistent at 06. The ferr number vary.... shallow ones 10-06 and deeper ones may read 11-06 or even 03-06, The ones i look a little harder for are the war nickels... but they hit much higher and easier to locate, not to mention worth digging. Its funny i dig more nickels when im looking for jewerly because im concentrating on that screen and tone. I have my AUDIO THRESHOLD TONE set at 8 instead of the factory setting of 5. Most of those shallower nickels have a distinct clear tone much like a gold ring does. Also those cond digits dont bounce around as bad on those shallow ones. Ive been at this a couple of days now and used other machines. I dont know that ive seen a ton of nickels dug with any machine. When you see peoples finds their ratio of coins seem consistent .... not many nickels.

Dew

 

[Dan-Pa.]

Some of these new tabs in my neck of the woods along with some older ones come dead nickle which is true of most units and lets not forget the can slaw from large grass cutting equipment.
When after nickles usually go with the numbers screen and 4 or 5 or even 3 for nasty shape shield nickles, Have to agree on nickels usually weigh more than the trash that is imitating them and tend to hold a more solid lock with less bouncing numbers. I do believe an Explorer is the king for silver coins but unfortunately some other units are just better nickle grabbers. Yep those nasty shotgun shells can also be a pain and being closer to a nickles weight are really tough. It takes time but watching the movement of the crosshairs after switching over from the digital display much can be learned .some of the gentlemen on this forum have perhaps hundreds and even thousands of hours with an Explorer so at 35 hours you are the new kid on the block. It will all come in time so do some experimenting and digging and it will all pay off..

 

[Aaron]

Thanks alot for the tips so far guys.
Greatly appreciated!
Aaron

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Dew, a quick look through a coin-price-guide book, and anyone will see that what you're saying is true. Compared to silver coins (dimes, quarters, etc...) there are just very few nickel dates that have good numismatic value. And then even when you DO find one of the few nickels that has a good numismatic date, nickels seem to always be orange corroded crud. Compared to silver, which can often times come out of the ground pretty durn good.

Reminds me of a park scrape demolition scrape some friends and I worked in San Francisco a few years ago. Since it was a scrape, so digging was a non-issue, most of us went into "relic mode", and dug everything conductive, no matter how small and flitty. At the end of a typical night, you might have 10 or 12 old nickels in your mix (V-nickels and Buff's). But invariably, they were corroded brown/orange cr*p, that you couldn't even read the dates on. And to get each of those, you invariably had to dig 50 low conductor pieces of cr*p to find them. But to the guys who were a little more discriminating, they ended up with a much higher percentage of silver, but perhaps only 1 or 2 nickels. They tended to get the choice SF mint silver, while the rest of us spent our time chasing little pencil eraser tops, zipper ends, etc... all night. It was a lesson in odds, for sure.