dfmike said:
Mega, just curious. I've never had anything silver show up as foil. I don't have a T2 but find that odd. Are the hammered coins really that small ? I ask this because here of course we don't have those (Canada). The smallest silver coins we have that I know of are old 5 cents which are really small in diameter and very thin. They show up as 69-70 on the F5 and 78 on the F19.
The answer too you question is basically 'yes' our silver hammered coins can show up as foil,you have to remember that our silver coinage goes back over 2000 years,over that time duration the silver content of the coins could and can vary by a massive amount,in times of turmoil and war they would reduce the actual amount of silver in the coins,you mentioned also about size of the coins,they of course do vary in size depending on what the coin was worth when 'hammered' as that was of course how they had been made,using a blank silver disk and placing it between 2 metal dies on usually a wooden block the top dies would be struck with a heavy hammered and this inturn struck both sides of the coin,also this is why we call them 'silver hammered coins'.
Next very basic reply too your question about size,some coins can be very small that you could just about balance on the end of your small finger but these are still complete coins that is,then we get onto the other part of the coinage which is what we call 'cut 1/2 and cut 1/4',basically this was achieved by cutting whole coins in 'half; and of course 'quarters' this was as i call it the small change of the day.
How the coinage worked was that of course the whole silver coin would be the whole amount of the coin,but if someone went too market looking for a nice fat juicy chicken for tea that night,but the chicken was a scraggy old thing and not worth the whole coins value the seller would then possibly give him some change,so he may then give him a 'cut 1/4' as the change.These parts of the coins are very small indeed and could of course be dropped and never found again till modern man come along with a metal detector.
Hope all that makes sense,of course that is a shortened version but that is how our basic silver coinage was made and worked till modern steam driven press made coins started appearing,but if you do start knocking out silver foil then the chance of also loosing out on thin early silver coins will increase,incidentally if you hit the cut 1/2 and 1/4 coins as mentioned above then you basically have your detector setup about as good as it get,i guess as we also dont detect in parks as such but mainly on farmland etc then we dont find as much silver foil as you would in parks,as that is the prime location that you folks would find foil sweet wrappers,ring pulls and can slaw,our demanding targets that we detest are shot gun shell or shotties as we call them,military buttons from WW1/2 uniforms given too farmers after the wars as fertilzer for the crops and the buttons are left after the clothing has rotten away and bullit casing from planes using sites as firing ranges.
The biggest concern and worry that has killed of many a prime site for us in recent years,has been the 'green waste' that has been scattered on farmland as farmers/landowner are paid to take this stuff instead of landfill,they are basically told its just biodegradable waste,infact its far from it,it can be from factory waste from these wood production factories that have 'metal' fixtures in them and also sometimes hospital wste with needles and other horrible nasties,infact we are winning the battle on getting this stopped only trouble is this will never bring back that field for detecting in our lifetime.
Sorry about the long post,but just tried to explain our silver coinage and a few other possible hazards.
