Nickels registering as pennies?

[Goes4ever]

Odd thing, tell me what causes this?? last three nickels I dug at that 1859 house
one buff, one V and one 1941 Jefferson.....ALL 3 of thing rang up as a zinc penny, a solid NON bouncing 32........???

Any clue to why they rang up like that?

this is not the first time either this has happened, a few weeks ago at an old farm I got a zinc penny signal, thought it would be an indian and it was a
V-nickel. I re-checked the hole, nothing else there, put pinpointer in hole nothing.....put x-70 in all metal resweeped the hole....nothing. Only thing there was the nickel.

Now I am not complaining because I wish nickels always registered that high, would make em easier to find. I have never understood though why a coin that was 75% copper would register low? you think it would always be high as a zinc penny at least

 

[BarnacleBill]

I'll overstate the obvious.....coins in the ground do not exist in a vacuum. They can attacked/affected by their surroundings. And when you think about Farms, that is one place where the ground has been saturated with various chemicals for long periods. Those chemicals can react with the already existing minerals in the ground and attack/affect metals. It sounds like either something is binding to the surface, or binding to the nickel(element), or the nickel(element) is being attacked and leached out.

Why does it normally read low with all that copper? Keep in mind that nickel is ferromagnetic, with the "ferro" being the important part. It is like mixing iron with copper. The nickel(ferro) in essence drags the ID down the scale, it counteracts the high ID of the copper in the coin. In your case the "ferro" portion is being counteracted and allowing the copper content to pull the ID higher.


[size=large]Warning...if you don't like technical discussions don't read beyond here![/size]


Clad steel Canadian coins present an interesting case i.e. Current Canadian Dimes & Quarters.
About 90% steel interior clad with a Silver/Nickel skin. With some detector coil combination's they read as Silver(which is incorrect), with others iron(which is incorrect). With the X-Terra's they read both(correct). Depending on the coil, angle of the coin, and sweep speed they will read Silver on some swings & Iron on others.

In the past there have been some short lived discussions around the theory that current flows only on the outer surface of the coin, and this is caused by what is known as "Skin Effect", whereby the higher frequency causes the current to only flow near the surface of the conductor. It is pretty widely accepted that "Skin Effect" only begins to be a factor above 100kHz, so that a detector operating above that frequency might exhibit that behavior.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[khouse]

That's happened to me on occasion with all brands. I don't try to figure it all out. I stick it in my pouch and off to the next beep.

 

[TURNMASTER]

Like a Faraday Cage, Ithink is what you are saying.

jeff

 

[Jackpine Savage]

I have dug nickels at old sites with other detectors that lock on or just below zinc and also ones that bounce nickel to near zinc without a lock.

With the CZ's you always watched for the foil/zinc bouncers which was well known as being an older nickel reading on those machines. One time I got one of the classic foil/zinc readings at an older park and was surprised when it ended up being an IH penny. Its just goes to show ya never know until ya dig.

Tom

 

[bigjohn070]

All five of my oldest nickels sounded like broken penny signal.
2 v's
3 buffs

HH
BIG JOHN

 

[Goes4ever]

yep that is how most of mine have been sounding