tin foil or aluminum foil ?

[hatpin]

I have an area that has yielded a lot of old coins , over 100 with several dating back to the 1800's . I also find lots of balls of foil . I believed these were aluminum foil because of the lack of rust and used for wrapping food . Being a lot of these coins predate aluminum foil could it be tin foil ? Tin foil would just rust away , correct ?

 

[REVIER]

I have an area that has yielded a lot of old coins , over 100 with several dating back to the 1800's . I also find lots of balls of foil . I believed these were aluminum foil because of the lack of rust and used for wrapping food . Being a lot of these coins predate aluminum foil could it be tin foil ? Tin foil would just rust away , correct ?

No, incorrect.
Both can rust slightly but it is only a very thin layer on top that does and that protects everything underneath.
In no case do either of these rust and dissolve away like iron metals can.

I hunted a mountain woods site with trails that goes way back into the 1800's where people rode horses and camped out because there wasn't much else to do back then for entertainment.
Besides the huge amount of horseshoes and horse shoe nails I found the biggest problem I had was tin and aluminum foil.
Big pieces, small pieces, clumps of thick crumpled up pieces that sounded good in both tin foil which was common in the 19th century or aluminum foil which became popular in the 1920's.
I dug a ton of tin and aluminum foil and none of it was rusted and very little was disintegrated at all.
Neither goes away, or at least it would take a lot more than 100-150 years to see them disintegrate especially if they are wrapped up in ball form.

 

[hatpin]

That makes sense then . Those clumps of foil are right there with the old coins . When I find a spot where there are lots crumpled up wads , that place has potential .

 

[still looking 52]

Good information right there, didn't know that clue existed about tin foil and aluminum foil.

 

[vlad]

of dime to quarter that were the crumpled up aluminum foil used to seal milk bottles, and on occasion also hit deeper signals reading nickel to tab that were aluminum foil.
I guess on the high denomination coin numbers, its a none issue. Foil is size dependent; its also depth dependent-at a certain point in depth targets gets bumped up in i.d.
The obvious foil signals could also be rings, and you can add in 2 targets in proximity averaging together.
I guess it all depends on how much time you are willing to spend. What % of foil targets are not, foil?

 

[hatpin]

I can identify crumpled up foil ball almost every time by the mellow sound and it will disc out before nickle . I dont use a target ID detector , its a tesoro Vaquero .