Wheat to silver ratio?

[marcomo]

In Michael Chaplan's excellent book, The Urban Treasure Hunter, he said the expected wheat to silver ratio when detecting is 6 to 1.

My wheat to silver ratio is way higher than that. I haven't actually counted, but I'd say it's at least twice that if not a little more.

Chaplan's book came out in the early 90's so maybe it's changed since then? Wheat pennies were in circulation many years after silver disappeared

I'm curious as to what ratio others are finding.

 

[thsfineday]

wheat pennies are still common finds in my area but the silver has all but disappeared

 

[Uncle Willy]

Both are gone from my area, wiped out in the sixties to eighties. I don't fiind a half dozen wheats a year and am extremely lucky to find 3-4 silvers a year.

Bill.

 

[joe dirt_1]

uncle willy, what type of sites do you hunt? wheat cents are very common finds at almost every site i hunt. silver is getting scarce but still can be found. maybe i don't have the competition here that you have in your area. it has been quite a while since i saw another coin hunter besides my hunting buddies hunting around here. the last one i saw hunting in a local park was on a dead run swinging his coil as fast as he could swing it. i wasn't too worried that he was gonna clean the place out ....lol

roger

 

[Uncle Willy]

I hunt everywhere, parks, schools, sports fields, river beaches, etc., but this is a big city and at one time we had six metal detector manufactures here in Oregon, including Fisher, Bounty Hunter, Compass, and White - so everybody has one.

Bill

 

[marcomo]

OK, I must have had one too many of glasses of iced tea at dinner tonight so I'm still up and I actually counted.

And my wheat to silver ratio was lower than I originally thought: 7.06:1

I think I might have misjudged because at the time I originally posted this I was hitting an old site hard where I found about 25-30 wheaties, mostly in the teens and 20's. Also a couple Buffs, Indians, a Liberty Nickel and various other interesting old stuff - but no silver.

 

[metalhead]

Man, that's a good book. I don't know what my wheat to silver ratio is, but I've found a whole lot more wheaties than silver. I have found quite a few silver coins, though. Happy Hunting!