AT Pro Pull Tab:Nickel:Gold Ratio Experiement

[swolfe]

My ratio is at least 1000:1. I'm not by any beaches which are the gold magnets. Good luck in your quest and don't get discouraged!

I'm landlocked too. I dig 100 holes each hunt and came up with a very similar ratio. I find a gold ring every 10th or 11th hunt it seems. 1000 pieces of junk in between them.

 

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[Budman231]

Why do you bother griding an area ?

Don't you think just wandering around and selecting more likely areas (under trees, near attractions, etc..) are best to spend more time? If you like to grid, that's cool but I tend to just flow through an area. Never understood this "gridding" stuff because you can still miss things.. Something cool may be just out of your MD's reach and gridding make no difference. Just a thought..

Bud

Finds from another two hour hunt tonight at the construction site. This time the area had a decent amount of pull style tabs, I found 23 of those. Also found 3 wheat pennies (1919, 1936, 1956), a nickel, two clad dimes, a clad quarter, a mixture of memorial copper and zinc cents, and a clip on ear ring. Mostly of this came from a freshly dug area.


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I do this for fun. I enjoy history, antiques, and the thrill of the hunt; so this is the perfect hobby for me. I keep all of my finds, except for a trash can full of aluminum cans that I cashed in earlier this year with some other metals. In regards to cherry picking or digging everything, that all just comes down to personal preference and for me it highly depends on what type of location that I am hunting. It is becoming increasingly harder to find a site that has not been cherry picked by someone in the past, especially for silver coins. Metal detecting has been a popular hobby for over 40 years and even the earliest detectors could find a good silver target easily so the "low hanging fruit" has been picked to some degree. Silver has not been produced for general circulation for almost 50 years now (excluding US Mint sets and the 40% half dollars).

As for my thoughts on cherry picking a location. If I am hunting some private property where I will only have a limited amount of time, I usually start out by gridding off the area and detecting with my 8-1/2 x 11 DD coil. That way I can cover more ground and go for the good targets, but it also allows me to survey the location and determine what areas are producing the most. I then grid the area again walk in a perpendicular grid pattern from what I previously hunted. For the trashy areas, I usually return to those with my 5x8 DD coil. Time permitting, I then grid the area again with either coil and dig more deep iffy targets. Each time you return over an area that you have gridded off you remove more and more garbage that unmasks deeper targets. Sometimes I will play around with the ground balance some and tweak other settings.

As for a hunting park, I usually hunt the areas that experience the most activity and just do a large grid pattern using the 8-1/2 x 11 DD coil. At parks I usually go after shallow targets, less than 4 inches, as I am using a brass probe to retrieve everything. Some parks are so full of trash that they are simply not worth the trouble unless you do a quick scan with a 5x8 coil to get the good easy targets.

As for the construction site, I have only been using the 5x8 DD coil. The ground is full of iron pieces, everything from crushed pieces of old cast iron pipes to pieces of metal siding and nails. The 5x8 has better target separation that my larger coil. It is also a very rugged terrain and the 5x8 is small, allowing me to better swing over most areas. I dig everything at the construction site as the ground has centuries of history in this particular area. Plus it is very easy to dig here, the ground is already torn up so you can retrieve targets fast and not worry about making a mess. I still push the dirt back into any hole that I dig.

These are just some of my personal ways of hunting. I am always trying and learning new techniques that I read about on TN. This holiday weekend I am going to hit some parks that have frequent concerts (where I have previously found gold). Maybe, just maybe, I can hit that 500:1 ratio goal.

 

[Jeremy S]

Hunted a park for some coin shooting on my last couple of trips. Not many tabs at this place, yet a managed to find a very old pull tab today. Added 11 nickels and 7 tabs between two hunts. Also found another presidential dollar coin, my second for the year.







I'm not counting finds from the beach, but I did find a fake gold ring last weekend in around 4' of water. Since school is back in session the beaches are deserted during the day, I'm going to try hitting some of the dry sand areas soon!

Why do you bother griding an area ?

Don't you think just wandering around and selecting more likely areas (under trees, near attractions, etc..) are best to spend more time? If you like to grid, that's cool but I tend to just flow through an area. Never understood this "gridding" stuff because you can still miss things.. Something cool may be just out of your MD's reach and gridding make no difference. Just a thought..

Short of strip mining the ground and sifting through the soil, every method of detecting misses stuff. I often will just wander around a property swinging my coil until I find a spot that is producing well. That's when I'll do this nonsense called "gridding" the area and hunt it in different directions. Every place that I detect is different and each ones requires a different approach to detect. The goal is to cover the most ground with your coil to increase your chances of detecting a target.

The park where I was coin shooting is essentially an open field where they host many concerts and events throughout the year. The finds are spread pretty evenly through this field so I walk in a wide grid pattern. Each time I return I change the direction and find more and more that I miss each time. After a few hunts the finds start to become far and few in between in that particular area.

 

[Jeremy S]

482 tabs, 91 nickels, and still 0 gold. Lost a week of hunting due to life getting in the way and a bad bee sting that left me blind for two days (eyes swelled shut).

Nice weather so I'm going to tear it up this week, going to hunt some active parks and sports complexes.

Now I need to decide what I am going to do with all of these tabs when I'm done with this experiment?

 

[RobRieman]

482 tabs, 91 nickels, and still 0 gold. Lost a week of hunting due to life getting in the way and a bad bee sting that left me blind for two days (eyes swelled shut). Nice weather so I'm going to tear it up this week, going to hunt some active parks and sports complexes. Now I need to decide what I am going to do with all of these tabs when I'm done with this experiment?

So far you have about 17 cents worth of tabs so you won't be doing much with them. your gold will come though digging the tabs, just try to pick some sports fields with a lot of hand movement and stay away from the bees! Good luck, you will certainly have a big grin on your face when you flip that plug over.

 

[HenryWaltonJonesJr]

500 Pull Tabs

Of course yours are more...unique, but they seem to be worth somewhere between $4.75 and $27.00.

I think the old beaver tails might not be as valued, but someone could possible just want old ones...never know!

 

[RobRieman]

Lol. That's not what they are worth, that's what they are trying to sucker some poor sole to buy them for.

 

[HenryWaltonJonesJr]

Believe it or not those are sold prices!

 

[RobRieman]

Oh I believe it. There's a sucker born every minute on ebay! That would be his best way to go if he can hook one for sure!

 

[Jeremy S]

Today's short hunt in a park added 16 tabs and 10 nickels to the count, bringing me up to 498 tabs and 101 nickels. I would have stayed longer but the days are getting shorter and a fog of mosquitoes came after me when the sun began to set. I found a 10k gold ring and several junk rings in this same park almost a year ago .

I have an orange recycling bin almost topped off with metal junk from the past two years, including thousands of sta-tab and pull tabs. I should bag those up and sell them on eBay!


Finds from today...

 

[Jeremy S]

Last two hunts have brought me up to 513 tabs and 113 nickels... still no gold! I haven't had a gold drought last this long ever.

I hunted a decently active park this afternoon. The ground was rock hard but most of my finds were recent drops right on the surface. I did get a solid #83 around 4 inches down in a newer section of the park. It was a 1961 Rosie! This part of the park was formerly a scrap metal yard, and the ground is still loaded with bits of junk iron, so hard telling how this dime ended up there. There is not much trash to be found in this part of the park. What little there was I cleaned out on my previous hunts.






My trash bin is starting to fill up! I bet there are over 10k tabs in that mix of metal trash! This trash is from late 2012 to date.

 

[CladGrabber]

5/1 pulltab/nickle

 

[skip_a_loo]

here's a chart you can take a look at to see what small rings you are missing

 

[markbxr400]

I have pulled probably around 500 pull tabs, 500 can slaw, 1 nickel (1918 buffalo!) and zero gold.

 

[Irishgoldhound]

This gold ring I just found yesterday was around 200 pull tabs since my last gold ring in June.

 

[JimDon]

That sounds about right!

 

[Irishgoldhound]

I'm already on # 20 tab. 180 to go. Lol

 

[Jeremy S]

Yesterday morning's hunt added 31 sta-tabs and 14 nickels, bringing me up to 544 tabs and 127 nickels. Among the pile of clad found, I also found a safe deposit key and a ring. The ring was a #72 (zincoln range) and appears to be made of copper. Perhaps it was plated at one time? The gold colored ear ring was a visual find in the parking lot and appears to be junk.






Irishgoldhound: Nice gold find! Did you use an AT Pro, and if so, what # did it come up as?

Thanks for posting this chart, very informative! As you can see by the trash that I retrieve, I go after almost all targets with a VDI #35+ (notice in all of my pictures there is usually a small pile of foil and bits of aluminum can slaw). I have yet to ever find gold below #45, but I will keep on trying. ALl of my gold with the AT pro has been 47+.

I have pulled probably around 500 pull tabs, 500 can slaw, 1 nickel (1918 buffalo!) and zero gold.

If I was counting can slaw and foil, that count would probably be much higher than my tab count. Foil and can slaw 'usually' is not a solid signal, but will bounce around more as it is a non-concentric target. Some of the parks around here are solid can slaw, and even a lunatic like myself won't spent much time hunting there.

 

[Irishgoldhound]

Yeah, I was using my AT Pro and it hit on a solid 58 on the VDI.

 

[Jeremy S]

Had a break in the storms this afternoon and decided to hunt my favorite local park. Right off the bat I find a deep target that is a solid 85. Expecting it to be a quarter, I unearthed a big silver ring, stamped 925. Unfortunately it has some slight damage.



The rest of the hunt was unexciting, I was finding the usual clad and sta-tabs. I also found a good handful of rings from tarps and those little back pieces that go on pins. The tarp rings have a # from the mid 50s to 70s. Those little back pieces are usually a solid 50-52, yet when I pinpoint I can tell that they are smaller than a nickel or a tab.

About an hour into my hunt I get a solid 52. Poking around with the probe I see a hint of gold!



With the 16 tabs I found today... the final numbers comes out to 560 tabs, 127 nickels, and 1 gold!!




The gold is a 14k mens wedding ring. Judging by the depth, I think it has been in the ground for a few years. It has an engraving with a date inside, but the engraving is rather generic and there is no name. It would be cool if I could find the owner, but that going to be tough.




Now my crazy quest is over, ending my longest gold drought ever.