Explorers and gold or copper coins

[Turtleman]

Explorer users,
Anyone found a gold coin with their Explorer? Where did it ID (grid or numbers). How about colonial coppers. How do they sound/ring up?
I'd appreciate any help on these.
Thanks,
T-man

 

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[Iron Patch]

Explorer users,
Anyone found a gold coin with their Explorer? Where did it ID (grid or numbers). How about colonial coppers. How do they sound/ring up?
I'd appreciate any help on these.
Thanks,
T-man

The answer is it depends on the conditions. Gold would be anywhere from a low signal to a high one, and generally copper is in the higher range.... but other things can affect that greatly.

 

[Shambler]

Small gold hits like a pull tab, but big gold will bounce around the top like a bottle cap. Either way, not something you'd dig in a trashy environment (IE Park), but definitely something you'd dig on private property.

Large cents are up around the clad quarter area. If you're in a spot that you believe are producing colonial coins, I'd say dig anything that hits upper right quadrant.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I've found a few of my 12 gold coins with my explorers (which I've used for 7 or so years now) I'm sure there are exact grid coordinates of the screen where the $1s, $2.50s, $5s, $10s and $20s would come in at, in an air test. You could do an air test yourself (if you have a coin collector friend, or find a friendly coin-store owner who would let you air test some in his shop, or whatever).

Basically, a $1 reads down a little below nickels. A $2.50 reads at about round tab. A $5 reads at about square tab (the beefier heavy kind of square tab), and so forth up the scale. But this only tells you the the "up/down" axis. It doesn't tell you the "left/right" axis. I could test mine and tell you, but it would take posting a digital pix of the screen, or whatever, to convey that.

Even if you had the exact coordinate of where they fell on the up/down, left/right axis, but as Iron patch says, it will depend. Depth, angle of tilt, proximety to trash, machine settings, etc.... can make the target vary. I do "cherry pick" when in trashy turf environments (if I want to avoid surface foil, tabs, etc.. and go for deeper potentially older coins in a very stratified turf type hunt). In those cases, I'm relying more on the up/down axis, and also computing depth of the target into it. But in no case do I think a person could mark the spot on the graph where gold coins hit in an air test, and hope to somehow go into the field, and just dig those graph coordinates, thinking they'll up their gold take. Only in air tests can you get that specific. I got a tractor knicked $10, for instance, that I bet reads slightly off from a perfect $10, because of the subtle warp and scratch. And a $1 I got, was made into a love token. For sure that one will read a little off, etc....

 

[Treasure finder]

Tom,
Sounds like you are down to the "Dig everything" method or you probably
wouldn't have so many gold coins.
Congrats!
Rich

 

[Turtleman]

Folks,
Thanks for the info. I certainly know that various conditions produce different results. I was just trying to get an approximate location on the smart screen. The reason being...the other day I got a signal in a park that I would have sworn would have been an IH; instead, it was a silver war nickel. A few weeks before that I found more IH's in a few days than in my entire MD career because I was hunting a field with few signals and I just decided to dig them. I wonder how many IH's I've skipped over in the last couple of years. It got me thinking...I wonder if the same principle applied to gold and copper colonials.
I haven't found either yet but I hope to report that I've found one soon.
Peace,
T-man

 

[Iron Patch]

Folks,
Thanks for the info. I certainly know that various conditions produce different results. I was just trying to get an approximate location on the smart screen. The reason being...the other day I got a signal in a park that I would have sworn would have been an IH; instead, it was a silver war nickel. A few weeks before that I found more IH's in a few days than in my entire MD career because I was hunting a field with few signals and I just decided to dig them. I wonder how many IH's I've skipped over in the last couple of years. It got me thinking...I wonder if the same principle applied to gold and copper colonials.
I haven't found either yet but I hope to report that I've found one soon.
Peace,
T-man

The same principal applies to all coins regardless of metal. If you don't dig all non ferrous targets you will definitely believing some behind. I strictly hunt older sites and have found so many early coins that were not coin signals it would be a foolish thing to believe I could cherry pick them. Luckily I'm after everything else just as much as coins so since I'm digging it all I don't have to worry about guessing wrong.