Less Coins on Beach when Metal Detecting?

[LawrencetheMDer]

Does anyone have hard data on whether there are less coins found on the beach now then a few years ago? I do recall an article showing a significant decrease in coin and general money usage as opposed to credit and other forms of payment in past 3-4 years. [Pandemic effect?] I was wondering if this translated into less coins on the beach to find metal detecting?

My own data, taking a sample of about 100 hrs of metal detecting for each of 5 years (about 4,500 coins) doesn’t show any clear trend in terms of decrease in number of coins found per hour. However, I do a lot of water hunting and this might not apply to the dry sand or even to land diggers.

Would anyone venture an opinion?

 

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[Mackaydon]

You got it right: "... a significant decrease in coin and general money usage as opposed to credit and other forms of payment."
Don in SoCal

 

[TORRERO]

Well, years ago I did a LOT better on salt water beaches than I do now, I like to walk, but if I had my druthers.. I would find twice as much in ballfields and school yards

 

[ColonelDan]

I’ve experienced the very same lack of coins in the past several years….and I’m talking about popular beaches like Daytona Beach, Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral, New Smyrna etc. I can also say that the same goes for jewelry. Of course, extensive renourishment of these beaches doesn’t help 😡

 

[Slimpickins]

This a part of the reason I changed my user name to Slimpickins. It doesn't really matter if I find little or nothing. Just walking the beach detecting using my brain to determine whether or not to dig enjoying the sounds of crashing waves seeing birds and an occasional seal or shark fin and during the summer some hot lookin chicks is good enough for me. Sometimes I'll walk a couple a couple of miles and if I'm using my Dual Field I'll do a lot of digging and getting some exercise. Better than staying home watching the "boob tube". Back in the '60's when candy bars cost a nickel, a hot dog a bag of chips and a coke cost 60 cents you would have some small change with you at the beach. Now a candy bar is 2 bucks and everything has gone crazy. Thats why everyone pulls out plastic or says charge it to my room. Another thing I've noticed is a lot of people go in the water knee deep then spend the rest of the time in beach chairs reading their Kindle or on their iphones maybe a walk along the shoreline nothing wrong with that of course but unless you're horsing aroung waist deep or otherwise being active enjoying the wave action I don't see how anyone is able to loose anything and to make matters worse, my wife ordered me some bathing suits this past summer due to my expanding waistline and can you believe it they came with no pockets. How rediculous. I sent them back. I wonder how many other people are wearing bathing suits with no pockets

 

[cudamark]

Too many variables for me to draw a conclusion. Less coin/paper money being used (but, do people still carry them to lose? I do), more people at the beaches, but, more detectorists too......and with better machines. Frankly, I don't care much about finding clad. Old coins, cool relics, and good jewelry is what I like to find. Those are definitely diminishing as the old sites are hit harder each year. Jewelry is a renewable resource and there are more people in the world, but, there's so much good looking costume jewelry these days, that less people are buying (and losing) the good stuff.

 

[angelito1]

Definitely marching on toward a cashless society. I, too, have noticed this trend...

 

[ARC]

Definitely marching on toward a cashless society. I, too, have noticed this trend...

sad to think this would even be something possible... or more so... tolerable... by anyone.

 

[TORRERO]

hot lookin chicks

YOU GOT THAT RIGHT !!!

 

[TORRERO]

Too many variables for me to draw a conclusion. Less coin/paper money being used (but, do people still carry them to lose? I do), more people at the beaches, but, more detectorists too......and with better machines. Frankly, I don't care much about finding clad. Old coins, cool relics, and good jewelry is what I like to find. Those are definitely diminishing as the old sites are hit harder each year. Jewelry is a renewable resource and there are more people in the world, but, there's so much good looking costume jewelry these days, that less people are buying (and losing) the good stuff.

Just a comment on this thread, Not only have the coin finds gone way down, but the Gold Rings went to "Stainless Steel" Rings... I had never dug a stainless steel ring until about 10 years ago, now I've dug 15 or more... They are extremely beautiful and work great for wedding bands, but I can't seem to find "Stainless Steel" on my precious metals chart ... 🤣

 

[ARC]

Just a comment on this thread, Not only have the coin finds gone way down, but the Gold Rings went to "Stainless Steel" Rings... I had never dug a stainless steel ring until about 10 years ago, now I've dug 15 or more... They are extremely beautiful and work great for wedding bands, but I can't seem to find "Stainless Steel" on my precious metals chart ... 🤣

I am a stainless steel person... love quality stainless in everything.... BUT... rings.

 

[cudamark]

Yeah, there are gold colored stainless and tungsten carbide rings that look just like gold, so, why pay a premium for the real thing? Something I always found curious was white gold and palladium. If you want that look, why not buy stainless, T.C. or silver? Nowadays, you can even get platinum cheaper than gold/palladium.

 

[DWerk]

Everybody now pays with their smartphone rather than carry cash. Most have also resorted to removing jewelry. What they don't remove is a lot of stainless steel crap. Cash is getting to be a thing of the past; can't even use cash at the carwashes around here.

 

[CalReg]

Not that I've been hunting the beach for long (about 5 years), but my coin haul has been pretty consistent. Hope that doesn't change!

 

[treasurehunter1957]

Hi
Just to keep you guys in the USA , Its the same in the uk , i have noticed a huge drop in coin finds on the beach, in the past i easily picked up 30-40 coins of various denominations even on a bad day , now i struggle to find 10-12 coins , things do improve slightly when the summer is here , but i have to agree everything is going cashless and joe public are not wearing so much gold and only wearing stainless and other junk jewellery.

 

[JB Hunts]

Does anyone have hard data on whether there are less coins found on the beach now then a few years ago? I do recall an article showing a significant decrease in coin and general money usage as opposed to credit and other forms of payment in past 3-4 years. [Pandemic effect?] I was wondering if this translated into less coins on the beach to find metal detecting?

My own data, taking a sample of about 100 hrs of metal detecting for each of 5 years (about 4,500 coins) doesn’t show any clear trend in terms of decrease in number of coins found per hour. However, I do a lot of water hunting and this might not apply to the dry sand or even to land diggers.

Would anyone venture an opinion?
View attachment 2128090

From purely a beach hunting perspective (I don't hunt inland, so no data here...) there is a fork in the road:

1.) On the one hand, absolutely 110% yes to finding less clad on the beach post Covid!

2.) HOWEVER, if you are at the right spots where known ships have sunk nearby, and research the tides, and the lowest cut, most highly eroded beaches, with towns who have lax beach replenishment programs, then I would say that my finds of 1700's, 1800's and early 1900's Silver coins have actually maintained themselves very well.

Read the NY Times article dated 3/23 on the rapid increase of shipwrecks being discovered, and one important point that they make is the rapid climate change allowing more old coins to get pushed in. If you have the right equipment, the right weather, and add a touch of luck to this recipe, then hunting the beach for coins and old relics should maintain for a long time. I grind very hard to find the good stuff, and have many days when i come up empty. But oh, the few good days of finds in the past few years have been fantastic. Keep grinding! JB

 

[troutbum]

I do find less coins on the beach's I detect. They replenish the sand every year in O.C.MD in some place's. So what I do now is fish the day before a storm, and metal detect right after the storm. But I did find an increas in junk jewery last year.

 

[Slimpickins]

Inflation is having a negative effect on everything and everybody. When you need a credit card to go food shopping, there is little chance of many people buying jewelry to replace what has been lost. Hopefully things will improve next year and things will start getting better for all of us. It can't get worse only better

 

[TORRERO]

sad to think this would even be something possible... or more so... tolerable... by anyone.

I know it might seem like this is possible, but the truth is that its a virtual impossibility to eliminate cash currency from a society.
There certainly is more mobile pay now than before, but there are also places where you can ONLY use cash..
I've had this discussion with friends of mine who buy into the conspricy theory that Biden is going to force us into a cashless society, but how exactly does that work ? No more ATM machines ? what about all the people who can't or don't have some type of electronic banking card ? What about all the tourist that visit here, how do they convert their money into USA digital currency ? This is not even a possibility ... So if your worried about it, you should forget it..
One of my friends said that he heard that at least 100 countries had done this already, when I asked him to name just ONE, he could not... because it's not physically possible to do that... force everyone to use digital currency ... make me laugh 🤣🤣

 

[TORRERO]

Hi
Just to keep you guys in the USA , Its the same in the uk , i have noticed a huge drop in coin finds on the beach, in the past i easily picked up 30-40 coins of various denominations even on a bad day , now i struggle to find 10-12 coins , things do improve slightly when the summer is here , but i have to agree everything is going cashless and joe public are not wearing so much gold and only wearing stainless and other junk jewellery.

I believe PART of this is due to the fact that we as hunters can pick up a substantially larger amount of coins than is actually dropped in a day.... 30 years ago you had 200 years worth of accumulation, now most of that stuff lost over the last 200 years has been found on public beaches or free access points, there are hundreds of us out there...
I was in Spain 30 years ago, and on a good summer night I would see 4-5 others walking around with machines...
Some stuff that's lost stays lost for a long time, but with today's technology most stuff doesn't stay lost long...
And the truth is this stuff does not get replaced as fast as we find it.. and so we are where we are today ... probably..