Nice forum ,great info! First post for me..anyway,s ..a few weeks ago my ex-mother inlaw passed away and left me a shocking surprise inheritance ... Out of the blue i receive 3-1990 ish looking metal detectors ..and a note tellin me she passed... I have no history in metal detecting ..except helpinb her change her battieries a couple times at the old camp like 10 yeaars prior..but the weird thing about it is .. About 2 hours prior to receiving my inheritance from fedex..iwent for my first walk into my new homes back yard abudet is Woods that the yard goes into.. during that walk there was a lot of it interesting rock formations that caught my eye... It made me think this be a good spot for a metal detector!! No lie...i even texd my budd about it there..so After dusting off my new inheritance s .. and stealing all the nihe volt batteries up from all the smoke detectors in my newhouse.. I took them with me up the woods... When I turned it on to the first time it was screaching every couple steps... And started digging up coins..but so far I have like of the blank copper coins roighly and lots of other coins in the same area.. I live north of boston . Im a total detecting junkie now! for the past two weeks or so iI find myself walking up the woods every minute I get searching with my new toys.. I come home with at least one or two blanks each trip .. I'm even up there in the dark diggin . Well just.last nights trip i got carrued away.. and a little lost... Could they be old coins that are faded seems like a lot of the coins that I found a copper up there really beat up I'll post a link to where I keep my pictures if you want a closerlook
I had copper slugs like these that fit washing machines, and then were returned to me for re-use so I didn't have to pay. (Dad co-owned the machines.) As for the metal detector, I use a battery charger, and it really works. 9 volts ( 2 of them) are expensive and don't last long at all in the MD. ( 4 hours?) I recharge them after every use and I prob get closer to 70 hours out of them. It was very inexpensive on Amazon, and I didn't even think it would work. I am very pleased.
Yes the dual 9 volt battery deal is a thing of the past hopefully .. i made a couple rechargable packs yestrtday, from many working,and perfeckly fine power tools .. i decided to really save a few bucks..my bright idea was that id build my own 9v ignituon system.. i used 2 dewalt 18 volt packs and built the heavieszt 9 Volt battery ever created... After 5 minutes it feels like your holding on to the Sun... Now I can stand on one side of the garage and detect the other steel battel 12 feet away..lol
First, welcome to the neighborhood @Meathead ! I suspect that the copper-looking coins have merely lost their clad layer from being buried in the ground for so long. It would be considered environmental damage. FYI - One of our members @paddyman98 is not only an error collector, but he is also an avid metal detectorist as well. Chris
Highly unlikely. More likely would be to lose the copper and have just the clad layers but that is also very unlikely. And it you did managed to get enough corrosion to lose one layer or the other the weight would be much less and the diameter would also be smaller. More likely these slugs are just that, slugs.
Highly unlikely? Why don't you just say impossible? Maybe you didn't say impossible because it may be possible. So, why don't you quit splitting hairs? Chris
If you carefully place concentrated acid on the surface of a clad coin (I can't remember if I used Nitric or sulfuric acid) and add a little more as needed to keep the surface covered, you can etch away the clad layer, while keeping the copper core somewhat intact. So it's not impossible, but I would imagine it would be highly unlikely that the quarters I put back into circulation 30 years ago are still around. Better living through Chemistry
The odd thing is the edges or end or...im sure there is a name for what i mean .. but the outer rims of the coins are like a bicycle tire on sum, then a fewsre like a newer quarter shape with the ribs or rige and one or two seem like a nickel smooth... But there all exa kly the same width... As i try to toothbrush them i keep thinking i see a number or letter faintly.. its makein me cookoo...i have a susppition of what they are after endless hours of searching for blank copper coins... I have a feeling i might of figured it out! And im just getting sinking feeling that my saxon copper coin hoard ,actually my captain kid hidden treasure exererson is comin too a end quickly.. the Captain Kidd treasure thing been stuck in my head ,since I found the first couple coins...shh dont tell any one....( I even played sick today from work ..butt Supposedly several locations as close as in 1 to 5 miles that kids treasures are still out there . Over the past two weeks I've gone to the measures of researching geological maps surveys.. even paid 22 bucks from some website for a map from 1800s just to see !! (Yes i paid like 44$ right after because the map went all the way back to 1820s)That feeling kicked in after cleaning a couple up just now with a brillow pad.... I've seen them before . And unfortunately it's even in my field as a plumber.. for the past 28years i even installed themm myself... Hopefully im totally wrong .... Looks like it's time for some more research... So what im thinkin i found.is that there old old style tags for water and or steam valves or even gas valves..commercial industrial... Typicaly... they usually stamped with a numbed used for identification on and referring to a blueprint schematic..the thing I did figure out just now with my 70$ treasure maps is the land also abuts to the reservoir and is the city Water Department headquarters .... That's wheret I'm going to first visit will be the water department lot with a couple tags to see if it's something that they would use will come on the big valves that they install that they cut off and they probably threw into the woods or some thing day aftet day...over and over... I know that's what they did definitely for water and steam shut-offs ...dam!! I guess was actually kind of fun will excitement or possibly a midlife crisis or something..who k ows.. but I'm still hoping I'm totally wrong and that by the time I hit post, what I just typed here..that you guys will have an answer on there cuz I ,,, seen a couple e-mails told me that they were posted replys to my original question... Ma great copper&gold hoard.. istilll safely buried up the woods waiting for me.. I remember I used them when I startef working with my old man.. so when the bills came in he was Flipp cuz those tags cost so much .. sorry so going on and on.. a post up what I find out I'm going to get going over there now to find out its killing me
Chris look at the bottom of the left most 'slug' in the photo, I get those rough straight edge if I don't use a 'slug punch' to pot them out and just a screwdriver to bend until I can move it back/forth to pop off.
I know what you mean, but I didn't suggest that all of them could be missing the clad layer. That is also why I suggested that maybe paddyman98 would be able to give him a better answer. It's just that Conder101 seems to like to call me out on the carpet whenever he has the chance, but he doesn't like anyone to tell him that he is wrong. If he wants to play his childish games, sobeit! I've lost a lot of respect for him. Chris
Hello @Meathead ! Welcome to CoinTalk! I a metal detecting junkie also! New York City area! 7 years now!