My theory

I have come up with a theory as to why it seems that alot of detectorists (including me) don't find many silver Washington quarters or silver Roosevelt dimes. I guess the same could apply to Franklin halves.
My theory is based on two things.
.1)
Most of the silver coins i have found are mercury dimes. The other coins are a barber quarter a standing liberty quarter a walker and a war nickle.
I have only found three Roosevelt dimes.

.2)
Almost all of these older silver coins were very deep under ground.

So my theory is that people with older machines have cleaned out most parks and school grounds of the large silver coins and the silver Roosevelts (as they wouldn't be as deep in the ground) And now the detectors are powerful enough to get to those older coins that were missed.

Yes, unless you are lucky enough to find a spot that nobody has detected (I find that very, very rare), then anything left is down deep or newly dropped. The secret, I think, is to detect very slowly so you don't miss those deep signals.

It must have been a real joy to be the first person to hit some of these places.

Good hunting!

I'm inclined to agree with you. I've found many more mercs than rosies.

I think your theory is sound. When I was detecting back in the late 1970s and early 1980s I found way more Rosies than Mercs, and I found plenty of silver Washingtons. In my lifetime I have found 7 Walking Liberty halves and zero Franklins.

So far this year I have found 19 Mercs and only 9 Rosies. Most of the silver I find these days is 5 deep minimum. I think you're absolutely correct that most of the Rosies and silver Washingtons have been cleaned out, leaving the older, deeper coins.

im down with that . i think its basically true . i have many more mercs than rosies . 0 benji halves and three walking liberties in the past 2 years . go slow and dig the iffy repeatable signals thumbsup01

I'm a stats freak and track all my finds. I've also found more mercs than rosies, but not by much. Here's the breakdown --

mercs - 150
rosies - 139
wash Q - 43
SLQ - 6
war nickels - 12
modern halves - 4 (3 walkers, 1 1964 kennedy)
barber silver - 5 (1 dime, 2 quarters, 2 halves)
seated silver - 3 (1 dime, 1 quarter, 1 half)
exotic - 2 (1 draped bust half dime, 1 trime)
Spanish silver - 3
foreign - 3

And another possible explanation is that mercs were minted from 1916-1945 (about 30 years), and circulated well into the 50s, so add another 5-10 years, whereas roses were minted from 1946-1964 (about 18 years), but only circulated til 1964. Many more years for mercs to have been lost.

RaZR link=topic=7158.msg82967#msg82967 date=1316810545 said:

I have come up with a theory as to why it seems that alot of detectorists (including me) don't find many silver Washington quarters or silver Roosevelt dimes.

So my theory is that people with older machines have cleaned out most parks and school grounds of the large silver coins and the silver Roosevelts (as they wouldn't be as deep in the ground) And now the detectors are powerful enough to get to those older coins that were missed.

Click to expand...

When I started detecting I would find lots of Rosies, a good amount of Mercs, a few barber dimes, 40's-50's-60's Washington quarters, a few SLQ's a few Barber Qs, and quite a few Barber, Franklin,Walker, and some JFK half dollars. Even dug a dozen or so, silver dollars back then.

Most of the older type of coins were lost before newer coins so it is logical they would be in the ground before the newer coins were dropped.

This continued into the mid to late 80's ..when a good amount of new hunters got detectors trying to find old silver from the ground, and they depleted most of the coins within 4-6 inches of depth.

You can never get it all, and no place is ever hunted out.....

There are some nice old silver coins still left in the ground---they are deeper and beneath many years of trash.

I think both Randy and Ryan are right!

randy link=topic=7158.msg83065#msg83065 date=1316914622 said:

And another possible explanation is that mercs were minted from 1916-1945 (about 30 years), and circulated well into the 50s, so add another 5-10 years, whereas roses were minted from 1946-1964 (about 18 years), but only circulated til 1964. Many more years for mercs to have been lost.

Click to expand...

I have thought about this as well, and it makes sense. The same would apply to Walking Liberty Halves vs. Franklin Halves.

But you would think that more Roosevelt dimes would be found as their minted quantities were so much larger than mercury dimes.
In 1964 alone the mintage of Roosevelt dimes was over 2 Billion!
And people had more money during that period in history and i believe they were more careless with their money too!
Oh well, as long as i can keep finding some kind of silver coins i'll be happy. :grin:

RaZR, you hit that one on the head. I see the same thing here, although there are areas that I swear have never been detected. Most of my silver finds are generally below 5 inches. thumbsup01

Now by my own admission, I am not the smartest anything. I was wondering if the economic invironment during the merc, rosie, wlh, Ben minting would have anything to do with the amount of coins lost? Were people more concience of there money during certain times, did people have more at certain times so that they could loose more?