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Thursday, February 2, 2017

Searching for old silver at the beach

Not everything that glitters is gold at the beach and I often spend beach hunting time searching for old silver coins.
I am sure many blog readers would be just as happy finding these Spanish silver reales over modern tourist gold. 


When I am purposely searching for old silver at the beach, I use metal detecting equipment and search techniques that improve my chances of recovering old silver.
Old silver coins are usually recovered from deeper layers of sand.  Eroded beaches in areas with a little history are excellent places to search for old silver.
If a site is not that trashy I prefer using a VLF metal detector with a large search coil or a pulse induction metal detector. 
Sometimes I will use these after I know all the shallow targets have probably been recovered. 
Depth is the name of the game when it comes to searching for old silver or gold. The majority of popular metal detectors used at the beach have 10 or 11 inch search coils. 
If you have equipment geared towards target depth you never have to worry about being the first person to search a potentially good site for old silver. 
Maxed out depth readings on metal detector display screens are always a good sign, use very little discrimination and dig any kind of target response. Using a VLF metal detector, you are looking for deep targets on the edge of discrimination range. 
Targets that respond quite differently to shallow targets that are easy to identify. 
Even a slight break, raising or lowering in the threshold may be a deep silver coin using a pulse induction metal detector. 
This is where a slow methodical local beach hunter has such a good advantage searching for older finds at the beach. 
I added local because if you know your beaches well, you will know where you are likely to find old silver when a window of opportunity opens.
These two pieces of silver came from a local beach with a rich Jewish history.  One of my favorite places to search for old silver coins and jewelry, when sand is stripped from the beach.


Where there is old silver you can also find old gold, use the old silver coins to lead you to old gold. 






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