Got out Wednesday night to the hillside in a Chicago pounded park where I found some silver and Indians a few weeks ago. Given the amount of older coins I have found at this location, I decided to open up the discrimination on the etrac and see if I could find some nickels. Place is super trashy and I worked it slow focusing on deeper signals since the place is littered with pull tabs. Turned out to be some nickels there! Got 1907 and 1910 V Nickels, a 1920 Buffalo, and a 1947 Jefferson. Also got a 1943D Merc and a unusually shaped Goetz phone token plus 5 wheaties.

Went back on Thursday night to a different section of the park that has produced oldies and tried the same technique but all the nickels I found were modern. Did manage 1901 and 1908 Indians and 5 wheaties.

Alright! Nice bunch of nickels and the merc is 'frosting on the cake'!
Like those V nickels!

I've yet to find a V nickel
If you or anyone else here is using an eTRAC, whats the typical V nickel ID?

Been successfully using a tight trashy park pattern that accepts copper/silver but nulls most shallow iron, smaller aluminum but unfortunately nulls gold and nickels too.

This year, i've just about perfected a nickel notch in that pattern and am finding a lot of nickels that i previously walked over. Been also experimenting with TTF and so far it coupled with the nickel notch and carefully listening to the 90deg. tones appears to be a kick-a$$ nickel killer especially in trashy areas. Roughly better than 60% of the time, the target is a nickel rather than a beaver tail piece, flattened foil, etc.

Cool! I love old nickels. Nice job on the photography too Pat! That's a neat token too. Keep hitting that spot! You may be the next one to find a gold coin.

About time you start going after the nickels!!!!

ironsight wrote:
Nickels come in as 12-12 (+ 4 or - 2) on my E-trac.

Ahh, OK thanks Rottonr!
V nickels register in the same ballpark as modern nickels.

....Old Nickels I believe are one of the hardest coins to find.....if you are using a Notch program be Careful!!.....most V Nickels and Buffalo Nickels that I find have a considerable amount of corrosion on them....I think that it is because of this corrosion that makes finding them more difficult....also the halo effect may be causing the coin to either register higher or lower on the scale than what is read on the surface or readings obtained from a bench test.....good luck Joe

Olde Texas,
now that you mention it, of the two Buffalos i found this year, one of them, the 1916, did have an un-typical nickel ID. Only reason i dug, it was deep.

The silver war nickels i found to date all exhibited typical nickel IDs. With the 35% silver alloy, i would of expected them to ring up with a much higher conductive component.

Just started to seriously look for nickels this season as i previously hunted with nickels along with pulltabs nulled out.

Anyhow thanks for the info, i'll keep it in mind!