Fiddling With The Clad Numbers

I like messing with numbers, too.

There are so many variables that can be factored into the equations, I doubt that anyone can know for sure why some locations yield larger numbers of one denomination over another. The following are just some random thoughts on the subject in no particular order:

1) We are basically a four coin society--penny, nickel, dime and quarter. 50-cent pieces and dollar coins are considered novelties by most people and are rarely used (in comparison to pennies / nickels /dimes / quarters), thus they're not dropped / lost all that often. Traditionally, the smaller the denomination, the more coins the government mints. If all coin losses were comensurate to the respective quantities minted, then quarters would be the least amount found, then dimes, then nickels, and finally cents, which would be the most plentiful. Pennies usually follow the aforementioned pattern, again, because there's so blasted many of them! The other 3 denominations often do not fit that same pattern.

2) The nickel seems to be the least found of the "big 4", but it certainly isn't because of low mintages. It's because a lot of detectorists discriminate them out as they attempt to discriminate out trash. I used to be guilty of that, but once I began detecting in all-metal mode and dug EVERY non-ferrous signal, the nickels began jumping out of the ground! I honestly believe most detectorists leave too many of the nickels behind because they inadvertently discriminate them. Coin percentages will always be skewed when the nickel count is out of whack (all other denominations will be too high).

3) Because of their size, quarters are generally the easist to find -- it's a big chunk of metal compared to the other 3 denominations. The school that I've been hunting for the past two years very seldom gives up quarters anymore (I've already found nearly all that would be in the 4" or less range). The smaller coins, however, seem to "hide" easier because there's less metal to send back a signal.

4) I think if any one coin is lost in disproportionate numbers it would be the dime because it's the smallest of the 4 and the least likely to be noticed when dropped. Drop a dime on the edge of a sidewalk and then drop a quarter. Which one was louder? The quarter obviously. When either is dropped and they bounce into the grass, it's more likely that you'll hear the quarter more often than you'll hear the dime. I'll go after either (if I know I dropped a coin), but I may not hear the dime to know that I need to go after it.

5) Your thoughts on the price of lunches at a particular school having a bearing on what coins are given in change may be a large contributing factor on which coins are more apt to be dropped and lost.

6) I have to wonder how much the affluence of the neighborhood affects which coins are most often dropped. Do schools and parks in wealthy neighborhoods have a higher percentage of quarters dropped than a poor inner city school or a rural farm area school?

One of my long-term projects is to compare government mintage number (percentages of the main 4 denominations) and how those percentages compare to what's being found by detectorists. This would simply be a count of all the business-strike coins (no proofs) for the past 25 or 30 years (which make up the majority of coins circulating today). All things equal, I would guess that the percentages of coins found by detectorists (pennies vs nickels vs dimes vs quarters) should be close to the percentage of each denomination actually minted and released into circulation.

In case your interested, here are the quantities and percentages of the coins found at the school I've been searching for the past 2 years -- a total of 1,530 coins found thus far:

pennies -- 661 -- 43.2%
nickels -- 405 -- 26.5%
dimes -- 318 -- 20.8%
quarters -- 145 -- 9.5 %
dollar --1 -- percentage too small to matter

Well, I've rambled long enough, but when it comes to crunching numbers, I definitely have a kindred spirit with you.

Harley-Dog

Z - those are some neat stats. I never have done any but I think mine are similar to yours.

Harley - If you ever want any stats for your mint/dug research = I have all my dug coin records for the last 27 years. steve in so az

It worries me a bit that I was thinking about the same ratios just the other day. (what does it mean)
I also included age of coins in my tabulations, as expected pre 64, pennies run away with the numbers, but second place for me is nickels by far? Maybe because I have TID and nickels are a very consistent 9,12.

steve in so az said:

Harley - If you ever want any stats for your mint/dug research = I have all my dug coin records for the last 27 years. steve in so az

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Steve,

I'll take you up on that offer....not right away, but I will be contacting you. With 27 years of detecting experience and 90,000+ coins to show for it, we can all learn some things from you!

Harley-Dog

Here's a great link for US mint coin prodction numbers each year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Mint_coin_production

Nickels are the least produced. If you think about it, it would make sense that they would be the least found, since no matter how much change you are owed, you should never get more than 1 back, where as you could get up to 3 quarters, 2 dimes, or 4 pennies.

z118 said:

Here's a great link for US mint coin prodction numbers each year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Mint_coin_production

Nickels are the least produced. If you think about it, it would make sense that they would be the least found, since no matter how much change you are owed, you should never get more than 1 back, where as you could get up to 3 quarters, 2 dimes, or 4 pennies.

Click to expand...

Great link! I stand corrected regarding nickel production, although in the early 1900's and again in the mid 1930's their production was second only to the pennies. Yeah, what you said about only receiving 1 nickel back in change no matter how is owed you makes perfect cents (sense).

So tell me, looking at my numbers at the school, how would one account for so many nickels being found? I will admit that out of the 405 nickels I have found there, 38 of them have been dated 1964, which was one heck of a year for nickel production. But other than that, most of the nickels are from the last 25 years or so.

If you think about it, a lot of detectorists complain about not finding many nickels, or they say that nickels are the hardest to find because their metallic composition throws them in with the pull tabs and all the other junk. So if my machine is finding so many nickels (second only to pennies), surely the pennies, dimes and quarters should be even easier to find....unless, for some unknown reason, they just aren't there. I would like to think that 1,530 coins is a large enough sampling for comparing percentages of coins found to percentages of coins minted...but who knows?

Harley-Dog

Harley-Dog said:

So tell me, looking at my numbers at the school, how would one account for so many nickels being found? I will admit that out of the 405 nickels I have found there, 38 of them have been dated 1964, which was one heck of a year for nickel production. But other than that, most of the nickels are from the last 25 years or so.

Harley-Dog

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Perhaps someone else is or has hunted this school, and like the typical detectorist, doesn't dig too many nickels? And now maybe you are finding them since you are more thorough...

Or perhaps lunches were $0.95 at some point?

z118 said:

Perhaps someone else is or has hunted this school, and like the typical detectorist, doesn't dig too many nickels? And now maybe you are finding them since you are more thorough...

Or perhaps lunches were $0.95 at some point?

Click to expand...

I'm almost certain that the place has been hunted before due to the sparse amount of older coins found (3 buffalos, 2 war nickels, 1 silver quarter [1942], and only 16 wheats) out of 1,500+ coins. The school was built in 1916, so you know it's old enough to have some lost silver and certainly more wheats than what has been found thus far.

Yeah, you may be right...I may be finding a bunch of the nickels that the last detectorist discriminated out!

Harley-Dog

In Re: Harley-Dog

Interesting what you said about affluence of students?

My towns H.S. I hunt I find tons of coins

2 others I find very very little...
are the kids in my town sloppy? cuase they are not rich.

I have recently started finding alot more nickels due to less descrimination.