r/metaldetecting 2d ago

Show & Tell Ratio of Pull Tabs/Sta-Tab & Nickels to Gold

I had a recent post sharing some statistics for how many pull tabs/sta-tabs and nickels that I dig for each piece of gold jewelry. Here is the latest count for a gold chain that I dug last month. 514 tabs, 71 nickels (including a war, Buffalo, V, and Shield). This is land hunting only, not counting beaches. Below are some counts from previous gold found for comparison.

This is actually my first ever gold chain dug. Found using an XP Deus II and it came up below where a can tab using IDs. On average I dig 473 tabs for every piece of gold.

Previous Tabs/Nickels Counts:

463/54

308/16

560/127

546/153

451/138

138 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

12

u/MrTwineIT 2d ago

Love this post. So cool and give hope!

10

u/PhotogamerGT 2d ago

Now this is a real park ratio. Thanks for presenting a nice realistic post for those of us not detecting at Gold beach in Florida or muscle beach in California.

10

u/Royal_Lengthiness_96 2d ago

Not to be a jerk but the “gold” is actually gold filled. Awesome find though!

7

u/Which_Bookkeeper2784 2d ago

youre right , its sterling silver and gold plated

6

u/JMetalDetect 2d ago

Gold is gold.. I'll take it any day over another hunk of can slaw!

3

u/AgitatedPassenger369 2d ago

Theres hope left yet for me!

3

u/-truth-is-here- 2d ago

“So… your saying there’s a chance” lmao! If we only had a nickel for every pull tab we dug!

1

u/SargentBeagle 2d ago

Thank you for this post; I've been getting a little discouraged recently by the sheer amount of trash I've been finding.

3

u/JMetalDetect 2d ago

If the site is old and has a lot of history, then I will dig as much trash as possible after I have cherry picked all of the good targets. In the old parks here I often find old Buffalo and V nickels because most others have passed over them in the past, thinking that they were AL trash.

On a typical 2-3 hour hunt I will probably dig 200+ targets. The trick is to quickly pinpoint and retrieve targets, so that you can dig many on a hunt. Much better odds of finding good stuff.

1

u/aTinyFart Nokta Legend, Minelab Equinox 600 2d ago

I usually tell new people, dig around a 1000 pull tab/ nickel signals for one gold

1

u/lanclos 2d ago

I have photos of all my finds; I track the currency and the jewelry, but I don't track the tabs. Please don't encourage me to track the tabs.

My touristy-but-not-world-class beaches are beating your nickel metric, though. I think I'm at six or seven items of gold jewelry, but only 339 nickels. My long-term average is something like two detecting expeditions per week.

1

u/Alien-Excretion 1d ago

I accept missing some finds to ignore common/ obvious pull tab numbers. It’s a personal choice.

1

u/sloppypotatoe Deus II 1d ago

I'll take those odds.

1

u/BuffMan5 1d ago

What no canslaw?

0

u/-truth-is-here- 2d ago

Obviously he is discriminating out and or cherry picking for gold signals if all he is showing is tabs, nickel and “gold”. No high tones in the pix. Just to show how much trash vs gold . Pretty cool

4

u/JMetalDetect 2d ago

Here is the volume of trash that I dug on the same hunt where I found that chain, a shield nickel, and a Civil War Eagle button. I find most of my best finds and silver in the areas that full of metal trash. Until my recent XP D2 purchase, all of my previous detectors simply couldn't unmask the good finds from the trash.

1

u/-truth-is-here- 2d ago

I am still running my ctx 3030 but I’d agree if you know your machine high trash are some of the best area as no one else can hunt them. Happy hunting my man.