New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Nice! Its always a good feeling to get a 'good' coin! Ive only got 3 or 4 so far in about 7 weeks of many hours detecting.

It sounds like you havent had your detector for long - if thats the case then lifes just started and you will never look back - great fun.
Get yourself a small bit of gold and place it on a card about the size of a drivers licence then laminate it so you dont lose it - then bury it under say an inch of soil and practice detecting it - get others to put it under things (non metallic) for you and more practice and finally try it close to wire, nails and so on until you can differentiate between it and the rubbish - then go into Central and look for gold. I have had detectors since 1980 or 1981 and found heaps of coins, a few rings and so on but never any gold. I bought a Goldbug and have never looked back - yesterday alone it detected a quarter of the value of the machine - I havent had it long and it has paid me back well and truly.

The road just goes ahead - good luck and hope you find many more treasures.

What have you got? - I am not trying to sell on behalf of Robert but I really cant praise the Goldbug enough - To me it 'is' the real machine because I am really a detector amateur even though I have had one for over 30 years - I have a Garret Deepseeker and a Minelab Xtreme and a cheap Goldbug...with the former two my son has found thousands of dollars with the Xtreme but we both got Goldbugs and I notice that now when we go out it is the Goldbug only we take - I have paid mine of in only a few trips. The fact is that it is so easy to use.
Guys like kiwijw use the big Minelabs with a great deal of success but I go for my cheap Goldbug even though I have got a great Minelab. I havent mastered the Minelab yet but the Goldbug is so easy to get used to.

I have found every metal except gold with mine so far.
Had a play in a couple of rivers yesterday but no gold big enough to ring up on it.
It never ceases to amaze me how much junk is in the rivers though.
One day ...

Will do cheers.

Try dropping it face down onto a hardened surface. Like a benchtop or sink. The green crust may break away. Works well on larger coins. Not so well with smaller ones as they are too lite.

I clean my silvers with a bit of tin foil,spit on the coin,wrap it up and hold it for a minute.You'll feel it heat up,hear sizzling and smell rotten eggs.Wash it in water and repeat if necessary.
If its really bad i sometimes resort to electrolysis,but you gotta be careful,and take your time.
I've never used bleach,i'd think it would tarnish the silver?

Silvers from the beach are a whole lot of difference from silvers found on land. Land silvers I find come up real well with the non corrosive cloudy ammonia (mild base). If that doesn't work then swap around with lemmon juice. But try cloudy ammonia first as its less harsh and won't attack the surface as the mild acidity in lemmon juice will. Watch for the gas formed with the reaction of ammonia to silver. Change the solution often. The gas produced as a reaction of silver to ammonia sinks too to ground level I think. I use a small closed container and try not to get a wiff of it when I change the solution. After I while I try rubbing off the grime with my fingers. Sometimes the stains and grime come right off after a few minutes soak in cloudy ammonia. The ammonia will turn blue colour or cloudier as the coating dissolves. A good sign its working.

That's if you need to do anything to the coin at all apart from gently washing the dirt off. Land silvers might also have a nice patina which you don't want to "Improve" at all , as it may be much better than a shiny clean coin which has its value ruined.

Beach silvers are often hard work. Last year I gave up on a whole heap of them and posted and sold them to the main refinery in Penrose AK (NZ Gold merchants ) for silver melt.

Bleach, I wouldn't think would work.

I gave up on electrolysis as it striped off layers of the surface. The"tin foil and spit" seems to do the same. Baking soda powder and a little water is quick. Rub between your figures with the paste formed. The coin won't have value as a collectable coin afterwards as the baking soda method does really bad things to the surface, but it is not as harsh as "tin foil and spit" or electrolysis.

But sometimes with the later methods mentioned its all about getting a coin back to a state where you can display it. And its not about the the value of the coin. The coin in the state we have found them if it has surface corrosion so most probably doesn't have value to start with. However if the coin is a valuable one or you think it might have value don't do anything to it apart from carefully removing surface dirt. My next step wouldn't be to go to a coin dealer though. Do your own research on the net. My best info comes not from u-tube but from the few references I have found from the few coin dealers who admit to cleaning coins such as:

http://www.anythinganywhere.com/info/clean.htm

If someone says don't clean coins ever, that's being silly. The coins we find aren't stored in a box at grandma's house.