Old coins on the beach. Always been there or washed up?

[sluice_goose]

Hi guys

I've been reading a little on here about coins on the beaches. Now I know that the current coins are most likely dropped but what about the old pennies etc that I have seen in recent finds on here.

Have they always been there and its just by chance that no one has ever uncoverd them with a detector or is the tide bringing in new coins all the time.
It just seems unlikely that a coin has been sitting there in the sand for 50 years or more and never found with a detector or a kid digging a hole.

Cheers SG

 

[axeman]

Hi SG, I dare say they would come and go with the tide or tidal movement. Having severe beach erosion like we had up here in Queensland would also wash a few freshies on to the beach. Old coins would take years to get washed in from a shipwreck, depending how far out to sea it was. Erosion would also bring deeper ones to the surface I suppose. Mick

 

[Scoopa]

Good question Sluice_goose. I've always found old coins (pre decimals) only after large amounts of sand has been removed from the beach either by storm or tidal action. The coins are always in the 'gravel' layer beneath the sand. Their condition a generally poor because of the length of time exposed to salt water. Without the removal of the sand no one wound find them. They have been lost at least 40 years ago. If you get to find coins in this layer of gravel, there's always a good chance you will find a ring or two there as well.

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Not owning a detector or ever finding anything at the beach but sunburn and sand filled crack.. I would thing that old coins washed up on a beach would show signs of tumbling etc, like a pebble or a piece of gold from a fast flowing stream, getting to a beach would be a feat in itself as the items would be going "uphill". I like Ax and Scoopa theory, always been there, just layered down under the current sand, or maybe brought in when and if they do sand replacement after a sever wash out.

Dunno, just my two bobs worth.

 

[Heatho]

I've been out on the Northern Beaches of Sydney (Clontarf, Balgowlah, North and South Curl Curl, Narrabeen inside lagoon beach
area) a bit over the last few days and have come to the conclusion that a lot of pre decimals have just totally eroded/corroded
or have been found already. A lot of the the stuff I found was very old junk (nails, ringpulls, exploded cans) barely recognisable.

Mostly things were quite deep, so seems other detectorists have been through, though with the GPX I was constantly digging deep
on some very small targets using 11 inch DD standard coil, interference is bad around here. One very small sinker recovered was
at least 500 mm down.

Some signals were quite subliminal almost, though kicking an inch of sand off always lets you know. I love this machine and am extremely confident in it now for finding small gold out in the goldfields.

Anyway found about $10 in goldies, a bunch of 2, 5, 10, 20c coins, a piece of very corroded silver which is black. a few bits of totally corroded I think old pre dec coin remnants, cheap silver plated copper jewelly.

I just don't think most metals last too long around here, underground or above.

 

[sluice_goose]

Thanks for the replys guys. Hopefully there's a little left for me when I pick my detector up from the post office tomorrow.