Acid soils raise havoc with both copper and silver Acid soils raise havoc with both copper and silver. Heavily fertilized lawns or lawns with large shade trees seldom produce good copper coins. Neither do manure-infested county fairgrounds.
Silver coins are generally shiny when they come out of the ground.
You can find some real beauties so you want to be careful when you dig. The looks of that 1916 Standing Liberty quarter won t be improved by a digging dent. That 1909-s vdb found 6 inches deep in the old yard might be more likely to be the genuine article than similar condition coins from some dealer's stock. My search buddy's lead double eagle is the only counterfeit coin I recall having seen found. Frankly, I feel that a pedigreed detector-located coin has an inherent intrinsic value that is special to the person that found it.