How to sort your metal detecting finds efficiently

When I first started metal detecting I threw all my clad and wheat pennies in the same pouch. Later when I got home I would sort them out and wash each one individually in the sink by hand. It didn’t take long to figure out that this was a terribly inefficient system so I came up with a new  plan.

The best method I have found is to carry a pouch that has a large area for trash and a smaller area for clad coins. I then throw a 1/2 dollar coin tube in the bottom of the trash area for good finds. Any trash goes in the large pouch, clad and tokens in the small pouch (I don’t zip it), and wheats, Indians, and silver coins in the coin tube which I toss into the bottom of my trash compartment. I’ve used this method for several hundred hunts at least and have never lost a coin tube. As long as it’s at the bottom of the trash it should never fall out. This makes for easy access to all three compartments so you can retrieve and sort targets quickly and get back to detecting.

After I’m finished detecting I remove the coin tube and dump all my trash in the garbage. I then pull out the tokens from my clad and throw all the clad into a large plastic tub. At the end of the year I dump the tub of clad into a rock tumbler or concrete mixer to clean all at once. I used to log every clad find but it soon became overwhelming so clad isn’t something I track anymore except the year end total. I then sort, clean, log, and store all my good finds.