HUNTING OLD HOUSES, ONLY FINDING CLAD???

[olprofessor]

Being new, Im getting the hang of this great hobby. Im very interested in getting some old coins (before 1930 preferably), but it seems when I find and hunt a house/yard built in the 1920s, I still find only up finding coins from the last 30 years. GRRR!!!!

 

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[cudamark]

You need to study the houses you want to hunt. If the place has been relandscaped at some time in the past, usually it's a waste of time to hunt it. You want to find yards that have never been touched. It's also possible that the old coins are deeper than your Ace 250 will find them.

 

[DDancer]

Cudamark pretty well said it. Another thing you may want to do is note depths for the current coins as well as any trash your picking up. This can tell you about the top soil and whether landscaping has occurred. Trash, like beaver tails, pop caps or screw type pop caps, buried cans can also point out areas of older congregation. Toys too.

 

[scotty544]

See what kind of depth you are getting in an air test, if it is less than 5 to 6 inches you may be missing the older coins, on a side note, I have found very old coins on the surface to three inches deep before, it's not always about the depth.

 

[Digger Max]

Deeper is probably the key. HH

 

[WhiteTornado]

I assume you've already done this, but....

Make sure you are hitting the heavily trafficked areas. Grass just beyond the front door, or whatever door is typically used the most. When I was a kid, we had two front doors on our house. One was closer to the street and rarely used. One was a lot further back, but used occasionally . It was actually our back door that was used the most because it lead to the driveway.

Also hunt around doorways/entrances of any barns, sheds, garages, carports, etc. If have access underneath a porch, try there too.

 

[Carolina Tom]

The other boys are spot on.

You should be finding wheat cents at places built prior to 1955. If you are not finding them, something is up. If all the coins are newer, someone might have beat you to the place... could have been 20 years ago or better, and harvested all the older coins, then new ones were dropped.

The old house is a game of numbers. You have to hunt a bunch of them, around here, about 1 in 5 has silver coins... if you are lucky.

One other thing, don't set your sights too high. Everybody would love to dig 1930s and older coins, however, the majority of us just don't get to do that often. Go for wheat cents and silver Rosies, that way you will be thrilled when a 1964 dime shows up, instead of disappointed that it isn't a Walker, SLQ or Barber.

Good luck out there, and don't hesitate to PM if you have questions. GL&HH!

 

[olprofessor]

Thanks CT and everyone...

 

[ATProAdam]

I'm Huntin a property from 1920 to today. Very trashy but I bet there is good stuff below the modern trash. Lol. Old farmland too.

 

[atomicscott]

Being new, Im getting the hang of this great hobby. Im very interested in getting some old coins (before 1930 preferably), but it seems when I find and hunt a house/yard built in the 1920s, I still find only up finding coins from the last 30 years. GRRR!!!!

Do not forget about anywhere they could have had a clothesline hanging. Many coins & jewelry items have fallen out of clothes hung out to dry

 

[ATProAdam]

Do not forget about anywhere they could have had a clothesline hanging. Many coins & jewelry items have fallen out of clothes hung out to dry

Great advice! You just reminded me of a clothesline at my house we bought from when we moved in. I use it to process my chickens but I'm gonna have to detect around it now. Thanks.

 

[atomicscott]

Great advice! You just reminded me of a clothesline at my house we bought from when we moved in. I use it to process my chickens but I'm gonna have to detect around it now. Thanks.

Your very welcome! Good luck, I hope you find some goodies! Keep us posted.

 

[ivan salis]

all metal is the deepest mode with a ace 250 (as with most detectors) --but it also the trashest as well -- know that the ace 250 comingles "trash with treasure" --like pulltabs are mixed in the same box as nickels and gold ... notch out zinc cents and you will lose out on indain head cents * -- if you want to not be a "dig it all type" -- you will need to get a machine that can pull apart trash from treasure .. ie a better discrimator -- might I recommend a tecknetics delta 4000... $279 .. it has a 0 to 99 numbers display vs the ace 250's 12 blocks ...so 8 times the "slots" to sort its finds into---- 99 vs 12 ...

 

[fliermartin]

You can also try the 8.5 x 5 DD coil for the ace. You will get better seperation and less effect from minerilization so you may run a little higher on sensitivity. Make sure to use headphones and learn the sutle differances in tones.

 

[Tonto]

Also remember this: Money was scarce "back in the good old days." There won't be nearly as much silver lost as there was copper and nickle. What I've found is the homes that seem to be "middle class", or richer, have the least amount of good finds. The ones where the property looks run down and not well taken care of have consistently produced more IH cents, war nickles, and silver than the "upper" class properties. I've given a lot of thought to this, and the only thing that makes sense is that parents who had enough money didn't give their kids money to carry around as often as poorer parents who would give kids some money to keep in their pockets from time to time. It made the kids feel less poor, and empowered them, if only temporarily. These are the coins that are lost, in my opinion. Of course, this is just a generality. There are always exceptions, and just about the time I think I have something figured out, it's wrong.

 

[cudamark]

Also remember this: Money was scarce "back in the good old days." There won't be nearly as much silver lost as there was copper and nickle. What I've found is the homes that seem to be "middle class", or richer, have the least amount of good finds. The ones where the property looks run down and not well taken care of have consistently produced more IH cents, war nickles, and silver than the "upper" class properties. I've given a lot of thought to this, and the only thing that makes sense is that parents who had enough money didn't give their kids money to carry around as often as poorer parents who would give kids some money to keep in their pockets from time to time. It made the kids feel less poor, and empowered them, if only temporarily. These are the coins that are lost, in my opinion. Of course, this is just a generality. There are always exceptions, and just about the time I think I have something figured out, it's wrong.

I've mulled that over a few times myself and came up with another possibility......that the poorer parents and kids were more likely to have holes in their pockets.

 

[TrpnBils]

See what kind of depth you are getting in an air test, if it is less than 5 to 6 inches you may be missing the older coins, on a side note, I have found very old coins on the surface to three inches deep before, it's not always about the depth.

To the OP: Air test isn't a bad idea, but it won't necessarily equal the depth you're getting in the ground. Usually air test is less.

Also, to add to what Scotty said, my oldest coin is 1730s and it was every bit of 14" deep measured to the bottom of the hole, but my next oldest coin, 1799, was less than 3" deep so there's a lot of variables that go into it. Lots of us have also dug clad at 8" before, so old doesn't always mean deep, and deep doesn't always mean old.

 

[Silver Simon]

Ahh the curse of fill dirt... I've gotten permissions at some really old structures in my town, only to discover that they had been filled in the past 30 years to make the lawn more aesthetically pleasing.

 

[IDXMonster]

Ahh the curse of fill dirt... I've gotten permissions at some really old structures in my town, only to discover that they had been filled in the past 30 years to make the lawn more aesthetically pleasing.

TOTAL bummer,this is the SINLE MOST DETERMINING FACTOR as to whether or not I am going to pursue a property or not. If it has been filled,I move on,too many other places to check out that are virgin. Example-I have hunted a local school that has ALL been landscaped,garbage and clad to 8". After 3 trips and 8 hours of hunting not ONE wheat or silver. Plenty of clad though. My bosses Dad has an old farm,it's been around for 100 some years but NOT BEEN SCREWED WITH! I was there half an hour and found a 28 and 44 wheat 3-4" down,two separate digs. I found a couple clad coins an inch or two down also.
I have to assume that everyone digs certain numbers,I have a block style display and dig penny/dime and up when coinshooting,which would include pre-82 pennies. If it was almost an impossibility for most machines back in the 70s-and 80s to tell a pre-82 penny from a dime of any kind,then the pre-82 pennies should be gone also. Not so,which is part of MY dilemma. Why am I finding pre-82 pennies by the bushel but no wheat or silver in a schoolyard that's been around 120 years? Long story short,it's all about sampling,as stated previously. I DONT CARE ANYMORE "why",it is what it is and it isn't going to be what it isn't. If I can't score a wheat in a schoolyard like mine in several hours,I move on. The farm produced immediately,or close to it,and a lot of that is the fact that nobody has moved the earth around,added to it,etc. It is in original condition,and the more places like that you can find,the happier you will be. That comes with a 100% guaran-damn-tee!!!

 

[Dave Rishar]

As I've said in the past, consider maintaining a database of your finds at each site. What you find (and more importantly, what you don't find) is not only going to tell you something about how the site was used in the past, but also how it's been hunted.

Cherry-picking is not difficult and it's not new. If you're in "dig everything" mode and you're finding plenty of pennies, nickels, and dimes, but no quarters or silver, it would be safe to assume that someone high-graded your site. That's not a deal breaker for me personally, as if there are nickels, there is potentially gold. The concept of cherry picking angered me until I started cleaning out those pull tabs and the gold, and now I don't sweat it anymore. Truthfully, a site with no nickels bothers me more than one with no high conductors, as it tells me that someone was looking for the big money items and knew how to do it. Cherry-pickers are your best friends if you're prepared to do a little digging, as they've helpfully removed some of the non-gold targets for you before you even started.

Never assume that a virgin lawn is truly virgin, even if the owner believes that it is. I learned through a neighbor that someone detected my front lawn a year or two after I moved in, probably while I was out of town on business. I certainly didn't give hi permission to. According to the neighbor, he did the whole block. He didn't ask, he just went ahead and did it, and was most likely picking off easy silver in order to minimize the time he'd spent trespassing. How many other blocks did he do? And this wasn't even nighthawking out in the country. This was dayhawking in a city. I have to give the guy props, as it takes some serious balls to pull a stunt like that in a town like this.