Tom_in_CA
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- Mar 23, 2007
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For those who wonder how to find sites with potential to give up old coins, here's an evolution of a site, with before and after pix. Typical of a site which we md'rs should be looking for, and the results of this one-such site. :ar15:
First, are pix of a ho-hum late teens home. These were snagged off of google man-on-street view, of the view in my town. Probably from earlier last year. It's just a block or so off of our oldest (1860s origination) side of town. But as you can see, this particular home is only 1910s-ish. It happened to be vacant, and for sale, as you can see in these pix.
Same house from side-view:
At a certain point last summer or fall, the house apparently sold. The new owner (someone from out of the area, who bought it as a rental investment), hired contractors to come in and totally over-haul the place. One of the things they did, was to scrape off the ratty fluffy crab-grass in the front. Here's a pix of when they'd just gotten the grass tilled it up with rototillers, but not pulled too much off.
A friend "Dave" and I checked the yard at this time (with the permission of the spanish speaking landscaper, since my friend speaks spanish
). We got a lot of clad, and a few wheaties. But it was plainly evident that there was just still too much fluffy top soil. We even labored to flat shovel a lot of the fluff aside, thinking we'd get to some older coins. By doing that, we got some wheaties and a random buffalo or silver, but .... just too much soil to move around, so we left. Here's a pix of Dave doing some shovel effort on the fluffy loose stuff.
Then one day a few months later, we noticed they had resumed working on the yard. They'd scraped off all the fluffy top soil, and taken out the concrete borders. Here's some pix of how that looked (after the grass had already started growing back, so this pix was a month or so later). Notice how the level is now level with the sidewalk, as opposed to the earlier shots, where the grass was a step "up" a bit from the sidewalk.
So we hit it hard more, again going off the earlier "ok" from the hired landscaper from last year. (House still vacant and undergoing remodeling on the inside and outside). This time we started getting better older stuff. I never kept my stuff separate, so I don't have pix of my coins from this site. But Dave did his stuff separate for these pix. My stuff was, as I recall, an IH, wheaties, a V nickel, some mercs, etc...
Dave kept on the site for several more times, and kept getting interesting stuff. For starters, he found this token. The guide book price is from a 1976 Kappens book, so that "$15 price" is way out of date. The token was ebayed for $160 shortly after it was found.
And in addition to barbers, some IH's, etc... he pulled up an 1867 Shield nickel, and an 1809 half reale!
All the other coins (barbers, V's, IH's, etc...) can be explained by the house that is the 10's vintage. But the shield nickel and the half reale sent me researching a bit more. I knew that the side of town this house sits on, that the streets way predate the 1910's. So I hit sanborn maps to see what was on the site in earlier times. The earliest sanborn for our city 1886. You can see from this pix of that map, there was no house on the site, at that time. Instead there was horses stabled here (that's what those shown structures are, is shed & stable coverings and a barn-like structure (as opposed to the letter "D" or "Dwg" for "Dwelling" if it had been a home, on those sanborn maps). And if you look close, you can see "granary" for the horse-feeder (or whatever type animals). So we think that in the 1880's, this was a stable for the hotels and businesses that are a 1/2 block away (as this is just a block away from the downtown district of our city). Our spot is right at the intersection seen there of "Gabilan" and "Pajaro" corner.
Then in the 1913 sanborn, a dwelling is seen, but NOT the home that is there now. It's positioned on the wrong part of the lot, etc... By the 1925 sanborn, the current structure can be seen. So there was an apparent home there from sometime after 1900, until the time that the current house took it's place. Thus homes from sometime shortly after 1900, to the present.
Therefore the older shield nickel, and reale come from the era before homes, when it was just sheds, horses, or whatever. This area goes back to the earliest parts of our city (1860s) is when those streets came into being. So I'm guessing the 1809 reale circulated up till that time. Reales apparently circulated up till the 1860s, as we know, even though a law forbade foreign coins, after a certain date (once the mid 1850s beginnings of the SF mint were deemed to have introduced enough coinage to end the coin-shortage going on). But the earlier coins in circulation (which inc'd reales) continued to be recognized and circulated amongst merchants, despite the law. I have heard of reales being found in western town sites that didn't get their start till after the gold rush people had started coming down and beginning towns down on the low-lands. You know, like oldtown demo sites, sidewalk tearouts, etc... of buildings or streets that didn't come into being till the 1860s. So it's possible that this one saw 50+ yrs. of circulation, and was lost in the very early beginnings of the city here.
First, are pix of a ho-hum late teens home. These were snagged off of google man-on-street view, of the view in my town. Probably from earlier last year. It's just a block or so off of our oldest (1860s origination) side of town. But as you can see, this particular home is only 1910s-ish. It happened to be vacant, and for sale, as you can see in these pix.
Same house from side-view:
At a certain point last summer or fall, the house apparently sold. The new owner (someone from out of the area, who bought it as a rental investment), hired contractors to come in and totally over-haul the place. One of the things they did, was to scrape off the ratty fluffy crab-grass in the front. Here's a pix of when they'd just gotten the grass tilled it up with rototillers, but not pulled too much off.
A friend "Dave" and I checked the yard at this time (with the permission of the spanish speaking landscaper, since my friend speaks spanish
). We got a lot of clad, and a few wheaties. But it was plainly evident that there was just still too much fluffy top soil. We even labored to flat shovel a lot of the fluff aside, thinking we'd get to some older coins. By doing that, we got some wheaties and a random buffalo or silver, but .... just too much soil to move around, so we left. Here's a pix of Dave doing some shovel effort on the fluffy loose stuff.
Then one day a few months later, we noticed they had resumed working on the yard. They'd scraped off all the fluffy top soil, and taken out the concrete borders. Here's some pix of how that looked (after the grass had already started growing back, so this pix was a month or so later). Notice how the level is now level with the sidewalk, as opposed to the earlier shots, where the grass was a step "up" a bit from the sidewalk.
So we hit it hard more, again going off the earlier "ok" from the hired landscaper from last year. (House still vacant and undergoing remodeling on the inside and outside). This time we started getting better older stuff. I never kept my stuff separate, so I don't have pix of my coins from this site. But Dave did his stuff separate for these pix. My stuff was, as I recall, an IH, wheaties, a V nickel, some mercs, etc...
Dave kept on the site for several more times, and kept getting interesting stuff. For starters, he found this token. The guide book price is from a 1976 Kappens book, so that "$15 price" is way out of date. The token was ebayed for $160 shortly after it was found.
And in addition to barbers, some IH's, etc... he pulled up an 1867 Shield nickel, and an 1809 half reale!
All the other coins (barbers, V's, IH's, etc...) can be explained by the house that is the 10's vintage. But the shield nickel and the half reale sent me researching a bit more. I knew that the side of town this house sits on, that the streets way predate the 1910's. So I hit sanborn maps to see what was on the site in earlier times. The earliest sanborn for our city 1886. You can see from this pix of that map, there was no house on the site, at that time. Instead there was horses stabled here (that's what those shown structures are, is shed & stable coverings and a barn-like structure (as opposed to the letter "D" or "Dwg" for "Dwelling" if it had been a home, on those sanborn maps). And if you look close, you can see "granary" for the horse-feeder (or whatever type animals). So we think that in the 1880's, this was a stable for the hotels and businesses that are a 1/2 block away (as this is just a block away from the downtown district of our city). Our spot is right at the intersection seen there of "Gabilan" and "Pajaro" corner.
Then in the 1913 sanborn, a dwelling is seen, but NOT the home that is there now. It's positioned on the wrong part of the lot, etc... By the 1925 sanborn, the current structure can be seen. So there was an apparent home there from sometime after 1900, until the time that the current house took it's place. Thus homes from sometime shortly after 1900, to the present.
Therefore the older shield nickel, and reale come from the era before homes, when it was just sheds, horses, or whatever. This area goes back to the earliest parts of our city (1860s) is when those streets came into being. So I'm guessing the 1809 reale circulated up till that time. Reales apparently circulated up till the 1860s, as we know, even though a law forbade foreign coins, after a certain date (once the mid 1850s beginnings of the SF mint were deemed to have introduced enough coinage to end the coin-shortage going on). But the earlier coins in circulation (which inc'd reales) continued to be recognized and circulated amongst merchants, despite the law. I have heard of reales being found in western town sites that didn't get their start till after the gold rush people had started coming down and beginning towns down on the low-lands. You know, like oldtown demo sites, sidewalk tearouts, etc... of buildings or streets that didn't come into being till the 1860s. So it's possible that this one saw 50+ yrs. of circulation, and was lost in the very early beginnings of the city here.
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