Silver dollars?

[pong12211]

If I knew I would be digging them up best of luck to you in your search.

 

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[Charlie P. (NY)]

Have not dug a silver dollar yet, but have found them squirreled away in places like desks and dressers.

Perhaps they were large enough you'd notice if you dropped one.

 

[MUDSLINGER]

If you look at the behavior of people you will see we have the same kind of people today as we did in 1880's; those that like to carry large denominations to show off their good fortune. have you ever noticed how many people today carry 100 dollar bills. plus it was more conveinent for rancher or employers to pay help. size does make it easier to find if dropped and some locals were more prone to circulate the silver dollar. my hunch is that most silver dollars were squirled away and hidden in jars and wooden boxes or saddle bags. the occasional dropped silver dollar pops up now and then but i think we should ask ourselves what kind of site am i detecting and where would they hide a cache? JMHO

 

[Rodbuster209]

That's the funniest thing I've read lately Rodbuster...the numbers being found ? I don't know how things are in Cali, but here you ask your buddy what he found..oh a lead sinker!
Thing is most detectorists IMHO practice Keppys signature
Most guys are not going to tell everybody hey I found a cache of dollars today.

Mike

It is my opinion that they are not a common find, maybe they are in some places but it does not seem that way here, I am still looking for my first one! GoodLuck!

 

[Jason in Enid]

It is my opinion that they are not a common find, maybe they are in some places but it does not seem that way here, I am still looking for my first one! GoodLuck!

Commonly carried does not equate to commonly found by metal detectorists. I have very few gold rings but that doesn't mean there aren't a ton of them lost in my area. Hell, I've never found a gold coin but I KNOW they were lost in my area. I just have to get my detector over one and be willing to dig the signal.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

It is my opinion that they are not a common find, maybe they are in some places but it does not seem that way here, I am still looking for my first one! GoodLuck!

I believe that is because of their size, even dropped in high grass they are 10 times easier to find compared to other coins.

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[Jeremy S]

I found one that was under an old asphalt driveway by an old house that has been torn down. This wasn't exactly a wealthy neighborhood or anything. It was dated 1887, but I expect that it was dropped a long time after it had been minted. Maybe some kid raided dad's coin collection in the 50s or 60s?

As for circulation back in the day, I didn't think dollar bills really started to come into use until the 1930s? They were around before that but just not widely used. A silver dollar was a lot of money back then. If one was lost the whole family probably scoured the ground for weeks until it was found.

 

[sproatz]

What years would you say that they would of been mostly used?

 

[uglymailman]

60 minutes had a show in late 70's of two guys metal detecting in the water at Atlantic City. Explained how they waterproofed their detectors and showed their scoops. Seems back in the day it was good luck to pitch a silver dollar off the boardwalk. They had a pile of jewelry they didn't want to talk about and a couple of thousand silver dollars. I guess you're 40 years late on that one.
I remember having them as a kid. Skilled labor was maybe 3 bucks an hr. so a kid didn't hang on to em very long. Ya know, that was a Giant candy bar,a pack of juicy fruit, a bottle of pop,a comic book and and 65 cents change. A generation or 3 before me would have paid attention to where their money was. That might have been two days labor. Still can't account for drunks. Good luck.

 

[Argentium]

Silver dollars did circulate widely through out the Western states - My parents have told me how in the 1950's (just after
they were married ) when they were living in Libby , Montana - they ran into them constantly , tried to get rid of them as fast as
they could because of size and weight . These would have been Peace and Morgans certainly . I would think it would be pretty
hard to lose one of these without noticing it , but If I was specifically going out looking for one , I would head for any of a
number of Western states , and I would target areas where there was a lot of activity during the winter months . Every
small mining or logging town in the West had like 17 saloons - drunken behavior was a constant - The challenge is getting
permission for an area that hasn't been worked over pretty well by now .

 

[Jason in Enid]

The challenge is getting
permission for an area that hasn't been worked over pretty well by now .

Virgin ground will be your best option but not the only one. Both of my Morgans were found on public sites which have been hunted many, many times. Both were also much deeper than older tech detectors could probably see them.

 

[scaupus]

my take...go out west, search teardowns, look for caches.

But...there's much more valuable things that are much easier to find, like big fat gold rings, and things of much more historical interest, like just about any relic, so why bother targeting silver dollars? Having said that, I'd be thrilled to find one.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I've found about a dozen silver dollars, in my 37-ish years. Several after beach storms, some in old-town urban demolition sites, 1 in a turfed yard, etc....

But the guys with the most staggering totals are some of the early hunters from states like Montana, Idaho, and Nevada. I have heard that they circulated there the longest , as Argentium says. Right up to the discontinuance of silver in 1964-ish. Reason is, that those states were silver mining states. So there was some sort of laws to favor silver dollars, versus paper currency, so as to promote the silver mining industry. However, I can't find any web-links about this right now, so I'm not sure where this came from. Just saw someone else cite that as a fact from a similar thread years ago.

Therefore, some of the earliest hunters in Montana, Idaho, and Nevada, were known to have found dozens upon dozens of silver dollars with their early BFOs and TR's. Like, they could be found simply in any sandbox that dates to the '50s - or-earlier, with ease. Needless to say, I'm sure all the easy pickens were stripped from those easy-to-hit spots earlier on.

Still though, perhaps those states would, to this day, be the place to have the best luck at fumble-fingers silver dollars (versus caches or some other strange-reasons).

 

[sproatz]

Thank you

 

[nomad 11]

guessing you want them for face value.if not go to coin shops they'll have plenty.that will be a hell of a lot easier than finding them with a metal detector because you may never find one in you're lifetime sorry just being realistic.

 

[sproatz]

Yeah you got it

 

[nomad 11]

Virgin ground will be your best option but not the only one. Both of my Morgans were found on public sites which have been hunted many, many times. Both were also much deeper than older tech detectors could probably see them.

and what kind of detector do you use ?

 

[sproatz]

Whites spectra v3i w/ 10 dd and 12x15sef sometimes

 

[sproatz]

I'm probably gonna buy a Deus in may

 

[CoinHunterAZ]

I have found only one silver dollar in over 25 years of detecting. It is a 1922 S Peace Dollar, and was found near the spot of the old original Post Office in my town. I found a Barber half and quarter in the same hole very nearby to it as well. They are few and far between, but occasionally people still find silver dollars.