How Many coins would you expect to be lost in the yard of a 100 year old house?

[skylarking1970]

I ask this for all of those people that have searched an old house that they know has never been hunted before, and either get skunked, or only get a few coins. You figure that there has to be more coins lost there over a 100 year period.

I was just thinking. I wonder how many coins would be lost in an average size lot of a house over the years.

I know there are a lot of variables, but on average, how many coins are lost in a yard per year do you think?

Now figure that the house is 100 years old, never been hunted, and always occupied.

If you could dig up all the dirt on that lot down to lets say 5 feet to make sure that you got every coin that was ever lost in the yard of that house, how many coins do you think you would get.

 

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[musky8it]

most of the coins found would be found where the old clothline ran

 

[deepskyal]

80x80 isn't that big of a lot.

People we a lot more frugal back in those days. Money meant more, was worth more. Nobody was tossing their pennies because they were worthless, like the zincolns we have today. Kids didn't have allowances like they do now.

A candy bar could be had for a nickle, penny candy abounded, soda ten cents.

A lost coin by a kid was worth scowering the ground til you found it. Grown-ups just weren't wrestling around in the front or back yard in their formal picnic attire.

Like someone else mentioned...you'd be most likely to find coins in an area where the laundry line was....maybe where the kids had a play area...or around the porches where a coin my have rolled off unnoticed.

I think 25 coins in a home site is a far stretch in 99% of the cases.

Older houses hold a lot more treasure than just coins...lost toys, jewelry, fancy pieces of hardware for horse saddles or carriages...plenty of whats-itz's....That's what I like about the old home sites.

Al

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I have hunted a yard, of a house built in the mid 1950s, and found well over 100 coins. (Obviously a house occupied by a rambumcuous bunch of kids sometime back in the 1960s or whatever). And then I have hunted house yards that date to the turn of the century, and found perhaps 3 coins. In these example cases, I knew for various reasons, as you specify, they had "never been hunted before". And in each case, were undisturbed (not re-turfed, not filled, etc....) So your question is just impossible to answer. It depends on the type people who lived there. Some type people just don't "lounge and play" on their yards. Others do.

As for the "never been hunted before", you have to consider too, that you might here this claim by someone currently living there, but quite often, they just simply don't know (no matter how adamant they are about it). 1) It could have been hunted before they lived there, 2) permission could have been granted by someone else in the house answering the door on a certain day, etc...

As an example, I hunted the same yard of a house, 3 different times, over the course of nearly 3 different decades: the mid 1970s, the early 1980s, and the late 1980s. Each time, the person answering the door, when granting permission, quipped "and it's never been hunted before" doh!

 

[skylarking1970]

I know there are a ton of factors to this, but I guess I was thinking that if you figure if a person just lost 1 coin every 5 years there should be about 20 coins there.

Just 1 coin every 5 years does not seem like a lot at all.

You think that someone might lose a coin at least once a year, or maybe ever once every other year.

 

[stefen]

How high is the sky?

 

[mts]

I know for a fact that my house (which is only 15 years old) has at least 10 coins in it. But that's because I put them there for my kids to find and they missed them.

As others have said, it really all depends on who lived there and how careless they were with money. My father in law still counts ever penny. I can guarantee you that if you went out and metal detected under his clothesline you wouldn't find a thing. His house is 40 years old.

 

[BillW313]

Every house is completely different and you will never know what is there until you hunt it.

My present home is a rowhome built 1910-11. Since getting my MD in March I have found a nickel, 3 pennies, a lead soldier, a beat-up fishing reel and more nail, wire and iron junk than I can count. Our row of home was once on the property of a 19th century horse farm. The area is now in the city. I have tried hunting with no disc. or in all metal mode and I cannot move the coil without getting a hit. I'm sure there is at least one silver in the yard but I have to get through all the iron first to find it.

The house I owned before this one, in the 80's, was built in 1918. The difference was this house was in a small village along the Delaware River. There was nothing on the property before the house was build. I was hunting with an old Garrett Groundhog at the time and took 250+ coins from the property.

As Forrest's mother said, "MDing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to find."

 

[rockhound]

There are really too many variables. Did the people who lived there have children? Children loose most of the money. How many families lived there over that period. Did they all have children? Was it always just a single family residence? Just too many questions that could effect the answer. Rockhound

 

[Montana Jim]

There is no way to average based on the input.

Depends mostly I think on the amount of time children were there. No kids, no old coins - or very few. (Like Tom said)

Also depends on location-location-location - if it's on the plains of North Dakota or the suberbs of Long Island it makes a huge difference.

 

[ClonedSIM]

I know you said in your initial post "excluding the variables" but the variables are what make it interesting!

I can say this, I used to live in a house built in the late 30's and dug better than 200 wheat cents out of the front yard, no silver, and no coins at all out of the bck yard which was about the times bigger than the front. Why? No clue. I find it hard to believe that someone detected the back yard but not the front, or that kids used to play in the front, up till 1958 anyway, but they never ventured into the back yard.

In that same vein, I've hunted older and larger houses and came up with a handful of trash, nothing more. It was as if the only reason anyone even walked on the yard was to mow it, and they did it in the nude or something to avoid dropping even a single penny.

 

[jglunt]

I've experienced both ends of the spectrum. Some old houses have given up lots of coins and others turned up nothing but trash and trinkets. My best luck is always the clothesline run, under and around wooden porches, the path to and around the out house and the driveway edges.

Jim

 

[truckinbutch]

My grandfather was born just after the Civil War . I was with him most every day until he left us for a better place when I was 18.
People of his generation did not casually carry money loosely in their pockets as we do today . I doubt that he ever carried more than two to three dollars in a very secure coin purse in a special pocket in his clothing on a daily basis .
Major money transactions were agreed on in advance and the money went from point A to point B in a direct line . There wasn't much 'loose' money to be lost .

 

[mts]

if it's on the plains of North Dakota or the suberbs of Long Island it makes a huge difference.

I'm curious, which of those two extremes do you think would have more coins? My uneducated guess would be Long Island. But I think that is the crux of this whole post. Knowing which locations are more likely to give up the goods. Were people on the plains of North Dakota more or less likely to hide/lose coins in the yard?

 

[LI Tom]

Well I live on Long Island,my house on a half acre was built in 1959.I've found maybe 75 coins,bunch of wheats,4 silver coins.I just picked up my son at college in upstate Geneseo.He was renting a 1890's house on maybe 40 by 150 Ft.,I found maybe a dozen coins including 5 wheats and '19 Merc.I was disapointed,hoping for Barbers and Seated.You just never know what you will find!

 

[MrBling]

I have a theory that the yards of wealthy, spendthrift alcoholics would be a particularly rich source of coins and other goodies
Some day I will focus my research in that direction

 

[Montana Jim]

if it's on the plains of North Dakota or the suberbs of Long Island it makes a huge difference.

I'm curious, which of those two extremes do you think would have more coins? My uneducated guess would be Long Island. But I think that is the crux of this whole post. Knowing which locations are more likely to give up the goods. Were people on the plains of North Dakota more or less likely to hide/lose coins in the yard?

I think the folks in ND prolly didnt have two nickles to rub together... folks out west that lost a coin looked for it till they found it. Not the same with folks in South Hampton I assume... you know, or even Hicksville. I hunt parks in the larger cities in Montana and the smaller towns... the cow-towns have almost nothing in them.

That's been my observation. As a native New Yorker I understand and have lived in both environs.

 

[handy]

tell me how many coins where droped and ill tell you how many might be there

 

[acefish64]

For statistics sake current home built 1927 found 119 coins

 

[SButter]

My parent’s old farm house was built in 1887 and over the years I have found well over
200+ wheat pennies
60+ mercury dimes
30+ quarters
7 silver dollars
One pocket watch
And countless other goodies and I found all this with a old Whites 6000 D and I would put money on it when I get a newer detector I will find more.