Is it even remotely common to find a silver dollar?

[joncooper1986]

I haven't found one, but I have certainly heard about MDers finding Morgans, flowing hairs, Peace dollars and it never adds up for me. Do you think these coins were once purposefully buried, or actually lost? I find it hard to believe that someone 100+ years ago could so easily drop a silver dollar out of their overalls. A coin of that value I would think was rarely in one's pocket in those days, and even if it was dropped, I would think that it's wide surface area would make it stand out for long enough to be stumbled upon. Any thoughts anyone?

 

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[jamey]

it would not be so easy to tell you lost one while on your horse,but easy to see bye the next rider.

 

[Red James Cash]

You could eat for a week on what a silver dollar bought way back when,it was something to look for if you dropped it.

 

[Ocean7]

no I don't think it was common. The ones that were lost were probably among the first coins found in any area where people MD because the larger the coin - the less it would sink in the ground. hence, typically they would within reach of most MD and make a very loud sound when passed over. I've never found one but certainly they were lost or buried. There are always exceptions to every rule but I don't believe every find that I hear about.

 

[dieselram94]

Even if I loose a dollar now I look for it...

 

[Red James Cash]

Just think,in the 1870s you could buy a brand new colt .45 peacemaker for 18 bucks.The only way youre going to eat for a week on 18 bucks now a days is ramen noodles.

 

[JunkShopFiddler]

I have a '22 peace Dollar I dug at 5 inches in a park that was once part of a RR depot. It was right at the corner of two streets a foot from the pavement, no sidewalks. Maybe a trolley stop, or maybe horse drawn cabbies pulled up there to wait for riders just off the trains. Money would be exchanged and dropped. The coin might have gotten trampled down into the dirt by horse hooves...Worse yet maybe into a pile of heap big doo doo.

Sometimes big silver coins would have had to have been dropped at night by folks with no lantern along or into the mud on a rainy day. Or dropped during a blizzard into a three foot snow drift. These kind of conditions would hide them too quickly for easy finding and would hamper a persons ability, or desire, to go looking for something they dropped.

I always end up thinking that because I hunt on sunny summer days that the valuables were lost on sunny days but this is most likely not always the case, even beach goers may lose things at night!...cheers

 

[CASPER-2]

I FOUND A MORGAN AND A PEACE ON LAND WHEN I WAS YOUNGER
HAVE FOUND 2 MORGANS IN SALTWATER - IS THE LAST ONE

 

[MUDSLINGER]

yes because a wide range of factors contibute to the coins loss. was the person drinking? liquor probably was consumed in great quanties after a hard week. also people had to travel and had to carry larger sums around. now think about the many pocket watches found by tnet members. i would think it hard to lose but they show up regularly.then there is the weight of the coin itself when dropped it rolls long distances. i was able to dig one in the 70's at a victorian bird park about 3in down in an area close to a wishing well. so keep the faith.

 

[joncooper1986]

Casper.. have you looked into doing electrolysis on that silver coin? I was watching a video on the Atocha shipwreck the other day and all the silver coins looked like this when they were found and electrolysis only took off the grime and kept all the detail.

 

[Jeremy S]

I found my first silver dollar a few weeks ago. It was in a lot where a house had been recently demolished that dated to the early 1900s. My dollar was beat up and had some crusty asphalt type of stuff caked onto it. It was probably under the old driveway which had been torn out. It was the only silver coin that I found on this particular lot. Lots of clad and wheats though.




I have only found two other dollar coins ever, both of them were new presidential dollar coins. So out of thousands of coins that I have found over the years, only 3 of them were dollar coins, one being silver.

 

[Dave Rishar]

Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, $1 in 1913 (as far back as their figures go) would have the buying power of $24.08 today. I'd expect that most people would spend some time looking for that if they had an idea where they'd lost it. Push the timeline further back and that dollar becomes more valuable. Factor in the amount of people who lived in rural areas in the past (and often had less access to hard currency than most people do today) and that dollar also becomes more valuable. Then there were depressions and recessions, periods of time where silver currency was hoarded instead of circulated, so on and so forth, and one starts to get a picture of just how badly an average American might have missed that dollar.

As Mudslinger noted, not everyone knew where they'd lost it, or even that they had lost it. I suspect that a significant portion of the silver dollars in the ground fall into this category. Remember that a lot of cities began as shanty towns, complete with dirt roads, boardwalks along the store fronts, and plenty of taverns. There was little or no outdoor lighting at the time. Even if someone knew that they'd dropped something, finding it again under those conditions could be a challenge. Depending on the age and history of the city in question, this period of time could span decades.

 

[midnightmoon]

I know for a fact that kids in the 1960s played with Grammy's morgans, burying them as pirate treasure and never finding them all afterwards. By the time my Grandmother saw that her jar was near empty, it was too late and she cut my older brothers off, saving a single morgan for each grandchild. Yup, there is a yard out there peppered with them!

... but the silver dollars took up residence in the dirt long after the 1800s.

 

[Argentium]

I was lucky enough to find a 1923-S Peace Dollar in Santa Fe about 7 years ago . obviously Silver Dollars are found more frequently
than G.W. Buttons or gold coins , but they are unusual enough to safely say that most metal detectorists will not find one . I'm very
surprised at how few Silver Kennedy half dollars get posted here- - but I'm getting off topic.

 

[Sandigger2]

This is an older find from May of this year.
First big silver ever. Fought spiders and other unknown crawlies under a porch on an older home. Surprised at the loud signal
since there wasn't much under there except old rotted lumber and rusty iron and nails.
Don't normally post pictures so hope this works.
Rusty


Bad Link Deleted

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I've got about 12 or 13 silver dollars. When you factor in over 35 yrs. of detecting, no that's makes them very uncommon indeed! Only found a single one in turf. That was a Morgan. The others were found usually after beach storm erosion, and a few in old-town demolition sites.

 

[CASPER-2]

Casper.. have you looked into doing electrolysis on that silver coin? I was watching a video on the Atocha shipwreck the other day and all the silver coins looked like this when they were found and electrolysis only took off the grime and kept all the detail.

I used to do electrolysis on a lot of my coins - don't bother now - no reason on saltwater coins - not gonna make them more valuable - just makes them thinner - so I leave a lot of them as is to show people how they actually come out

 

[CincinnatiKid]

Although rare, yes silver dollars are found. An exceptional one, even more rare.
The excitement of finding a silver dollar would be overwhelming. Even a Eisen.
Those who "plant" need a hug.
Peace

 

[nscrcr8z]

Still on my list

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

Found a Susan B. Anthony and a couple Sacagewea dollars. But never a silver dollar.

Closest I've come is a 1942 Walking Liberty half.