Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!! (UPDATE!!!)

[MDnoob]

Well, kind of old.

1920 and 1935 wheats; pretty small time, but listen to my story:

I have been hunting at my parents house (built in 1795) for the last 3 years, I have put in tons and tons of hours there... and I haven't found jack until yesterday. Going back to the beginning, in late 2002 when I got my first modern MD, we found a 1917 wheat within 5 minutes of turning the MD on. I did find a 1943 wheat there a month or two ago, but yesterday I nailed a 1920 and 1935 wheat! They were about 4-5" deep and about 30 feet apart. Both signals had a very small footprint, and didn't really read as pennies. I guess this is due to the fact that there is tons of iron in the ground there and tons of junk from the last 200 years...

By comparison, I have found about 10 wheats, 4 silver dimes, and 1 silver quarter at my own house which was built in 1956.

This has been a subject of great debate within my family; I have found at least 80 coins at my parents house, all of which are post-1964. No silver. Supposedly the neighbor found an 1856 Flying Eagle cent about 50 ft from where I just found the old wheats. It is strange, as if the top layer of ground has been scraped and moved somewhere else. This is pretty much impossible since it would have had to have been done pre-1965 and we are talking about a 3 acre area. I have searched all over it and have found absolutely no old coins until yesterday. I have even looked under the front porch which was added in 1930.

So, it is a relief to finally find something that is kind of old. Hopefully I can keep up the streak and get something pre-1900.

 

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[Southcacalaky]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

Sounds like a good spot, HH Art...

 

[Nitro 54]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

Your 43 wheat, was it copper or steel?

 

[MDnoob]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

It may have actually been a 44, I can't recall exactly. It was copper either way, I have never heard of anyone finding a steel penny while MDing...

 

[ashleen]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

Noob,

Congrats!
................ ahh........perserverance

neighbor been there long?
maybe he's already cleaned the place out?

Keep at it & Good luck

 

[Smartin]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

MDnood,

Great finds!! I just read a post similiar to yours (early 1800's house but finding early 1900's pennies). My opinion is that the older coins are much deeper. (if there are any, and there most likely are). Areas with no wash and that are primarily undisturbed for 200 years a small coin or dense item could possibly sink all the way to the bottom of the top soil. I would sample the soil to see how deep the subsoil is. (the area where the topsoil meets the harder bottom layer). If this area is in the north where the freeze depth can be 2-3 feet, then dense items can sink even futher and quicker.

What Detector are you using?

Smartin

 

[Mirage]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

Hey MDnood. My mom has a house that was built in 1853. Thing is it was moved in 1917. Anyway, our story is similar. Couple years and just wheat pennies and modern clad. Also lots of misc stuff - hot wheels, old rusty iorn, belt buckels, etc. This year we started getting to the good stuff. Not a lot of coins but did get a 1912 barber dime and a 1942 Quarter. Also got some really neat tokens and pins(dated around 1905-1920). The best finds are coming from the "original" undisturbed farm field. Trouble is the topsoil goes down about 12 inches before it's clay. This is where we are finding a lot of stuff. All the old stuff has sunk to the clay. So good luck and go deep!

Mirage

 

[MDnoob]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

This neighbor has been there awhile, but he isn't really interested in coins, he just found the FEC in his garden on top of the ground, he had no idea what it was until he looked it up. I guess that someone could have cleaned out a lot of the coins before my parents moved there, but it would have had to have been pre 1965... I have found TONS of coins from that date on. I really don't think the technology existed before 1965 to find a signifigant amount of stuff back then... I just can't picture someone scouring that place for hundreds of hours back then with a WWII era MD or whetever they had back then...

It seems like the topsoil goes down 4"-8" for the most part, before it turns to clay. I think in some places it is a bit deeper. This is in western VA, so there are quite a few freezes every year, esp. back in the old days.

This spring, we are going to detect an area then dig that area (maybe 12'x12') down to about a foot, sift it all and see what happens. I am curious to see how deep the really old stuff is, and how much we are missing. I have seen foundation stones there down 18"-24". This place once had slave quarters and many other outbuildings. I have been trying to figure out where they were, but there is no visible evidence, and no old pics or maps.

Former owners of this house owned an iron mine on the mountain above it, so there is a good bit of slag an misc bits of iron, and of course the usual nails an other junk.

Maybe now that I am more experienced, I will find more stuff, but I doubt it...

BTW I am using a Minelab EXII

 

[wpricetr]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

great story and keep it up. i'm sure that when you sift the 12'x12' you'll be very happy with what you find. Good Luck MDnoob
Wpricetr

 

[rvbvetter]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

Since you have unlimited access. I would just do like what it sounds like your doing. Take it as a challenge and keep trying their from time to time.
I have the EXP II also. And as much as I like it. I got other machines because their quicker and sometimes better suited for a certain site.
You might want to try a quicker responding detector there. It might get in between the iron a little better and pickup those coin signals. HH

 

[EDDE]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

time for the buzz kill maybe the neighbor picked i clean of deep stuff?

 

[thumper]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

MDnoob, sounds like you have a great site there, keep looking the finds have to be there, I've only been MD'ing for about a yr and a half, and I have a really cheap detector, but always manage to find a coin or two wherever I go......granted its mostly parks and homes, but always something there.......BTW I dig almost everything.......here is a pic of steel pennies i have dug

 

[mchamby]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

Keep up the good work, if it's there your ex II will find it. HH
Mchamby

 

[trk5capt]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

MDNOOB, Keep At It, There Has To Be More, Best of Luck & Good Hunting. trk5capt...

 

[Smartin]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

MDNoob,

You've got the equipment to find the deep stuff!!! I've found "all metal mode" works best for me on deeper stuff.

Good luck,
Smartin

 

[River Rat]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

MDnoob,

Still these finds are better than nothing at all. Don't give up!

HH
RR

 

[MDnoob]

Re: Parents 200 year old house finally yields old coins!!

UPDATE!

Easter weekend my father and I found a 1918 and 1942 wheats, and a gold looking charm bracelet. These were in the same area as the other two old wheats... Now I just want to either find silver, or something from the 1800's............

The week before that I found 5 wheats at a friend's house (in another city), including a 1917 (my oldest coin so far) and a 1919.

Oh, and a few weeks ago we excavated a 5x5 area down to about 12"... (25 cubic feet of earth takes plenty long enough, so we had to scrap the plans for the 12x12 area) Anyway, the subsoil/clay does start at about 4-6" which we pretty much already knew. First I detected the spot, and marked the possible signals... there were 3, but they were kind of jumpy. After digging, the signals turned out to be: guess what?? iron!! Chunks of it, up to the size of a superball.

I would estimate there was about a pound of iron in the 5x5 area. The EXII ignored about 90% of it totally. Nothing else metallic was found. On a more interesting note, we did find several flint chips and part of an arrowhead/spearpoint. These are definately 200+ years old and they were only about 4" down, so this shows that the subsoil stops all objects from moving past it. So; all the old coins in the yard should be relatively shallow, as was evidenced by the 1918 etc. which were all 3-4" down.

 

[southbound]

Congrats on the coins. Good luck finding the elusive silver and gold.
Vern

 

[Mona Lisa]

McNoob, the coins are probably there but hidden by all the junk in the ground. I live in a house built in the 1850's.....haven't really found anything to write home about. I decided one day to start digging out all the iron signals. In a small 1' by 2' area there were 32 nails. I'll saving the rest for a day when I don't have anything better to do. Here's what I dug from that small area.

 

[goodhubby]

As a newbie I am always curious about the amount of silver found by MDs. Don't get me wrong, I believe all of the finds posted are true, but it seems that people lost a lot of silver back then. These coins turn up every day, and yet just think about how much has still not been found.

In the old days (1800-1900s), it seems like people would have looked for money they knew that they dropped, and of course silver coins were pretty valuable in those days. I have been living in my over 100 yr. old house for almost five years now, and I am about 99.99% sure that I have never lost any change by accident when walking from my car into the house. And if I did drop a quarter (OK even a nickel), I would be looking like crazy til I found it.

So my question is, if the homeowners didn't lose many silver coins by accident, and they looked long and hard til they found any of the good/silver coins they might have known they dropped, then doesn't this very much limit the potential of finding silver around the average old, residential homesite?