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I have access to a hunt club that was started in the late 1800's, the original club was destroyed in a fire and was rebuilt the early 1920's. Today it's a private residence. Over the last 4 or 5 years I've gone detecting there on numerous occasions. Lots of iron, lead used to weight the duck decoys, bullets, shotgun shells, nails, trash, etc. My main question is, do you think it's unusual that the oldest coin I've found so far is a quarter from the 1950's? I'm just surprised in all my time detecting there I haven't found anything earlier. Keep in mind this was an active hunt club from the late 1800's all the way until about the 1960's when it became a private residence.
My thoughts on the question:
It depends on what level of activity was around this "hunt club". Ie.: how well used, and used-for-what. Because if it was just a bunking place, where a dozen guys met up now and then, before heading off in the AM to hunt elsewhere, then it might just have not been heavily used (or heavily used right there, recreationally, at THAT spot).
Also, "hunt" conjurs to mind lots of bullet shells! Because I can just imagine the guys shooting target practice all around there, as they bs'd, etc...
But assuming that all demographics of time were/are equal (equal usage in at the turn-of-century, vs in the '30s/40s/50s), and assuming it was trafficked (and not, as I say, lightly used an no frolicking around on the actual premisses), then here's something to keep in mind:
The late 1800s through the 1930s had less $ in people's pockets, than the 1940s/50s, and to the present.
I saw this played out in targets of school yards we started hunting in the mid 1970s (back when schools weren't worked as hard, and machines were primitive). For example, one school we used to hunt a lot, was built in 1921. We used to find LOTS of 1940s/50s loss silver (washingtons, roosies, mercs, and wheaties). But I would notice that when I DID find coins from the teens to '30s, they usually had evidence of more wear on them. And we NEVER found barbers (which should have still been circulating in the early '20s, afterall). At the time, in the mid 1970s, we wrote it off to the simple theory that: "they must be deeper". This was because we could deduce that the older the coin, the deeper they tended to be. And at the time, our 66TR's and Compass 77's only went about 5" deep, tops (if you listened REAL hard
) Fast forward to the 1980s and '90s, where it became easy to reach 8 to 9" deep: I noticed that even though depth became a non-issue (we'd find the teens wheats with low circulation), yet they still never compared to the quantity/ratios of coins we'd found that were 1940s/50s/60s losses.
It was then that I realized, that the post WWII generation in america, became very prosperous. Prior to that, perhaps kids simply didn't have, or didn't need to carry coins. But contrast that to the post WWII generation, figuring that school lunch programs came in to vogue (where every kid brought his nickel or dime to school, etc...) and ...... all of the sudden people and kids had $ to carry.
Of course, perhaps it could be argued that adults (at a hunt club) were not the same as kids. Of course. But still though, the average dude in "1950", I bet had more coins in his pocket, than the "average dude" in 1910. Just sayin'.
in theory. Would require knowing original grounds layout. Minus change. For example,
