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Skunked by not done.

ollievon

Elite Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2006
Messages
814
Location
Upstate NY
So, last weekend my MD buddy Steve and I happened to go door knocking at a farm with historical marker signs from 1807; cool thing is the 91 year old farmer is the 6th generation and his family founded the farm, simply amazing.

He was more than gracious to allow us to detect his fields now that they are cut and offered back fields unseen from the road, according to him there were a few guys around a decade ago who detected in the fields, but he hasn't seen them back since. I asked him about his farm house and he informed us that it was built in 1800 and the larger farm house was 1807 - I then asked him for permission to detect his yard, he was more than happy to allow it and said no one had ever detected it - as you can imagine I was super-psyched!

We got there at 9AM on Saturday and started swinging, within the first minute my buddy Steve nails a large dandy flat button, so we felt this is going to be a killer day...fast forward 6 hours later, and all we had as 2 flat buttons and 6 wheat pennies all from the 40's, how can this be????

This is the second time we have hit a really old property that "should" give up some great older finds, just to discover we got skunked and it's bleak...blows my mind. Both of us started thinking our MD's were having problems, but clearly that was not the case, it was just the reality that some older properties just didn't see much activity, although your imagination says the opposite.

How many of you has this happened to?
 
Very good possibility that they keep a good hold on coins and items of value. Therefore, no dropped coins, etc.

I have an abandoned farm site where I have found a few 1700's coins and items and then 1900's coins and items but very, very few 1800's coins or items. Seems strange but only thing I come up with is they owners were careful and didn't loss things.
 
a friend and I hunted a site on his grandfathers property that was a one room wooden schoolhouse with a chimney. turn of century possibly late 1800's. sharecroppers. clapboard up on sawn limestone supports. it was knocked down and burnt with only the chimney remnants and the stones left. iron nails we got by, but.... zilch nada nuttin" ZERO keepers. His grandfather said "What did you expect to find? those kids did not even have shoes......" :( point well taken
 
Keep hitting it, dig all the pennies and even the junk signals. Weed all that stuff out and then you might start getting some good hits.

I had a property that was the same way. Right on a long time parade route, across the street from a school and a LARGE Church. I knew their had to be stuff there. So, I just keep digging and before long I pulled silver coins and jewelry out of it. Plus a couple other cool old items. Good luck.
 
People back then had no reason to carry change daily in remote locations. There was nowhere near them to spend it. Why have it in your pocket. Trips to the store were planned events.
The wheat pennies probably indicate when they started driving more.

Just my thoughts:hmmm:
 
People back then had no reason to carry change daily in remote locations. There was nowhere near them to spend it. Why have it in your pocket. Trips to the store were planned events.
The wheat pennies probably indicate when they started driving more.

Just my thoughts:hmmm:

I like your thoughts, makes good sense.

Ray
 
I always like yards in town better than the ones in the country. I think someone mentioned that there was no need for kids in the country to have coins in their pockets and they didn't play in the yard as much as as their cousins in the town. Most of them had chores to do and then they were either hunting, fishing, or other country kid things. I never have as much luck in the country. I'm sure there are exceptions. I won't pass up an old farm house yard in the country though. Especially the clothesline!
 
Go back and hit it again. I detected a piece of property that at one time was a ball field. It is now a city park that has been almost covered with tennis courts.

First time I hit that park I found a silver quarter. Was told that someone had hit the entire park a couple months before.

Later I went back and I have found 4 more silver coins.

Had one gentleman tell me that I was wasting my time as he had dug Every Coin out of that park and the property next door.

Detect 90 degrees to the way that you covered the property the first time.
 
Id give it another shot....you never know.

Theres a local swimming hole not too far from here that's been hunted a BUNCH of times by a Father/2 Sons team.

They must not dig penny signals, because I found lots of em!!!!
 
I detected an 1800s house...only modern coins.
I detected an 1800s building...1944 merc, thats it.
Some places just don't have much.
Keep looking you'll win eventually.:yes:
 
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive" - Robert Louis Stevenson

The anticipation and things we imagine are so often better than the end result. It just makes it all that much sweeter when it works out the other way around though.
 
I have this happen also at very old home sites. I have detected 3 yards on the same land, 3 houses from the late 1700s. I di find a few really old coins and items but not like I thought it would be. Could it be that the really old stuff is actually mega deep? I found a 1794 cent (huge and thick!), It was 6 inches deep but on top the root of an elm tree that is 3 feet wide. Could it be the only reason I found it was because the tree grew under it and kept it from sinking? I know the "old" stuff is there, I have pulled many many old coppers from the fields. The earliest is a king William which puts it in the late 1600s. If they dropped that many coins in the fields they surely droped them in the area closer to the house too.
 
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