Obtainable Coin Types (In your area)

Now this picture from Bruce, is of West Avenue looking south. In a site like this several sections have good potential. The sidewalk removal shows some darker older dirt, plus the corner area should be gone over slowly. Dig all positive signals, some brass items read low and can be quite valuable. The street section has lots of gravel fill, I tend to stay out of these areas, due to past experience for me showed them to be non-productive, course your area you live at, could be different. But the road section that was scraped down below the gravel fill area is of great interest. These spots can produce Indian heads from the 1860’s as well as a possible large cent. I know an older fellow in LaCrosse who got a bust dime from an area such as this. In fact his experience from the past hunting shaved down road sections is the reason he loves to hunt them. But hey, every section is different and who ever gets in first determines who gets the goodies! When you see a road shaved down this much, remember the old time roads were dirt and mud! Whatever was lost is still there.
This picture is also a haunted site and there is a treasure story that goes with it. I'll do up the story and post it in the Wiscosnin Treasure Stories thread. The story was once told in a book called "True Tales of LaCrosse." I believe the book, or parts of it are online.
 

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In the above photo, notice the brick, thats the first road improvement some streets recieved. Few brick streets are around anymore, but if they do replace them, jump in those sites!
 
There Not Too Deep!
In this picture of Bruce and the side walk demo, Bruce is digging one of his targets. The photo is a good one, due to it shows that the older coins are not all that deep in a site like this. For years the sidewalk protected the older coins and other items from being found by anyone else. So when you see some project such as this, what are you waiting for? Even the most basic of metal detectors can get those 100 plus year old finds.
 

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Sparta Wisconsin 2008

Here is the first of the photos Bruce sent showing a project in Sparta Wisconsin. A picture like this one, I try to look down the street at those buildings and see the horse drawn wagons and folks trying to cross over to the general store and not get their feet too muddy. If you can picture what it looked like over 100 years ago, then you realize the potential for old coins does exist here.
 

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This photo from Bruce of Sparta, is useful to a degree. Looking at how deep the excavation is, I would tend to not bother with most of this area. There could be some scattered coins and such that can be found, but I believe they would of been hauled out as dirt was removed. One could find the edges can be scanned to get under a side walk and a few coins can be had this way.
 

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This one is pretty much that same photo that was posted a few days back and most everything that could be said about where to hunt and what type of signals to dig has been gone over quite a bit. So for another spin on the tale of traveling to hunt sites (demo tear ups), I'll cover what Bruce found at this one, which wasn't much at all. Considering he traveled over an hour to reach the Wisconsin border and then a bit over another half hour to reach Sparta to only come up almost empty handed, brings up another good point. Staying close to home, especially with the cost of gas these days.
So what does a person do for places to hunt when there isn't any demo sites close by or they are so far away that by the time you get there someone has picked it clean?
The answer is going back over older sites when local conditions have changed, this means rain or snow melt or even the frost coming out of the ground for those who live in the north.
 

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This Sparta tear-up photo brings to mind some of the hunting I've done and some of the types of finds that can be made in an area such as in the picture. Looking at the muddy dark area just off the edge of the sidewalk, one should check these areas out. In the past this was where junk got tossed, I have found many items that were made of brass from the 1800's, course there will be a few items they didn't toss out, but rather dropped inadvertently. This was also the place when one tied their horse up on a hitching rail. Getting up and down from a horse or wagon, something fell out of a pocket on occasion. Places such as this one are in cities and towns across the country, after all autos are fairly new contraptions, to this day not everyone owns one! :lol:
 

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Great ideas and information. Thanks for your contributions to the forum!
 
My Oldest Coins

I have had a Bounty Hunter Land Star for abut 5 years now and have found
about 500 coins including v nickels, a couple dozen indian head pennies (oldest 1867), an 1862 Barber dime, Mercury dimes, about a dozen minnie balls all shapes and sizes, jewelry, misc stuff.
But the oldest coins to date are a 1749 King George II copper half penney and a 1739 King George Farthing. The 1749 coin (bigger of the two) was about 9+ inches in the soil. The farthing was next to it but only about 6 inches down.
 
South eastern Kansas
Half dime 1844
Large cent 1853
Half dollar 1861
Dimes and pennies 1870's
 
My area goes back to about the 1750s for European settlers. It goes back even further than that on the other side of the Susquehanna river. Almost any type of coin is obtainable, it's just finding the right spots. My area was majorly poor scotch irish and German farmers, so there's not an excess of extremely old coins like New England has, but there's a considerable amount around. HH!
 
Wow just read 9 pages of this and love it. Tons of great info/tips in here and the stories make me feel like I'm sitting at the table with my grandpa again like I am a little kid again. Wish he was still around to keep telling them!

Sent from a hidden menu within my AT Pro
 
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