Hi Everybody,
I grew up in Melrose, Massachusetts long ago. The house was a Victorian era house built in 1873, though the city records only indicate 1900 for many houses that are, like my old home, much older. Around 1963 after I got out of the Navy, my dad decided to replace the old floorboards on the front porch as some were beginning to rot from age. He hired a carpenter to do the work. I was a casual coin collector, though not into metal detecting at that time. After the carpenter finished his work of removing the old flooring, one evening I went scurrying around in the dirt beneath. I came up with something over 10 Indian Head pennies and a couple V Nickels.
Years later in the mid 1980s, I was cleaning out the house in preparation for sale. I thought about that time back over 20 years earlier. By then I was living in Connecticut and on the weekend trips to Melrose, I just didn't have the time to crawl under that porch with my metal detector. I'm sure that to this day there are still more coins hidden away in the dirt. You see, there was about a quarter inch spacing between the board, left so that the porch would drain water and melted snow. When I was growing up, we had a 3 days a week deliver from the local dairy route man and the local bakery deliveryman. Add to that the daily newspaper boy and his delivery. In the first half of the last century and before, many of these "services" only required payments of a dollar or two. A lot of change was made in coins, a few of which did manage to drop through the cracks.
The moral of the story, when you find an older place to hunt, don't just confine your search to the land. Look the place over thoroughly to see what you imagination can conjure up. There may be several other places associated with the property that may be worth hunting, assuming you can get permission. In addition to the above, how about the floor of the old barn or the dirt floor in an old garage? Also remember that before the 1940s many people didn't trust banks; they had their own "post hole bank" which might have been just a mason jar buried under a fence post, hidden in the crevice of a tree or behind a rock in stone. Oh, try to find out where the old clothesline was located. When clothing was washed by hand, sometimes the pockets weren't thoroughly emptied. They were "emptied' when the laundry was hung out to dry. Let your imagination run wild and see what you can come up with.
If you have an interesting experience to share, please do. If you have other ideas for places to hunt, please share them too. We all can use a tip or two because none of us know it all, and many of us just like to read about the success of others.
Above all, have fun and good luck.
Wayne Irwin, W1KI/4
Ocala, Florida
I grew up in Melrose, Massachusetts long ago. The house was a Victorian era house built in 1873, though the city records only indicate 1900 for many houses that are, like my old home, much older. Around 1963 after I got out of the Navy, my dad decided to replace the old floorboards on the front porch as some were beginning to rot from age. He hired a carpenter to do the work. I was a casual coin collector, though not into metal detecting at that time. After the carpenter finished his work of removing the old flooring, one evening I went scurrying around in the dirt beneath. I came up with something over 10 Indian Head pennies and a couple V Nickels.
Years later in the mid 1980s, I was cleaning out the house in preparation for sale. I thought about that time back over 20 years earlier. By then I was living in Connecticut and on the weekend trips to Melrose, I just didn't have the time to crawl under that porch with my metal detector. I'm sure that to this day there are still more coins hidden away in the dirt. You see, there was about a quarter inch spacing between the board, left so that the porch would drain water and melted snow. When I was growing up, we had a 3 days a week deliver from the local dairy route man and the local bakery deliveryman. Add to that the daily newspaper boy and his delivery. In the first half of the last century and before, many of these "services" only required payments of a dollar or two. A lot of change was made in coins, a few of which did manage to drop through the cracks.
The moral of the story, when you find an older place to hunt, don't just confine your search to the land. Look the place over thoroughly to see what you imagination can conjure up. There may be several other places associated with the property that may be worth hunting, assuming you can get permission. In addition to the above, how about the floor of the old barn or the dirt floor in an old garage? Also remember that before the 1940s many people didn't trust banks; they had their own "post hole bank" which might have been just a mason jar buried under a fence post, hidden in the crevice of a tree or behind a rock in stone. Oh, try to find out where the old clothesline was located. When clothing was washed by hand, sometimes the pockets weren't thoroughly emptied. They were "emptied' when the laundry was hung out to dry. Let your imagination run wild and see what you can come up with.
If you have an interesting experience to share, please do. If you have other ideas for places to hunt, please share them too. We all can use a tip or two because none of us know it all, and many of us just like to read about the success of others.
Above all, have fun and good luck.
Wayne Irwin, W1KI/4
Ocala, Florida