Do you ever wonder?

[robertj298]

Do you ever wonder whenever you find an old coin what the person was doing when they lost it over 100 years ago? What they looked like? How they were dressed? What the site looked like back then and basically how different the world was then? I believe that is the biggest draw for me to this hobby, not how much a certain coin is worth.

 

[SpiritRelic]

I find a lot of colonial period relics and some coins from the early 1700's.So i think of this all the time.The old flat buttons.The musket balls.Who lost this coin?.I found one that a coin collector said it looks like a wagon wheel ran over it.

 

[DirtAngler]

Yes, to me that's what part of this hobby is about. Reflecting on the past as to who lost it, when and how.

 

[coin hunter]

I think of my metal detector as a time machine bringing the past to present- day.

 

[JimmyCT]

Exactly my thought. This is the closest device man will ever invent that will "transport" him to the past.

I think of my metal detector as a time machine bringing the past to present- day.

 

[Elton]

Detecting and past History do go hand in hand !!

 

[mudpuppy]

In fact, you can put yourself in someone elses shoes that stood at the same spot many years ago is sort of weird...like way out in the woods you see a big old oak tree and think.."If a guy was hunting squirrels, in the morning, he'd approach from the east with the sun at his back, stand right about here, and POW! Theres a shotgun shell right where it should be!" I like the mental excersize of this sport, thinking of things like this..
Mud

 

[fowlercharles]

Hi Robert, I believe we most all feel the same way as you about those of the old times and how they lived out therir lives. That" connection" we make when we dig something we think to have had a special, or personal closeness to someone gives it all much more meraning and appreciation by us for those having"blazed trail" before us.We gain a little more insite into their lives every time we make those particular finds, pretty much no matter whether they are "goodies" or not. A simple square/cut nail has it's own story to tell if we think on it a bit. I am old enough to have gained some first hand appreciation of life now and life then. I know there are a few old hands left that have also. I spent summers on my Grandma's farm in S. Ar. at a time before indoor plumbing,or electricity, when cooking was still done on a wood stove,and an Ice Box was almost more ICE.than box.Absolutely no modern conviencies as we know them to day. They owned an auto, a Model A Ford I believe, but had found they no real use for it, and when it broke down, left it so. Their trips to town(6 miles) were so few and far between that they had decided it still easy enough just to hitch up the horse and wagon. I made that ride myself a couple of times.They either grew,raised, or made everything they needed.I could probably write a book from my memories of those days when I was a kid. To many of this generation have not a clue of those trials of folks gone before us, so when those "thought connections" reach out through the years and touch them , that is surely a good thing, and any extra effort they then make to learn more about the old days is an even better thing. HH Charlie

 

[scubadetector]

Well I know where I found my 1893CC eagle it was an amusement park. I found so many coins in there I would love to take a buldozer to it. BUT the golfers would frown upon it I think!! The amusement park ceased in 1925 and turned into a golf course. Whoever lost it was possibly having a blast on a ride.

I have returned over 35 class rings and 2 silver ID braclets. I love the stories and thats one reason I do it.

 

[JB(MS)]

I'm old enough, and fortunate enough, to have lived in those days. I was almost 9 years old before we got electricity and then didn't have anything electrical except two light bulbs hanging from wires for several years. Water came from a hand pumped well or a bucket lowered into a well with a rope. We picked cotton by hand and put it in cotton sacks we drug behind us, used hoes to chop the grass out of the crops, scraped the grass out of our yards with hoes, got our milk directly from cows by hand milking them, made homemade butter, grew or killed most of our food, got one pair of shoes a year that were so big they rubbed blisters and rode to town on a trailer or wagon pulled by mules or an old tractor. I woundn't trade those memories for a million dollars, and although in 43 years of detecting I've found untold thousands of coins, dozens of gold and silver rings, Civil War relics and more my favorite finds are those found around old homesites where sharecroppers and poor folks struggled to just get by.

 

[fowlercharles]

those memories in so many ways make us wish we could do them all over again. They were, in reality, in many ways the "good ole days", God,Family, Home, Nation and Freedom, was what it was all about back then, and none of it being questioned or doubted..We were secure in our beliefs and Blessed because of it! Sad, but those days are over and gone.HH Charlie

 

[ken ward]

Im in my 60s. I remember my dad would tell me that if they lost a coin, they would look all day trying to find it . They were verypoor. I just wish they would have lost a nice pocket spill for me. I wouldnt have to walk all over the place trying to find more coins.

 

[MarkCZ]

A number of years ago I recovered a silver dime, I don't remember the date but I do remember it being a Roosevelt dime, the dime had a small piece of paper wrapped around it and secured with what looked like scotch tape. I unwrapped it and I could still see a phone number on it.
I often wondered what was going on at that time?

Mark

 

[bootyhoundpa]

yes rob, i too have pondered many of those same questions especially when the coin is like 200 years old... i sometimes look at the landscape and imagine what these long gone homesteads would have looked like back in the 17 and 1800s..... i do believe when i find a large quanity of buttons mixed in with the occasional large cent that i must be standing on the spot the lady of the house would wash or hang the laundry.... there are a few very old desolate places i hunt that are in the middle of nowhere that i sometimes feel like im being watched by the spirits of the settlers and natives that used to live there....

 

[mudpuppy]

MarkCZ...probably the dime was given to a kid by their mom with instructions to call home (number) in an emergency or somesuch?

 

[scubadetector]

Mud, you are probbly right on!! For a dime pay phone and a number to call in an emergency. Great thought! LOL like who else on here remembers the pay phone booths!


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[GunnarMN]

I found an 1876 indian head penny in an old outhouse, I think i know what they where doing , or wrenches out in the farm feilds it is neet to think of the diffrent sceinerious