Here's my THEORY on MD

[Uncle Willy]

Most of those old homes were hit years ago. Detectors have been around since 1932. And in the old days people didn't have much money to lose. Any coins they had were carried in a pouch or a coin purse - not loose in a pocket. And if they lost one they looked for it till it was found. Losing a coin back then meant the difference between whether you ate that day or not.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Large sums of cash back then would have been $5.00. As late as the thirties people were working for fifty cents to a dollar a day. My mom worked in a hotel back then seven days a week, twelve hours a day, for seven dollars a week - no vacation, no medical or dental,no pension, no nothing. And if you lost your job there was no unemployment compensation, food stammps, welfare, no nothing. You were on your own. And a penny would buy about what a dollar buys today.

A loaf of bread was a nickle, or five pennies. Everything is relative and that's what you have to keep in mind when hunting old sites. If you've never experienced it then it's difficult to visualize.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Here's one for you. Was hunting an old park and found a coin from the 1700's at two inches. In that same park I found clad at 8-10 inches. I've found Barber coins at 3-4 inches and clad deeper in the same area. There is no outwitting Mother Nature.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

I cut lawns with a push mower in the forties for fifty to seventy five cents depending on the size of the yard. That included trimming, pulling weeds, and raking up the cut grass.

Bill

 

[Mike T]

I agree whole heartedly with you, my point is that if you were going out to dinner(which probably cost 10-25c) or to a 5c movie you carried lots of CHANGE which was used like we used dollars, quarters, dimes and nickels were used as singles, fives and tens.
And my inference to people carrying large sums of cash refers to people who had it and were in the process of purchasing a house, an automobile, a washer a piece of property a gravesite a herd of cattle a winchester rifle and a list that goes forever, were usually done in CASH or possibly a letter of credit.
As for your statement that I would have to born then to understand, true I was born in 1949, in an suburb of Los Angeles to a wonderful couple of middle class parents. I didn't miss many meals growing up because my folks sacrificed to see that I had what was needed. They came from Russia, having barely escaped with their lives and having suffered so much in their lives to them the Depression in the US was an improvement.

 

[stick]

i just had the chance to search the old homestead. the house and out buildings are over a hundred years old. i know for a fact that no one has ever been over the grounds with a metal detector. you have no idea how much i was anticpating the chance to work the property. i found lots of trash but only one wheat penny. i still can't believe it. so my theory is that back in the old days even pennies were too valuable to ignore when dropped. much less any silver.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah I grew up in a town full of immigrants from all over the world. One section of town was called "Little Italy." Yeah credit cards and instant credit was unheard of back then. And almost everyone carried their coins in a draw string pouch or a coin purse. I have an old snake skin coin purse from those days. Will post a pic if I can remember. Only the well to do carried what was called "folding money."

I remember when we lived in this one town the family two houses down from us lived in a converted box car. They couldn't afford shoes for their kids and they all went bare footed. They had a herd of kids and they handed all their clothes down because they couldn't afford to buy any. There was no welfare, foodstamps, or social services of any kind. If you were broke you were broke all the way.

We could be there again the way this country is going. Our money is worthless. The Federal Reserve just prints all they want backed by absolutely nothing.

In the twenties Germany was wracked by massive inflation ( like ours is moving along now ) and a postage stamp cost $25,000 in their money. Employees were let off work three times each day to go out and purchase what they needed before the price went up. The smallest bill printed by their mint was the $25,000 bill. That's where we are headed.


Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

You got that right. The only kind of old property that you will find money on is property that was owned by the rich.

Bill

 

[Mike T]

You sound like you don't think the Gold is in Fort Knox? Personally I'm waiting for Obama to become president, then I'm immigrating to Russia.

 

[Mike T]

Yes it very perplexing? I've seen guys pick up OLD coins only 2or 3 inches down, and I saw Archeologists excavating in Old Town San Diego, peeling layers of ground back, there were 150 year old coins at 4 feet?
There doesn't seem to be any common denominator as to how deep coins drop per year, excluding the question of whether the family in a house had coins to loose or if they had kids at all, or if they only worked and slept and never used the yard for recreation or anything at all?
One thing I'm pretty sure of; if theres alot of trees around, the coins can be deeper than average. 75 years of foilage decomposing can add up to 8 to 12" of topsoil on top of the coins natural depth.

 

[Stingraymb]

I've hunted a few + falling down ones, foundations, etc. Mostly I've found ticks (or rather they found me). The past year I've probably spent 10-12 hours total on old houses-foundations and found 3-4 wheat pennys. On some houses there was so much metal roofing and other trash even the sniper had it's work cut out for it.
When I was a kid, my neighbor and his sister found a can of old coins one the inside of a foundation wall of a burned down house.
I bought another house this year built in the 50's and in a few minutes found 2 silver quarters and 4-5 wheaties in the yard. There's a whole neighborhood of these house and I doubt if they've even been detected.
The most I found was in Scotland, public parks, around old monuments. It was a duck in the barrel shoot there. Average one older (pre 1950)coin every 10 minutes. I recommend that you take your detector on vacation.