Hunting Old Home Sites

[MDMac]

Good Morning Friends.
Yesterday, I was doing the front yard of a house built around the time of WWI. My finds, other than trash, were 1 quarter, 2 dimes and around 50 pennies, all memorials. I was beginning to wonder if I was hunting an old wishing well site. So my questions are these.

1. Is it normal for a homesite to have this many one cent coins?

2. If there are this many one cent coins, shouldn't there be a smattering of other coins as well? At least better than 50-3.

3. Is there a better system for searching old home sites? I have an MXT with a 5 inch DD coil and it is constantly chattering at me with the VDI bouncing all over the place. At one point, it said one cent and I dug up a 3 inch washer at about 5 inches. If I am to "dig everything" as many of you post, it is going to take me all summer to do this 10 X 20 front yard.

4. Since most of the Memorials and other clad were in the 1-3 inch range, do you think there might be older coins in the 8-10 range? Not due to sinking, but due to grass and leaf decomposition build up. If so, would I be better off using a square point shovel and removing the top 2-3 inches of soil and detecting then? I have permission to do that as this house has been vacant for over 5 years with no yard care. That is a lot of work, but since the yard is never watered except via rain and snow, the soil is really loose, being decomposed grass and leaves.

5. Any other suggestions?

 

[jim tn]

Seemingly, with the age of the site there should be older coins. It could be that there is just so much trash and newer coins that the older and deeper ones are being masked. Or, maybe some fill was brought in at one point in time and the older coins are now deep. Now that you have removed some of the trash and newer era coins, you might want to go back over areas with the larger coil, which will give you a little more depth, just to see if there are deeper, older coins. Good luck! HH jim tn

 

[GRAY GHOST]

n/t

 

[tabdog]

That's for sure.

It takes little or not much of nothing to mask a deeper target.

When there is all kinds of stuff, you can bet that you are seeing
just the crust of targets.

There are programs and MD's that do this and that, but at the
end of the day, you have to sharpen your skills and go it one better.
It may take more than most are prepared to deal with. But with
determinination and a good attitude, more will be revealed, I
promise. But you have to deal with it your way after all the advice
has been given.

Good Luck,