when hunting one of Portland's nicer parks. The grass was still about 4"-5" high as it had been a while since they mowed. Just a big amount of blasted pennies in about a 6' - 8' diameter area. I also noted quite a bit of straw scattered about the spot, too.
When I was about done with recovering all the pennies a park worker approached and told me that they had just cleaned up the leftover straw from a coin scrabble pile that had been there. It was part of a very large Mexican May Day activity that had gone on that weekend.
He was also very kind in pointing out where they had already cleaned the left over straw that hadn't been all carted away from a candy scrabble off to the south, then pointed out that section C, D and E at the park also had straw piles that they hadn't made it to yet. I was off!
One of the sites held an abundance of dimes, one a lot of nickels, and the last, and largest, had nickels, dimes and quarters scattered all over with the main concentration about 6' in diameter, but it extended out to about 9' to 10'. I later learned that this was their main pile.
When they were done they had just picked up the bulk of the scattered straw and carted it away to clean up their mess, but the blessing came from the tall, unmowed lawn that helped hide the coins. I didn't keep an individual denomination count for the busy morning hunt, but I do recall that it was the second time that year when my 'detecting day' produced over $24. The other was when I hunted "the projects" where most feared to tread at the time and tallied over $38 by 1 PM.
Those kinds of spills or scatterings might make us wish they were older coins from long ago activities, but sometimes it's not all that bad to put up with a small quantity of new money!
Congrats!
<EM><STRONG>Monte
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