Pit of Pennies

[Treasure Hawk]

So I wanted to share this story and see if anyone has heard of anything like it. When I got my first metal detector a few years ago I hunted at my parents house. It was built in 1912 and I have found well over 50 wheat pennies but only 3 silver dimes and a 1 buffalo nickel. Im sure there is more silver in there and I just have not found it yet. Any way one day I got to a section of the yard that kind of on the border of some woods and my metal detector starting going nuts. I thought it was malfunctioning. But I dug and discovered there were thousands of modern day pennies in the ground. I spent a couple days just sifting through the dirt and pulled out over 60 bucks in pennies ranging from 1970 to the mid 80's. There were also several canadian pennies, nickels and dimes but no American nickels, dimes or quarters. Just pennies. There are still many, many pennies in the ground there and I go dig some up when I am bored and cant think of anywhere to detect. They just rent the place but neither them or the owners have any idea how all these pennies got in the ground there. All this was in about a 10-15 sq ft area. I haven't thought about it for a long time and It just popped in my head and I figured some of you might like to hear about it or maybe even throw out an Idea of why someone would dump thousands of pennies in the ground? It baffles me every time I think about it.

 

[sandiggerson]

I have heard of people settling an old debt with a wheelbarrow full of pennies. Just a thought.

 

[jim tn]

That is interesting and unusual for sure. Especially with the U S and Canada coins mix. No signs of any bag(s) around I guess? Shame they weren't at least wheat cents. HH jim tn

 

[Treasure Hawk]

I like the wheelbarrow comment! I couldn't see somebody that collected them all just dump them and not go cash them in. I rinsed them off and went to the nearest coin star! And no I haven't seen any signs of bags, jars or rolls. When I get around to it I want to build some sort large sifter and just dig up the entire area. Maybe then I will solve the mystery.

 

[John-Edmonton]

I have found a couple of those hoards, and my thoughts were that people begging for coins go off by themselves to separate the pennies from the other coins then cash them in, leaving the pennies behind.

 

[mudpuppy]

$60 bucks is a LOT of Pennies! Thats a cool mystery here TreasureHawk!

Been thinking about this...I've found a few big penny pits, and they were all intentionally seeded in sand boxes for kids to hunt for, maybe $5 total, nothing near the magnitude of your trove!...

My best guess is someone nearby was saving pennies in one of those BIG glass water cooler jars...that was a very common thing to do in the 70's before they changed them over to plastic...then, somebody stole that big jar, which also happened a lot in the late 70's early 80's when cocaine got popular...(addicted dads were even stealing their kids piggy banks back then I remember, it was a real tragic mess back then)....must have weighed 100lbs...(maybe more, those large glass containers full of pennys are heavy and slick) tried to run off into the trees with it in the dark, tripped and dropped it and it busted open like a big glass pinata! If you ever find any shards of big glass, that would be the missing clue...thats so many pennies, it such a small area, it had to be from one of those huge jars...
Mud