virgin school site

[coin50]

Hi everyone,
I just spent my first 2 hours at the 1878 school site. Finds so far include a square nail, screw(not square), plant hanger hook, chunk of metal and a "rare" 1878 Timex watch with plastic wrist band. The area is difficult to hunt at best because it is overgrown with raspberry bushes and a lot of buried metal fencing. I will wait until some of the vegetation dies off in the fall and try again. The farmer also told me that he has plans to bulldoze the area, if he ever gets around to it. I doubt if it will be any time soon. Going out to the high school later today to find some coin. Thanks again for the suggestions.
Jody

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Are you talking about a 1-room type school house? If so, some of them were used for only short spells, and had whopping student #'s like 10 or 15 total. My experience at 1-room school houses of the 1800s, is that they aren't too good for coin-hunting. Unless they were used for adult cross-over purposes, like grange halls, church use on Sundays, community room, etc... It wasn't till after WWI or WWII that the demographics of the population and economy changed to where kids had change in their pockets (for school lunch programs, etc...).

Or if you're talking a regular school site, how do you know it's virgin? I have to chuckle when a landowner (farmer, renter, manager, etc...) says "no one's ever hunted here before". Often times they just don't know. I hunt a lot of sites, then go back 10 or 15 yrs. later, and hear the next person on-site say "no one's ever hit it before". Like maybe it was someone else who answered the door ages ago, or maybe someone just helped themselves, etc.... If you're in an area with lots of md'rs, and the school site is no secret to the history books, then odds are, someone's tried it.

 

[I a thr]

Still won't hurt to look. I hit a spot last summer where there had been a one roomer and has been gone now for 50+ years. When I got permission from the land owner she told me that a guy had looked there 20 years ago but she thought things may have been turned over since it has been a corn - bean field. My first trip there about 2 hours and dug 9 pennies 8 of which were IH's. Went back this Spring and got a barber dime and an old wheatie. Just goes to show you that even if it was hit in the past that they probably didn't find it all. I have found many Seated & Barber dimes, V and Shield nickels, IH's and even a 1900 Morgan Silver dollar at one room school houses. In fact of the 50 or so I have hunted I can only think of a couple that didn't give up some old coins. I think the reason being was I didn't have the location quite right.