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What Is The Average Depth Old Coins Are Found In Your Area?

from 1 to 8 inches for the most part depending on soil conditions. They do not just sit there on top of the dirt. Out west coins are very shallow in the desert. Not much regrows through the top soil or lack there of to push them back down. They stay shallow.
 
I hunted a large forested park this Spring. I got a nice signal and swept the leaf litter away and saw what I thought was a bottlecap I swung over it again and it gave a very high signal that I rarely get from caps. I pick up a tarnished 1960 silver quarter sitting on the surface. I thought to myself thats really strange? I continued to find newer clad coins from different years also on the surface. I got down to see why nothing was sinking into the ground. What I found was surprising, for some reason the leaves never decomposed from the previous Fall season and apparently not from many years before that and were just dried up and loose on the surface and under the leaves was a carpet of super fine roots like a steel wool pad everywhere. I could barely push my digger thru it. Nothing ever sunk into the ground in this park all the way back to the 1960's and before. A couple weeks later I went back again to another side of the park about half mile away and found more surface coins including another silver from 1952. So all this being said there are certain conditions that can keep 50 - 60 year old coins on the surface. Big items like rusted chunks of iron I found under the root mass but lighter stuff like the coins,,bottlecaps, pull tabs stayed on top. All other parks in my area are normal where coins sink to varying depths.
 
It would be interesting to know what type of tree that was.

In southern Canada we have a lot of different soil conditions, it's an area where the trees go from deciduous in the south to mostly coniferous. I have sandy moraines, or even solid granite with a few minutes drive.

Because of the lakes, historically, there can be clay in weird places. I have one site that has modern clay near the water 6" down, or you can go to other areas 20' away and encounter soft wetlands that would consume almost anything. At the highest point in town I can still find decomposing clay 8" down from where the water was 10,000 years ago.

In addition to the animals already mentioned, the yearly freezing and thawing cycle does cause the coins to sink in soil (and up on sandy moraines ), the ground breaths, it expands with the freeze, shrinks in the summer. especially saturated soils.
This action could additionally flip a lot of coins on edge. A coin on edge has a higher PSI and would sink faster then a flat coin. I wouldn't be surprised if a coin tumbles as it sinks through the ground over time.

Some forested areas have soft, loamy fluffy soil, perhaps with sand mixed in. I would speculate things here would disappear quicker, even if it's just because of the addition of rotting sticks and leaves over the years.

So if you can find areas that have a clay base, you will probably find that the upper soil is very clay-like compared to soils that are composed mostly of organic matter. These clay rich soils will hold the coins shallower, longer IMO, but that doesn't mean they are all shallow targets. They will still drop through the first 6" comparable to other sites.
 
I to am also located in southern Canada. The park is within the limits of a City and it's mixed with mostly deciduous trees maple, ash, alder some cedar. Very little grows between the large trees there, Great place to swing and no poison ivy. Just a strange ecosystem that is only in this particular park.
The thing is it shows that some of the earlier discussions are valid. Coins don't sink by themselves just from their mass except at the beach, it is a combination of soil density, erosion, decomposition, freeze and thaw and other forces combined. In perfect conditions a coin could probably keep sinking until it hits gravel or bedrock. In my area I find older coins on the surface down as far as I can hear them, 10 + inches if I am lucky. Do they go deeper most certainly.
 
there is no answer to the question. there is no "average". Everything depends on the soil and what is growing in it. You can dig 100+ year old coins barely under the surface and 10 year old coins 8 inches deep. I have found that lawns with fast growing grass, and frequent watering will get coins down to about 6 inches really fast because they are constantly growing over the top and making a new layer. The oldest layers under neath are decomposing and turning back into the soil. After 6 - 8 inches, items really seem to stop moving very fast. You can walk across the street from that type of site to an area covered with heavy trees and no grass can grow. Old coins will be very shallow.

This changes from yard to yard, one part of town to another, and town to town. Every site it unique and cant be treated like "all the others". What makes this even more complex is freeze and thaw cycles. They can push things up, push them down, turn them.... and in droughts where the soil blows away.... flood deposits.... Depth of a coin is a crap-shoot.
 
Jason in Enid said:
there is no answer to the question. there is no "average". Everything depends on the soil and what is growing in it. You can dig 100+ year old coins barely under the surface and 10 year old coins 8 inches deep. I have found that lawns with fast growing grass, and frequent watering will get coins down to about 6 inches really fast because they are constantly growing over the top and making a new layer. The oldest layers under neath are decomposing and turning back into the soil. After 6 - 8 inches, items really seem to stop moving very fast. You can walk across the street from that type of site to an area covered with heavy trees and no grass can grow. Old coins will be very shallow.

This changes from yard to yard, one part of town to another, and town to town. Every site it unique and cant be treated like "all the others". What makes this even more complex is freeze and thaw cycles. They can push things up, push them down, turn them.... and in droughts where the soil blows away.... flood deposits.... Depth of a coin is a crap-shoot.
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Rich (Utah)
 
The total number of inches of all coins you dig in your area divided by the total number of coins you dig = the average depth. No matter the disparity between individual depths.
 
marcomo said:
The total number of inches of all coins you dig in your area divided by the total number of coins you dig = the average depth. No matter the disparity between individual depths.
Click to expand...

Wow that would be a level of data recording I dont think most have the patience for. But, just for humors sake.... throwing out the deepest recovers of 2+ feet and the shallowest of being on the surface... my "average" would probably be 6 - 7 inches for all sites hunted.
 
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