Best Finds In Your Backyard?

FortMyersDrew

What are the best finds you guys have found in your backyard and NO im not talking about your 100acre land or even 5 acre land lol. Im talking about the average house with an acre or less. Well please elaborate what kind of signals were you getting if you remember? How deep was the item?

Musky1011

Silver rosie dimes

wheat cents

house built 1959

Jim

davbec

found a 1959 dog tax tag

BunchOBull

I bought my XLT with part of my college graduation money, so the first place I detected was in the acre lot of the 1968 built house I rented during college. Besides tons of modern clad, I found 5 or 6 wheat pennies, old dog tags, a white gold ring, silver charms of various styles, a child's cast iron toy train, and tons of .38 caliber bullets and casings. I think my favorite find from that yard was a 1982 McDonald's "Next Time Dime" for 10 cents off your next purchase at McDonalds.

I've been living on 213 acres hidden in the suburbs of Atlanta (out of place, I know) for the past couple of months, but I'm leaving the area in August. Since being here I've found some neat stuff, including:

a 14k yellow gold and sterling silver ring (badly smashed), a sterling ring, sterling religious pendants, tons of clad, earrings, wheats, tokens, 19th century farming equipment, buttons, tons of Boy Scout items, foreign money, pocket watch parts, among other odds and ends. Last night I found a leather working stamp of a bear, extremely detailed, by the Craftool Company. It's a discontinued stamp, but very cool. One of my favorite finds.

I guess my favorite finds aren't the most valuable, but I really think they're cool.

I've yet to find any silver coins though, and that's surprising being that the land I'm living on is a 160 + year old homestead. I really thought this place would give up some oldies. As of yet, it has not.

Here's a pic of the Next Time Dime and the leather stamp, I really like these finds for no other reason than I think they're cool.

lordmarcovan

Best find in MY backyard?

A 1962 Memorial cent.

windwhispersintrees

In 1983, I was hunting my parents' yard with my first detector, a Relco TX-70. That was a one knob detector....on/volume. No discrimination, no pinpoint, no meter. But after awhile, you could tell by how clipped or broken the signal was if the target was likely to be non-ferrous or rusty junk.

The house, built in 1955, was a one story ranch on about an acre of land.

Beneath a big tree in the back yard, I found an 1887-S Seated Liberty dime. Needless to say I was thrilled that my first silver coin was so old, and an S-mint to boot. I spent quite a bit of time wondering if it was a random drop from before the house was built, or if a previous owner had lost it while planting the tree.

The rest of the yard had nothing so good...mostly wheaties and memorials, and no other silver.

FortMyersDrew

wow thats a great find thanks for your input

RelicPortal

I found a small Gold Wedding Band in an old co-workers yard once, but not mine, lol

The X-Wife took it!!!

pocketpiececommems

The only thing that I have found in the backyard is a 1968 dog tax tag. By the sidewalk in the front of the house I have probably found about a $ in change and a small Sterling Silver ring.

FortMyersDrew

seems like a lot of people seem to be finding dog tags in there back yard

eyoung429

Guess this leaves me out

FortMyersDrew

haha we will make our mark dont you worry lol

laserart

I've found lots of coins in my own yard but the one thing that I found that was nice was finding my son's Cub Scout neckerchief slide about 10 years after he lost it.

FortMyersDrew

neat story what does your son think of it lol

laserart

He said he didn't even know he had lost it.

FortMyersDrew

haha that is how most things are lost without even having the consent of losing it in the first place

laserart

He may not have realized he really lost it outdoors but maybe lost it in his room. I betcha he could lose a full grown elephant in there for weeks at at time and never know where it is.

marym

Thank you for posting the website for Old City Maps Drew, but I can never access them with the user name and password you've provided. Can you offer any help?

CROCKofCOINS

Mary, Try it the other way...reisdence and welcome
NOTE: no caps

Jerry

Dockwalliper

Nothing great...1940 Wheatie.
I did find about $30 in clad where the trampoline used to be.

MisterBungle

I found a 1954 quarter in the back yard
of a house I owned years ago. It was
built in the 1950's. I had (and still have)
a cheap Radio Shack detector, that I used.

Also in the yard of that house, I found an
old brass dog tag that used an obsolete
name of that part of town, a handfull of
wheat cents, all bunched together, and
another wheat cent that was actually sitting
on top of the ground in an area underneath
a big tree where we never could get the grass
to grow.

That yard was pretty much the only place I
ever went detecting, except once I went
to my Grandmothers house, and took a
swipe at a place where my Grandfather
had built the kids a sandbox back in the
late 50s. I found a wheat cent and a
little toy car, about the size of a Hot Wheels
car, but much older.

I couldn't think of anywhere else to go
where I wouldn't feel like I was trespassing,
so I retired the detector, but reading this
forum, makes me want to buy a new machine,
and get back out there again!!

~

demodigger

squeeze me macaroni, Mr. Bungle!

MisterBungle

Ah!! A true fan of Mike Patton and company, I see!!



~

Pghpete

Our house in Pittsburgh PA was built in the 1880s. The best find to me and my brothers was an 1887 IHC with the obverse almost unreadable from corrosion, that the date was barely readable. The reverse was nice though. I say this was the best find because I found it, and with a house full of brothers, competition was alway present.

BobGreene

I would love to be able to detect at the house where I lived as a kid. Half of the house was built in 1865 by a retiring Civil War General (I can't remember his name) for his bride. The other half of the house was built about a half-mile down the road from the first sometime in the 1880's. At around the turn of the century the second houes was moved by mule team down the road and was connected to the older house. When my dad was making repairs on the house he ended up with buckets full of square nails that he removed. Once when he was wiring in a light over our kitchen table he discovered a hidden room. Unforunately there wasn't anything in it but old empty canning jars. When my mother was getting ready to paint the insides of the wooden benches that were built into the wall for the kitchen table she discovered an old newspaper glued to the inside. She peeled the paper off in pieces and it was like a puzzle reassembling them. The paper was from 1876 and listed the names of the dead from the Little Bighorn massacure. I was playing in the yard and found a skeleton key that fit the locks of the older portion of the house.

I wish I had a detector back then! I wish I had that house now!

Pghpete

Bob,

If able, go back to the house. Tell the current owner of your personal history of the house. Heck, tell them you lost a sentimental item or two and ask permission to look for it. I'm welcome back any time to my old house. Naturally, be sure to fill your holes, etc. etc.

BunchOBull

As an added note, I found my father's 14k w/ diamond wedding band at his lake house in South Carolina this weekend. Pleasant surprise.

CROCKofCOINS

WOW! ! ! That is so cool.


Jerry

pendragon1998

When I was a boy, back in the 1980s, my dad found this coin the dirt crawlspace of our house in Athens, GA. Our house was built in the woods, but back over 100 years before, the land had been a cotton plantation. I have never gotten around to authenticating it officially, but every time I mention this coin, people tell me it's probably a fake. Maybe(probably) so, but I can't imagine how it got where it did. Dad found it lodged in the dirt down under the house, so the only way it could have gotten there was (a) if it was dropped there by a construction worker in the late 1970s, or if it had been buried in the local fill dirt when they dug the foundations.

We used to find all sorts of cool stuff back in the woods behind our house - old clay bricks, an old still, old corner stones, even an old, dried-up well about 5 feet across and a good 15-20 feet deep. I can only imagine what was down that thing, but today all that land behind our old house is a bunch of patio homes (disgusting) and the old well is likely filled in and covered by a house. It's a shame, because the woods back there were absolutely beautiful.


Old pics from a year or two ago, sorry:

AlteredTone

Why wouldn't you send that coin to PCGS to get authenticated?

pendragon1998

Honestly, I just haven't ever gotten around to it. I guess I've been dissuaded by several people on the NGC boards who were convinced it has to be a fake. I've never been 100% sure it was a fake, simply due to the circumstances of its unearthing. If anything, I'd probably send it to NCS to see if anything can be done to remedy the (well-intentioned, but unfortunate) cleaning my mother gave it when Dad brought it in. I think there's some soap residue on it. Now that I am thinking about it, I'll probably acetone it tomorrow.


Here's a somewhat better set of pics I took tonight...

dcamp78

Any edge lettering?

pendragon1998

No, smooth as a whistle.

lordmarcovan

That Continental dollar is totally fake. It has the typical mushy details of a cast coin. Compare it to a picture of a real pewter one. Still an interesting find, though, and probably one that caused an adrenaline rush!

Your "1970s construction worker" theory might be close- my uncle had a similar piece in the late 1970s. (A cast pewter copy, unmarked as such). I suspect a lot of them were cranked out during the Bicentennial era, but some of these might be older copies than that, perhaps predating the 1973 Hobby Protection Act that required the "copy" stamp on replica coins.

Were I to speculate on how it ended up in a crawlspace, my theory would involve a kid. I remember playing with my uncle's replica piece at age 12 or so.

lordmarcovan

Oh, back to backyards for a sec. While I have yet to find anything but crap in my current yards, I did have modest success in the yards of my old house in North Carolina, which had been built in 1930. I got some old costume jewelry- one of the very first pieces I dug was a miniature gold plated treasure chest with fake "jewels" inside, which I took to be a good omen. I had my first modern metal detector and was itching to get my first old coins with it. In fact, the very first coin I dug (before I even got my first Memorial cent) was interesting:



That coin began my recordkeeping- all of the coins I dug with an old TR detector back in the 1980s were lost during my nomadic post-high school and college years. Since finding that Mexican coin, I have kept records.

That yard produced a 1935 Wheatie and a few from the 1940s and 1950s, but no silver. Still, back in those heady beginner days, I got psyched over digging a Wheat cent.