Collecting weird stuff
MrTea
Posts: 56 ✭✭✭
Boy am I glad I stumbled across this forum.
I’ve been collecting weird stuff most of my life. I live in a historic colonial city, and work in construction, and you can hardly dig a hole without turning up something a few hundred years old. In ‘77 I was working on a pre-Civil War Black church that was undergoing building and renovation.
When I took apart the upper seating gallery, I discovered several coins that had been intended for the collection plate that must have been dropped and rolled into cracks in the floor. Because of the pitch of the ceiling underneath, they slid to the bottom and were all in the same area.
Two Indian Head pennies and three half dimes.
But to me the most interesting object was in the basement. The loadbearing cast iron columns there had to be replaced, because engineers could not certify the structural load bearing capacity of the old iron. We just slightly jacked up the building with massive house jacks, until the load came off and the columns could be removed. Under the center column was a bone button, clearly placed there on purpose.
If I remember my mythology, it was common in ancient times to put a gold coin under the base of an important building, to sanctify it in some way. Freed Black slaves would probably have had no currency to use in that way. Did the button stand in for gold for a people with no money?
Comments
Those are 3 Liberty Head Nickels.
My bad. Just starting to learn my way around coinage.
When they were digging up Georgetown, DC in the 1970's-80's for modern buildings we would find all kinds of stuff like that in the dirt mounds: small bottles, bone dice, buttons, utensils, but no coins. Alexandria, VA is the same but I never got in on that.
I had a similar experience building an outside deck for a pizza place in DC. The site was in the back alley, behind what must have been a drug or convenience store. The ground had never been disturbed, and there were hundreds of 19th century bottles and other stuff.
Cool thread!
My YouTube Channel
This is a place I would love to dig around or be there if reconstruction took place. It is the nation's last pre-Revolutionary War Intersection. Cheers, RickO
https://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/gov-last-pre-revolutionary-intersection.html?fbclid=IwAR0KoHuYYAVCrr8pslon9ymXgOXgZQ8SM02DX67ILmchLbZR_1sUIj97cxA
Per the article: "It is said that the Four Corners, as it’s known, is the only remaining pre-revolutionary intersection in the nation."
I'd like to know came up with that determination. There is an intersection down the street from me that has three houses on it - one from the 1600s and two from the 1700s, definitely pre-Revolution. In Plymouth, Mass, there is the oldest street in the US, dating from the 1600s, and I guess the small road that feeds into it counts as an intersection.
There have to be hundreds more 18th century intersections in small towns across parts of the US.
But that one in NY does look neat...
Come to think of it, my house was built circa 1780. I guess I need to buy a metal detector.
The oddest thing I EVER heard collected was toe nail clipping ???????
Welcome MrTea.
For your non coin related finds....
https://www.antiquers.com
Very knowledgeable folks over these as well.
I don't see anything weird.
If that is a clay pipe in the picture I think I have the broken stem for it.
Successful BST deals with mustangt and jesbroken. Now EVERYTHING is for sale.
Almost everything in that picture was found when a foundation trench was cut through two side-by-side outhouse pits. Two clay marbles, two liquor bottles, a perfume bottle, horse tooth, broken curchwarden pipe, and a partial cast iron toy horse. That was just my share. So people were smoking and drinking in the outhouse behind the church.
Your stuff is not weird at all. Had a friend in Oklahoma who collected PeeWee Herman pull cord dolls. I was creeped out when he showed me his closet upper rack with dozens of PeeWee dolls staring at you. LOL
I almost forgot the glass ball-claw foot piano stool foot.
I used to own the conning tower of a WW2 diesel submarine. Is that weird enough?
This is a great thread. Your finds are really neat, especially the button.
Not bad at all or weird. I collect coins, paper money, historical document, antiques of all types and countries and off the wall items. just bought this 1500-1600 glass cameo at auction this week. welcome to the forum.
It's too bad an archaeologist was not involved. There are a lot of unknowns about black history in this country due to their status during this period, and outhouse pits is a prime source of data. What you have pictured (bottles, clay pipe) indicates a certain amount of wealth that might strike a researcher as unusual, depending on where this was (freedmen?), if it really was "black", if it really was pre-Civil War, etc. Pretty cool stuff regardless.
Yes, an archeologist would have been appropriate. But in that era (and still to this day), there was a strong conflict between those trying to conduct business and those trying to preserve history. We all knew that, if we brought this to the attention of preservationists, we would lose our jobs. And the congregation of the church didn’t want to slow down our work and delay completion. The church was still in continuous use, and we were very much entangled with the congregation at the time. In that atmosphere, we all saved what we could. The church is still black, and the cornerstone on the building is pre-1860. To some extent, they still aren’t very interested in preserving their history. I’ve tried to return these things, plus a few more not described here, many times, over many years, and the head of the church will not return my emails (with pictures included) or phone calls.
That IS weird - not that you owned it, but that you used to own it, Why would you let that go?
I have a few weird things that I won't even mention as some would think they are in poor taste.
I found a few seated liberty coins in the basement of my old rowhome in baltimore (circa 1800). They were utterly destroyed however.
Minor Variety Trade dollar's with chop marks set:
More Than It's Chopped Up To Be
I remember a forum member many years ago that had some real shrunken heads.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Here’s me at the helm. The conning tower is basically an 8 ft, dia. by 20 ft. Long steel pill with 1 inch thick sides, and without the fairing (the smooth false sides) it’s really pretty ugly as a lawn ornament. My late wife wouldn’t allow it. I got it donated to the Seawolf Park in Galveston Tx. who are going to put periscopes in it and restore it to as close to combat configuration as can be done with mothballed fleets and help from the DOD.
Here’s my conning tower in Galveston after Hurricane Ike. Most of the park was messed up, but not my conning tower. It was meant to be under water.
