Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.
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| Silver Coins Dug By One Reader At One Small Site. Look at that parade of Walking Halves! Photo rights reserved. |
Finally! I've been itching to tell you about this for months now. Finally I can do it. Remember, you got it here first, right here on the Treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.
Back in April of 2014 a small run-down condemned bungalow built in Florida in the early 1900s was condemned and demolished. Old silver coins spilled out of the walls - 60 pounds of them. But that is not what I'm going to tell you about today. I'm going to tell you about what happened when one of this blog's readers, who will remain anonymous, followed up on the story.
Here is what he had to say.
When I read the news of the hoard and the method it was discovered, I
thought some of the silver coins might have made it into the ground. I was
cautiously optimistic, but when I heard that the demo work had occurred months
before I thought surely the area had been scoured since it was an open secret
amongst the city workers, as there were multiple workers on site when the coins
were initially discovered. I worked out a deal with the current owner to split
my finds 50/50. I found one coin in the first half hour (a 1906 Barber dime
unrelated to the hoard) before finding a large concentration of coins. In about
3 hours I found 125 silver coins, many of them halves. In one expanding hole I
found 30 silver coins!
The search was made much more difficult because 6-8 inches of fill had been
spread on top of the site after demolition. Many of the coins were deep and
gave marginal signals. There was also a huge amount of trash. After searching
the area over eight visits using every method that I could muster, including
different swing directions, different coils, trash removal, digging all
questionable signals, searching after hard rain, and even blind digging in
spots, I found thirty more coins after having 4-6 inches removed with a Bobcat
(I have a family connection and how I wish I had access to that Bobcat all the
time!). |
| Silver Coins Found First Day On The Site. Photo rights reserved. |
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| Silver Coins Found Second Day On Site. Photo rights reserved.. |
I searched carefully for buried jars, but no luck with further
caches.
My total silver count for the site was 335 coins.
One other quick note. A city worker who was on-site the day the coins were
discovered during demolition said that their project manager was impatient and
did not want to delay the demo job for long while the coins were collected.
They carefully picked up all they saw, but scoops of dirt and debris had already
been loaded in the dumpster prior to discovery. The worker pulled out a few
handfuls of dirt…and found silver coins. The site manager did not want to
search that dirt so it was hauled to the dump! After hearing this story, I made
some effort to find out the exact location the debris was dumped but, since it
occurred several months prior, the search was fruitless. I guess silver coins
are still being lost!
Congratulations!! And thanks or sharing. It is always good to see people do so well.
Back when the project started the detectorist commented to me on how going back over the same ground in different ways was productive.
There are some good hints in that story.
In that number of coins, and they look to be in very nice condition, there have to be some good dates and maybe even some error coins.
I was invited to be in on the project from the beginning, but tried to give what advice and assistance I could via email. I missed a lot of fun, but I'm happy about the outcome nonetheless.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
