Many of us may never dive on a Spanish treasure ship or discover a gold hoard but in a small way the old home sites are a treasure for each of us. The old house can be found anywhere without a lot of trouble and permission can be obtained without any problem (especially if the house has been torn down), and each of these is a time capsule containing a variety of interesting artifacts. To really appreciate the dig it is a good idea to collect all of the junk metal as you dig it and place it in a clean area to evaluate later (also cleans the area for metal detecting). A picture will begin to develop as you start to dig artifacts where you can get an idea of the general age of the house by the coins and then unearth the old toys to envision the family that lived here. You know you are onto a good site when the coins are old and there is evidence of many children because the kids love to take things out of the house to play with (and lose).
I had the opportunity to hunt one of these the other day and although it was not very old it was built in the 1940's it was exciting and different from metal detecting new clad coins. We started early because south Texas in the summer is really humid and hot and working in the trees blocks any wind that might cool us. The first thing that I did was to swing my loop at the root of a large tree and boy did the detector beep! There was a pocket full of pennies in one hole beside the tree and it seemed that I would never get them all out. They were as deep as 5 to 6 inches and I wondered what lay in the oversized yard ahead of us.
My hunting buddy has the uncanny ability to follow me around and work the fringe of where I detected and ALWAYS find something neat. The last time we hunted an old home site he dug in the sand under where the slab of the house was and came up with a 1857 large cent! This time he worked close to the area where I detected and pulled up a lovely old Mercury dime just as shiny as the day it was planted. You know now that I am always looking over my shoulder to see what he is digging.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any hotter -- it got hotter and I was looking to wrap this hunt up but gee whiz whats this a green old wheatie from the old days(amazing how a good find helps) I had a pocket full of coins and a apron full of old iron relics and toy cars. Found an old tootsie toy car in good shape and a '57 chevy with a smushed roof (drat!).
Well I had bent over enough I thought, and searched the whole area twice when I got this strange signal that seemed to indicate coin but bounced all over the scale(iron!). Maybe I was curious but something told me to dig it and find out what it was so against my better judgment I started digging (by this time I already had a blister coming up in my hand because of the hard dirt) and guess what! Just like I thought... a rusty old nail so I pitched it and swung the loop to check it once more and sure enough there was still something there. About 5 inches I looked down into the excavation and what did I see... a ring! Wow! I would have never expected a ring and I took it over to the car where we had a jug of water where I could wash the dirt off of it and WOW again... sparkles... I counted eighteen small stones and one large one and you know what I don't even care whether they are diamonds or not it was a great find! For those folks who read these articles and don't understand why we suffer humiliation and stop at no expense of time or money to follow this hobby thats why. It is the unexpected element. The thing that you didn't expect that happens. Maybe it is the joy of discovery like finding toys under the Christmas tree that we still look for. But I know that its the child in each of us that keeps us alive with expectation for that day when it will happen again, and the best part is that it doesn't grow old and we don't grow old as long as we have the hope of that child in each of us.
