I am Baffled????

[Rogerm069]

My wife and I got permission to do a 1810 built Inn yesterday and spent 3 hours there. It was an Inn from 1810 through 1861, then a farm with the barn added in 1861, then in 1970 it became a antique shop by the now owner.
He has did a pretty thorough research on the Inn and has all the owners and even the alcohol license application, Pictures of it in 1810, all the owners and all, and all the newspaper write ups on it threw out the years.
We came up with a plan to hit all the high traveled areas first, then we were going to grid it. but after 3 hours we found a few new gutter nails and one 1985 dine and a newer memorial panny. This is really strange as no one has done it since he has owned it. and no one has done any landscaping.

Why do you think this is?
With all the history you think we would find something, and with the activity now even more newer coins.
We have been detecting for over fifteen years and have been pretty successful through out the years. We have new Deep detectors and are baffled.
Anyone have any ideas?

thanks,
Roger

 

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[TORRERO]

Obviously it has been hunted before regardless of what the present owner says.
If he has never given permission, and he swears to this and you believe him,
then it stands to reason that this was probably hunted years ago, during the night,
on weekends, on Holidays, or other times when no one was there, and no one
could possibly say anything...
But this seems to be a frequent consept, "never hunted / but no targets"
I've hunted places like this, (not this old) (churches) where the pastor says
he has never seen anyone metal Detect before, and I get no signals...
Then I've hunted Churches where I did not see anyone, but found 30-40
old coins / buttons and so forth...
I would try any area's that are not the "Normal path of life" Fields close by,
woods, or next to the woodline. try places where it might have been hard to reach
for anyone in a big hurry to detect...
then let us know what you get, and see if you don't turn up something.
Good Luck !
Richard

 

[stud564]

i was just gonna say what torrero said

 

[kierdan]

Hrm that does sound weird. You would think that even if it had been hit in the past you would still find something other than gutter nails and a dime. Plus it sounds like the current owner has done all the research allready. And you know you didnt have a detector malfunction because you had two of them out there...right? You and your wife. I dont know. of course my MD history is only three short trips out with a cheap radio shack model, but it doesnt sound right to me. I would definatly hit that spot again.
Sounds like an interesting site anyways. Any chance to get some pictures of the place? Hope you have better luck next time.

Dan

 

[rvbvetter]

Some what like Torrero said. If there's a road or street next to it, try directly across the road from it. At some point the structure could have been moved from one side of the road to the other. Perhaps to make way for a railroad line. HH

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Can you find the old dump near it? That might be a good place to start. And across the road like Rvbvetter said .Look at the old pictures carefully. Look for landmarks or an old root cellar,pump house,outhouse or clotheslines. How about old Sanborn maps of the area? Its strange that you got nothing but a nail.

 

[Burdie]

You might look at an old topogrphical map of the area to see if the road has changed. Just a thought.
Burdie

 

[Rusted_Iron]

Pictures from 1810? Are you talking engravings or paintings? I didn't think photography came out until around the 1840s.

It's possible the property has had some fill dirt brought in or re-landscaping. There is a 1700's site I hunt with a couple of very deep machines, but I have not found a single coin on it older than the 1940's. There are some shallow, fairly modern junk targets, but I know the guys with their 6000/Di's on high discrimination didn't get everything.

I did some research and found out there was major relandscaping in the 1930's. All the pre-1930's stuff is down like a foot or two. I have found square nails at 12 inches or so, and they just get deeper from there.

Don't give up, though. The "old" layer could be right at the fringes of your machines' detection depth.

Like the others said, try some of the less-traveled areas of the property.

 

[bakergeol]

Lots of good points here from Torrero, rusted iron and the others. The site could have detected pre 1970 as this site would have been on my hit list at that time. Present owners of property and also pastors of present day churches have no idea if their property was detected 40 years ago. So there are lots of other possibilities which have been mentioned by the crowd.

I remember detecting an old tavern site(1820-1860) similar to yours except that it was in ruins. Perfect site- undisturbed since it was abandoned and believe me it had never been detected. I found quite a few coins from that period just lying on the surface in the debris/ fireplace cinders inside the boundary of the tavern. But no coins what so ever in the incredible expanse of grass surrounding the tavern and believe me I hunted it well. I concluded that some old sites because of their age and ground conditions are just sinkholes for coins. We are talking about a 1810 to 1860 era site in which the coins have sunk incredibly deep beyond the range of most VLF detectors.

It would be interesting to run a high end PI on the site to see what is really deep at the site.

HH
George

 

[Rogerm069]

Yes, and thank you guys! I have thought of all these areas, but My wife and I have always approached a site with the Attitude that if we havent done it it isnt hunted out!!!
I have a Fisher CZ-3D with a 10" coil, my wife has a new Fisher ID Edge. We have been to sites that were heavily hunted and always found not only newer coins but old silver, and I don't think I every hunted one area that I never got at least one wheatie.
The owner is my mom's boyfriend, and lives in the house, he also rents part of the back extention out. To add some little notes about it, it has had two extentions on each side, older though, like late 1800's or early 1900's. The pictures he has is a drawing done of it soon after it was built, others are prints from news papers throughout the years. They even produced a newspaper from this very building in the late 1800's.
We could not dig much deeper then around eight inches due to it was very, very dry. The back yard had around 6 to 8 inches of top soil and then it was clay based. Very rocky in some areas.
I did set my detector to scan deep and hit some targets, that were iffy but as to their depth being below what we told him we would dig. It was so dry the grass plugs were crumbling apart.
It isnt likely it has been done since he has lived there, he has put motion lights all over the place. Someone is always there so not likely since he has been there has it been done. Which is the confusing part! No newer coins?
Oh, we arent done by a long shot!!!
There is several trash piles, he told me when he moved in he walked a 100 yds across the field to a woods were they dumped, and he found several old bottles and pottery. After all he is a an antique dealer.
Again thanks
Roger

 

[Rodog]

Sounds like alot of those roofing nails and other rusted pieces of iron are probably masking the good stuff. Might have to dig some of that trash to find what the others have missed. I've found that older homes that have had multiple owners have had the roof replaced at one time or another, add in any of the old iron laying around and any machine would be challenged.

Rodog

 

[Rogerm069]

I agree, but it was fairly clean, not alot of noise at all, just alumiun gutter nails and some alum. clippings. We both got some larger Iron hits. Like I said really dry, didnt want to have all our plugs dieing. We'll go back when the soil moisens some. Right now the place sits on the corner of a crossroads, and is surrounded by cornfields. so going off the beaten path is not a option.
HH

 

[rvbvetter]

Four corners sounds like an old school I'm trying to locate. It sat on one of the four corners of a cross road in the country here. It was torn down in the 20's. Ive gotten on 2 corners with no luck. Working on getting on the other 2. If your hitting clay with no luck, It sure sounds like the Inn has been moved. Hopefully from one of the remaining 3 corners and not the middle of the intersection. I would be tempted to go look up some county records. HH

 

[Rogerm069]

No,
it is still located right where it was built in 1810, according to records and maps. The owner has a 1860 wall map original and the Inn shows up on it exactly where it is now. This Inn is on RTE 10 in chester county before Oxford, Pa. it was called Edenton Inn, and now is Edenton Antiques. I believe the owner has done enough research with county records and the historical secioty which it is registered with.
Oh be sure we will go back, and will do the areas not common!!!
HH

 

[TORRERO]

Well, just one more comment on this,
I have been hunting for over 20 years. The truth is I've been to
some locations that are like "public" places that I could not find even
iron targets at. I learned later that these sites had been
hunted by other professional Metal Detectors years earlier, and my
impression is that they used the old "BFO" all metal machines.
or used newer machines but dug all targets including all iron targets.
That's because on a site where very old targets are, many of us have
learned that good targets get "Masked" by large iron, right ?
So when these guys found a good site, they camped out there and dug every
target using several different machines, until no one got any more targets,
including iron.
Now if someone goes to one of these sites...
With a new top of the line detector, that promises glory in an old place..
what do they find... no targets at all, except maybe a nail or two...
I personally do not believe that there is such a place where the ground is a
"sinkhole" and you get no targets because everything has sunk so deep that
no machine can pick anything up...
Different items sink at different rates over time, and you can have one 2 coins
inches apart that might be 6-7 difference in depth.
An unhunted site will have many things within inches of the surface, but also
many things deeper, I don't believe much really goes deeper than about 8-10,
rarely sometimes deeper...
Just more of my opinion.. this place and places like it have been hunted all metal
years ago, and cleaned out by professionals who where hunting when
I was only dreaming of a machine...
Good luck

 

[bakergeol]

Well I am afraid there are indeed areas which are sink holes for coins. Charles NY posted a good sink hole area where he found the really old coins at 8" to 12". A lot of people at the time told him that coins just don't go that deep so they left an incredible amount of goodies for him.

http://groups.msn.com/MinelabExplorerXSusers/wotcoiltips.msnw

I don't know why people are so resistant to the idea of deep coins as incredible coin finds have been made in previously searched areas in which the topsoil has been removed.

With regards to the BFOs- well that is the machine which I broke out with over 40 years ago. You could actually distinguish some iron with it but it was basically a dig all machine. Actually the pain was not pull tabs as they were few and relatively new but small pieces of foil which sounded like coins. Anyway we did dig everything but we did not dig deep. The BFOs had very shallow depths compared to todays detectors and we left a lot for the later VLFs. BFOs were still the only technology in 1970 and if the site had been detected pre 1970 any deep coins should be still there if not detected by later VLFs.

I am going to tell you something else about the early BFO days too. I guess this is true confessions here. We may have dug everything but we did not REMOVE everything. We had our ethics but they were simply not as advanced as todays. The early BFO users commonly left the trash in the hole after IDing it as trash. That's just how things were done. Nobody told us we were required to remove it or about "iron masking". Eventually we learned that sites which we would come back to such as parks and fairgrounds well it benefited us to remove the iron. Well for all other sites junk iron was commonly just left in the hole and recovered with dirt. Why would we remove the trash as we would not be coming back? Remember at this time who in his right mind would detect a site someone else had previous detected once as there were too many virgin sites? It was also the pioneer thing as you had a great rush in detecting highly productive sites which were virgin. Remember this was the 60's with virgin sites and silver coins everywhere and we only came home with our pockets bulging with coins with no trash. So again I have to wonder why a lack of trash?

George

 

[cedarratt]

I would say some one hunted it at night some time, it happens...

 

[bakergeol]

I would say some one hunted it at night some time, it happens...

Well they won't have motion sensors installed in 1980.That is terrible. What type of low down skunk would do something like that? I mean for me it always was about the thrill of discovery and not the possible monetary value.

HH
George

 

[Rogerm069]

Well, I got to agree with everyone! and George your right it was only a few years ago the motion detectors were installed after his rentor's car was broken into and stripped!
Well mt CZ-3D was set and I did hit one target 10+ inches, but when I went to dig it it was somewhere in a large, deep rock area, and I promised him I wouldnt dig deeper the 8 ".
And my fisher with the 10" coil will do 12" easily! and I will have to agree but just weird NO TRASH to speak of.
We all know for a fect it was done, and done hard, but when where and how will remain a mystery!
Later in the fall I will go try the off areas, but my hopes are not to large!
HH
Roger

 

[TORRERO]

"I don't know why people are so resistant to the idea of deep coins as incredible coin finds have been made in previously searched areas in which the topsoil has been removed."

I did not say that coins don't go deep, I have dug many many deep coins.

What I said is " I don't believe that there is such a place, where everything ever lost
in an area over the last 200 years has sunk so deep that no targets can be found with
any machine"
A statement like that is just not true, or silly....

I hunted parks in Charleston S,C, where I got some nice old coins at 2 inches and some nice
old coins at 12 inches.... but now you can't find much at all....
....
your welcome,,, : )