How deep could they be?

[TheSwede]

So, some background...

I have been detecting a "play field" in connection to the high school adminstration building in my town. The adminstration building was former the actual high school before they built a new high school on the other side of the street. This play field does not seem to be hit hardly at all since I manage to pull some silver jewelry at 1,5 to 2 inches deep along with clad, other junk jewelry and the regular crap and all in those shallow depths.

Now to my research...

I have been looking at those sanborn maps and the high school adminstration building is built between 1893 and 1900 and has been added on to since then up to the 20's. At 1884 the public school of the town was already at that particular spot. The play field itself had 3 residential houses on it at 1888 which were still there to at least the late 40's so I am not sure when they tore them down and when the play field actually became a play field.

Nevertheless, what I am wondering is that....I assume that whenever they tore them down and decided to give the kids a place to play they filled the sh*t out of those land lots before they planted grass and so on. What am I looking at here? Do I even have a slightest chance to get down to the goodies you think?

Regardless what your guesses would be, I will of course go back to try clear it out as much as I can, but I am curious what you guys would think in this case since there is a lot of experience here that I do not posess.

...I havent cover much of it yet, but so far no oldies, neither in coins or trash items. I think I had a -62 penny there last time as the oldest so far but that being the only one so far means nothing I guess.

Well, always seems like I keep posting these long boring threads but hey, help me out here

[Detector]

I've found the best judge on how deep the goodies might be, at any given site, is how deep you find junk. As I said in another thread, trash can be a valuable source of information. If the site has buildings from the 1800's that have been torn down, you should find square nails and other debris from that period. The depth you find that junk will give you some idea on how deep the goodies might be.

[Mr.krayola]

i agree with Detector. garbage if valuable. if u find square nails u r in a good spot. glad we can help u! keep posting its gonna b a long cold winter here in WNY.

[Jason in Enid]

Is there anything to make you think that they brought in fill dirt? It's very possible that they just scraped the ground flat and went from there.

Like the others have said I would look at how deep you are pulling the trash from. People leave WAY more trash on the ground than coins.

I am always amazed at how deep I find even modern coins sometimes.

[Lightningjack]

I don't know the lay out your site, But if your convinced it's been filled in, I've had my best luck finding old coins at grounds thats been filled in by hitting the outer edges & if there are any large older trees in the area definitely try going around them..Best of luck to you.

[Diggler]

Sounds like a scenario school/admin building near me. If there is any slope to land at all, go to the high spots. Low spots were probably filled in more. Also, I have been finding more stuff in the outfields where the baseball fields used to be. Way less filling seems to have gone on there.

[Silversmith45]

I have found coins in sites that were filled in. I believe that they were brought in with the fill. It all depends where it came from.