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A Personal Big Cache Story... 100% True

Treasure Quest

Junior Member
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
Messages
87
Location
Nashville
A Personal Big Cache Story...

Here's a little story of encouragement... It's out there.

When I was a kid growing up in the Midwest, I went metal detecting with my dad. (I caught the bug early!) It was 72'... maybe 73' and had one of the first metal detectors anywhere around. (We cleaned up, but that's another story.)

A buddy of my dads found out we had a detector and said "Hey, you need to check out Mr. (Insert Name Here) ;) property. I picked up some fill dirt for my new hog shed a couple of years ago and found a $20 gold piece in the dirt. (Now that dirt is under a concrete hog building...:no: ) Well, that peaked my fathers curiosity and he placed a call to the land owner asking for permission to look around the old farm. He told my dad, "Yea, come on out and look around." When we arrived, my dad told the farmer about his friend finding an old coin in his fill dirt. My dad asked if he remembered where that old fill dirt came from. He said, "Well, there was some fella that lived here long before we bought the place... He died years ago and we tore down his old shack of a house and (this is the part I love..) dug out the old cellar to build a full basement under the new house we were building. That dirt was piled up for some time and then we just dozed it out across the yard here." My dad and I looked at each other and thought could this be a cache??? The coin came from the dirt of a cellar wall! He had no idea what a metal detector was and left us alone. His brother hung out (unfortunately for us) and we got to looking with our White's Coinmaster (maybe it was a Goldmaster??) Anyway, after about five minutes we got a big signal. I dug down about a foot and pulled up the bottom half (or what was left of it) of a copper box. It appeard to be about the size of a glove box with a latch still intact 12" x 4" and about 2" tall. We kept it and kept looking... (the farmers brother in tow). Not TWO minutes later we get a strong signal. I dug down about 6" and pulled out a beautiful $20 double eagle gold piece! :shock: It was amazing the dirt just wiped right off like it was brand new. (I think it was 1873..) I stood up and handed it to my dad... The farmers brother waived over his brother who was working on the side of the barn. He looked shocked... I don't think he thought there was such a machine that could find a coin under the dirt. Then he said, "Well, you have a nice find there... I appreciate you coming out and sent us on our way... It was VERY obvious it was time to go. We couldn't believe it. We found a gold coin that had to be from a cache. My aunt lived nearby and talked to the farmers wife several years later and told my aunt a total of sixteen had surfaced from the dirt around the house mostly when it rained.

Ok... here's the down side of the story. These were not nice people. They had a reputation of being pretty unfriendly and kept to themselves. So.. we were caught off guard when about two years later this couple showed up at our front door demanding the gold piece. My dad, who was just a great guy said, "Hey, you handed it back to us and said, you have a nice find there!" The farmer then said, "Well, now we want it back! We don't want to have to go to court over this, but we will." (He claimed he told us we could keep it for two years to show to friends and then they would get it back!) Yea right... that was a big fat lie. *Bovine Scatology* if you will! Anyway, my dad, (who was a much better person than I) had even purchased a nice case for it... walked over and said, "Here just take it and go. If you're the kind of people to lie to get it back, we don't want anything to do with it." Now, that was my dad... I wouldn't have been so nice even if I had to go to court!

Now I live 1,000 miles from there and the old man and woman are dead and I have no idea who owns that property. Next time I go home, I think I will drive out there with a couple of crisp Ben Franklins and say... "These are yours if I can just metal detect here for one day. The money is yours wether I find anything or not. I'm sure the owners have to know what has been found there, but you never know!

I'll guarantee there are more gold pieces out there just waiting to be found.

It's a bitter sweet story, but thought I would share...
 
What a cool story! For some reason this brings to mind a book I read (and the movie I saw) called God's Little Acre. The property owner (dirt poor) spends his life digging up every inch of his yard to find gold he was told was there. I'm talking huge craters 15 feet deep!

I think you should go back there. Sounds like this is one of life's unfinished tasks.
 
Yeah, good movie. All that diggin', and not a one of Jack Lord's hairs out of place, lol.

Oh, and a young Tina Louise...
 
great story- same as you i wouldn't be that nice if someone came and knocking on my door asking for a coin i'd say what coin what are you talking about have we ever met then shut the door and lmao
 
Great find! To bad greed interfered:(. Well, I hope you get permission to hunt there again.
 
This brings me to ask, what do you do if you find a rare precious coin or relic and you get contacted by someone demaning your turning it over to let's say 'the GOVERNMENT'.

I'd be really mad, I'm and honest guy but I'd have to really think about what I'd do here. The last thing I'd want to do is hand it over.:mad: :no:
 
It Still Bothers Me...

Even after all these years, I still can't believe I don't have that gold piece. As I said... if it were me, it would have turned out differently. When I'm back home next summer I'm going back out to the home site AND I'm going to try to look around the edges of the farmers hog sheds. (The guy who found a gold piece in the fill dirt he bought.) My mom said he's dead and gone, but the hog sheds are still there. Who knows, maybe a little of that fill dirt didn't get covered with concrete!
 
This goes back to my question about finding caches. Does it belong to the property owner or the finder. I think different countries have different laws about it. You have to check the laws and see.

I think you and your dad should have asked the owner if he was willing to share what you find before you started.

I think they may have gotten their own metal detector and searched every inch of that place.
 
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