Treasure Hunting Tips: Finding Old Coins

The following treasure hunting tips are all about finding old coins. Much of the content here is taken directly from the treasure hunting chapters of Unusual Ways to Make Money, an e-book I sell on my website 99reports.com.

Coin Dumps

It used to be that some treasure hunters found valuable old coins by kicking old gas tanks to listen for the rattling of coins in them? How did they get there? Back during the Great Depression people threw coins in their car gas tanks for safekeeping. Tanks back then were easy to remove for later recovery, and gas doesn't hurt coins.

I suspect that almost all the old gas tanks have been kicked and emptied by now, but it does get me to thinking about where else people might put coins. As children, my brothers and I used to throw pennies into a hole in the kitchen floor from time-to-time (but I honestly don't remember why). We never did know where they went, but into the ceiling space in the basement is a likely guess.

Now there might only be a couple dozen pennies there, and this was in the 1970s, so it isn't likely that this hidden treasure is worth much. But what if kids did something like that in the 1920s, with some of the pennies dating back twenty years? Those coins would have some value to collectors. It's enough to make you look at the odd spaces in old homes differently.

I once overheard a woman saying she was throwing her spare change into a hole in the wall. She wanted the room remodeled, and this was her way of making sure her husband would eventually tear out the old drywall. Who knows how much money accumulated there before the wall was finally opened.

Or was it? Not to be too morbid, but what if the couple died before remodeling? Did they tell anyone else about the coin dump? Was the drywall then simply repaired rather than replaced by the next owner?

Metal Detecting

Here are some some treasure hunting tips for finding coins with a metal detector:

- Search areas where sidewalks have been removed after being there for decades. I know of a woman who found two old coins worth hundreds of dollars in this way.

- Search ponds that have been drained.

- Search around the porches of old homesteads, and anyplace else people would have sat (allowing coins to fall out of their pockets).

- Search beaches. You'll find more recent losses in the sand typically, but there are areas along the coast where ships wrecked, and old coins sometimes are found as they work their way closer to the surface.

Note: There are more treasure hunting tips on the page Hidden Treasures.