After the comments on the last post I thought I would share the following excerpt from the “Coin Hunting” page…. I would also love to hear from anyone who has hunted for or found a cache.
CACHES
Dictionary.com defines cache as “a hiding place, especially one in the ground, for ammunition, food, treasures, etc..”
Always consider the possibility of a cache! Homesteaders, early settlers and landowners did not have easily accessible banks in which to deposit their money and frankly did not trust them anyway. Giving your life savings to someone else was unsettling and not at all an action that provided comfort or relief. As a result many old timers concealed their money, their life savings, their pin-money, their stashes, their drinking money or their incomes from illegal gambling.
It’s also been said that many times the man of the house seldom shared the location of his buried treasure with his wife or family. Why? Because he assumed he would outlive everyone, and it was simply the manly thing to do. He was the head of the household, and his wife the housekeeper and childbearer. Like it or not, that was the way things were.
Locating a cache is indeed a challenge, and requires lots of thought, and patience. The premise I go on with every OLD home site I search is that a cache is hidden somewhere on the property. Finding it will be up to me and while the end result may be that I leave empty-handed it could also mean that it was there and I just didn’t find it!
Where to Look for a Cache
Fireplaces(loose bricks), under front porches, root cellars, under large trees, under fence posts, hollow window and doorsills….
Under floorboards, abandoned autos, barns/outbuildings, out houses, planters, attics, cellars, canned food containers, under woodpiles, chicken coops, hollowed stairs, pipes, old tree stumps, under sidewalk stones and farm equipment.
A big head start in finding a money cache is to put your self in the place of the individual who hid it. In other words, if you had a thousand dollars, where would you hide it? Would you hide it inside the house? Outside? If so, where? If you buried it would you bury it deeply? Would you hide it somewhere where you could put your hands on it quickly? The questions are important, because these are indeed the same thoughts the original owner must have had, and they will surely help you narrow your focus.
If it were me I would bury it outside. Hiding it inside makes it subject to fire and that’s never a good outcome. Next, when I did bury it I would make sure I could get to it quickly if needed, and I would make sure I could keep any eye on it from inside the house. Lastly I would bury it in a container that would keep the money safe from the elements. Now I know all this doesn’t mean a great deal but by putting yourself in the place of the individual secreting the money you will more than likely hit the most promising places first.
__________
Time for Cooper and me to dig up the backyard.
Absolutely! Cooper would love it.
Don’t overlook larger signals as trash…more digging, but that’s always the way to more and better finds
Absolutely. Thanks Avery…
Dick, I have read plenty of books on the subject and always try to locate a small Cashe if I have chance to detect an old home. Maybe I should expand my thinking and try for bigger ones other than “Milk n butter money”.
Once a co worker asked me to search his attic and back yard. He was told that the last owner hid his money because they didn’t find much when he passed. He lived to an old age and his home was well maintained. Could be the reason why I didn’t locate any jars of coins but it was still a fun day, you never know.
“you never know” is the reason we even try….
Er…why not try to find an ‘old’ orchard – apples, pears, or cherries – and search at the base of the trees!!!! Just a tip from an old LImey hunter.
Explain please you inebriated old limey….
Oi! Who you callin’ old? Inebriated Limey, yes.
Here in the Old Country many hoards were buried at the base of trees in orchards during times of conflict. The way orchards are laid out makes the exact location easy to remember. Often, the hoards, or caches, were never recovered due to the hoarder dying of disease or killed. This ‘tradition’ would have found its way to the US.
(This explanation does not waive the outstanding $20.00)
HH
https://detectingandcollecting.wordpress.com/
I can just see a few tekkies heading out to the orchards today.
No idea what the $20 means…
Hopefully those “tekkies” make some YouTube videos.
Damn I hope so….I will be soooo disappointed if they don’t.
Good advice, Dick. I heard somewhere, maybe in a THing book, that one in five homes has a concealed cache somewhere. I’ve found several caches, I totally blew one in 1984 that my detecting buddy told me to ignore, he thought the signals were just copper pipes (what they WERE was about $35,000 worth of silver dollars buried in big mason jars!!) that the demolition crew collected the following day, when a bulldozer hit the wall and blew the coins in the cache all over the building site. Found one under a tree (oddly, this time I was telling a detecting buddy to just ignore the signal, it was probably only junk) with a German WWII prisoner of war cache of several solid silver dollars buried under a big tree. Interesting subject, but very,very few folks new to the hobby will remember to take advantage of your advice. They never do.
Jim you need to share those stories on your blog. Would lover to hear more and see photos if you have them.
And detectorists today are just into digging and filming. The idea that people actually buried money in large sums is lost on them. It’s a new era and a new generation.
Sure, Dick…I didn’t even think of that. Lemme see what I can dig up and weave that into a blog post!
Jim’s blog is Detecting an Attitude https://detectinganattitude.blogspot.com/