Wow, what fun! Sounds like an episode on "If These Walls Could Talk!" (They often find artifacts on the property outside as well as in.) How cool! Can you find out anything about the previous owners?

The only thing I've found in that vein was a completely fossilized, very large turtle skull. I still have it on a shelf, and I love it.

And also thinking along those lines, we lived in our last house for eight years, during which time, we buried two of our cats, a neighbor's cat (they were going to leave it where it was lying), a pet conure, and a possum. They were all laid out in a circle under a tree. I've often figured that if the next folks living there ever decided to put in a garden in that spot, they would probably figure they had come upon a ritual site for someone practicing animal sacrifices!

Marcia

Hey you never know what you may find. In doing our landscaping after buying our home we found the following buried in the way of my flower beds: Engine (actual full 4 cylinder), Transmission (opposite side of yard), old swings with chains off a swing set, huge metal pipe, Really Old Donald Duck yoyo, a few shoes (no matches), and of course bricks and stepping stones (these were buried at least 2 feet down).. Im still betting we will find hoffa eventually if we keep digging around but Im almost out of space.. Keep going MusicMan and do watch that you dont reak that shovel...

Hahaha...Hoffa, eh? That would explain a LOT! Why on earth would anyone bury bricks and stepping stones? I wouldn't bury ANY of the things you found, myself, but those in particular seem ridiculous. I can't imagine what they were thinking!

Marcia

musicman

That's my MAIN hobby, looking for stuff like you found. I like to find old coins, tokens, military items and jewelry.

If I am not diggin in the yard I am probably digging somewhere else.

Here is one of the latest finds....

Cool, Tony...what is it? I mean specifically?

Marcia

Hi Marcia,

Its a lapel or collar button. The Air Force wore them on the enlisted dress uniforms and still do. The officers version has no ring around the US. Aside from my brief description of the button, I dont know much about it.

I found this button here in Orlando at a location where the brick road was being torn up to place new sewers. The street is old, perhaps from the 1920's. I was hoping for tokens and coins.

I am usually out in Sanford somewhere looking through the old areas for odds and ends. Wish Sanford was a lil closer, especially with these new fuel prices !

I dont know much about military buttons, and kinda like finding them, but also kinda dislike finding em too because it forces me to try and look up the history of it. Jewelry and coins are usually a lot easier to deal with. Tokens can be tough to identify too, but fun.

I really enjoy seeing old areas being renovated especially when a lot of digging and soil rearranging is going on. Its always interesting to see what can be found.

As for musicmans find in his yard, the area he stumbled on may have been a trash pit in his yard. Years ago, everyone had dug a hole and filled it to the max with trash and bottles etc. Old outhouse spots are supposedly loaded with bottles, and coins and jewelry too.

Its a strange hobby. I have been addicted to it for the last 25 yrs now!

The sand is constantly being moved by rain and wind so even stepping stones that were once on the surface , can sink after a relatively short time .
I have still only found fence parts or parts to my tractor or truck that have fallen in the pastures decades ago . Found some nails in a piece of metal yesterday . Good thing the cows didn't find it first !
Hay baling twine- the plastic kind - pops up quite often in the pastures but never anything as exciting as coins or jewelry .

Tony,

That's what I figured. It's probably a trash pit. All the stuff that wouldn't burn... metal, glass and so forth. As I said, this house has been here for 50+ years, and there were settlements all around the lakes here in this part of North Tampa back into the late 1800's.

I've been gardening on this property for about three years, and really only scratched the surface of the land. Who knows what I'll find :)

I guess that Tony and I think alike...that Musicman had found and old outhouse. I collect old bottles and they say that is the best place to find them.

wow! not much interesting stuff here: a little toy dinosaur, neon colored gravel (fish tank?) and old pull top from a soda can...and some bricks...

Musicman,

If you think you are in an area that may produce some old items which were trash to the folks long ago and perhaps treasure to you, consider building a small sifter out of medium screen and any time you dig in the yard, toss each shovel full in the sifter and see what might be there.

I personally dont use one, I use a metal detector but of course, if the item is ceramic or an arrowhead, I would hear it but at times I see it while digging for the items I am able to hear.

Your plants will love the sifted soil too.

areas dating back to the 1800's are great but items sink VERY fast here and are usually out of detection range, especially the items I like to find.

Must be nice living on an area that old with some history of its own.

If it is a dump site, you may find a lot of lead tubes of toothpaste that are all rolled up. Usually, you can still read the brand etc when you unroll them.

If you do find some nice bottles, you can clean the insides with a handful of BBs placed inside it and every once in a while agitated to loosen the crud up on the insides.

Have fun.

laura1

yes, our minds are in the ummm gutter, thats it.

I haven't found anything of interest in my yard. But, growing up in the Boston area,I grew up in an old estate house built in 1701. My parents did extensive remodeling and restoration of the property including a 3-story barn.

While removing the cement floor of the barn ground floor, we discovered an old well. The prior owners--probably orignial owners, had used it as a dump. It was full of old bottles, broken china, loads of glass items, etc. It went too far down to the bottom of the well for us to safely escavate.

To this date, it has to be the coolest 'find' I've ever had. Of course, my mother -- not a history fan and a neat freak - threw most of it out as 'trash'. Nice...thanks Mom.

when we dug one of the ponds I found a dump site. Cost
$ 1,500 to take it to the REAL dump!!!!Don't have my internet up or Id show photos.

Hey Tony, to clean inside flower vases I can't get into, I use a mix of dishwasher detergent and rice. It's a little milder than BB's, but can't say if it would work on real crud.

Hi Coffeemom, that sounds like a good idea too!

You know how guys are.... BBs are magnetic and we would use magnets on the outside to pull the BBs into the crud and move em around magically. Its a guy thing I guess.

Tony and others,

Thanks for your insight and experience on this subject.
The rain today helped to wash off and expose some things at the site I was digging. It sort of takes me back to my childhood days of digging in the yard, dreaming of finding dinosaur bones... :)

Whenever I do get the area thoroughly excavated, my berry patch is still going in, dangit. I was thinking that to myself last night as I was pulling strange junk from the ground... I just want to plant some blueberries...

Mostly I found a bunch of beer cans -- thick, heavy ones that had to be opened with a can opener!

WOW how cool you guys found some neat stuff! The land we built on was once a cow pasture. Other than some olb barbed wire, all we ever find is the builders trash. Nails, concrete, broken concrete blocks. Sure would love to find something more interesting!

I too grew up just north of Boston on a large dairy farm (1500 acres) and we had our own dump for bottles and cans.
Nine generations of my family lived and worked on the land (I'm the 11th in this country). There was a collection of artifacts stored in the china closet at my grandparents home. Pottery, arrowheads and tools. I had my own collection of arrowheads and passed them on to a younger cousin.
The property we purchased in NH was part of a large farm but on the other side of the road from the house (1746) and barns. When our friends built a new barn we found a bottle dump and had fun for a couple of weeks digging bottles out.

Tony I've always wanted a metal detector. Thought it would be a fun hobby. A friend of a friend has found lots of interesting and valuable things along the treasure coast.

SaintP where did you grow up?

About the only interesting things I found preexisting to when I bought my house were cinder blocks and those large cement housing blocks around the housing foundation. I've found all sorts of toys and aquarium gravel and a piece of a tarp burind under the grass next to the sliding glass door in the back, but those were courtesy of my ex-wife "cleaning" during the divorce.

I have a friend who started digging in his yard to plant a tree only to discover that the previous owner had paved half the yard with bricks and then either buried it or let nature reclaim it. It's about 6 inches down. He tears out the bricks that are in his way and keeps telling me to come over and get them if I want them because he wants them all gone. Too bad I don't have a truck.

Well,

I finished excavating the site this evening, and put in all of my berries. Now I have a pleasing berry patch instead of a gaping hole in my backyard, spewing other peoples' garbage!

Most of what I found were small vials and bottles. Finally, one that I found had some print on it... it was a nail polish bottle, obviously from the 50's or 60's. There were many others like it. I had heard that one of the previous occupants of this house ran a hair salon in it. I guess she did nails too... hahaha

Strange bit of very local history. :)