Yes. I was helping a friend dig up her backyard years ago so that she could put in some garden beds. We found a whole cache of books of all kinds. I think our final count was around 150 books. I have no idea why someone would have buried them.

I found an unused bullet. I was able to dispose of it by turning it into the police.

No idea how it got out of the drawer I kept it in because I did not wear it much after I received it but my class ring. I was moving some dirt outside my parents house where the ground was washing away from the outside water connection. It was about 8 inches below the surface.

Burying a bible is how you are to "properly" dispose of it.

Bury the Bible.

1. Gathering with family members in quiet reflection.
2. Saying a prayer as the Bible is buried.
3. Enlisting the help of a priest to bless the Bible.
4. Marking the buried Bible's location with a small marker.

^^^^

Interesting. And oops,guess my hibiscus didn't belong there. I did put it back because I didn't know what else to do with it. My Catholic guilt wouldn't allow me to toss it. I have never had to dispose of a bible. That hibiscus did not do well, thought the others did.

Over the years, a gold locket, a twenty dollar bill, and a bunch of plastic army men.

Not at my current house, but at the last one many things. Armless plastic toys, a rug, a speaker case, coffee mug, and old pieces of lumber. All were at least a foot under the surface.

This is a very easily avoidable experience.

I never dig in the dirt, so I never have this "problem". ;-)

There used to be an urban archeological museum downtown called New York Down Under. The museum was filled with objects that were dug up when excavating for the skyscraper that housed the museum -- dolls, dentures, clay pipes, teacups, broken plates, general discarded junk. According to the museum, it was a custom in Colonial times to throw these kind of discards into the privy. So if you are "lucky" enough to dig up a centuries old latrine -- jackpot!

amylou...That's pretty fun! I've never "dug" anything weird up.☺

At our current house, I found an arrowhead not too long after we moved in. A lot of earth was disturbed of course after construction and some tree removal and it was a good 50 yards from the house.

It is pretty well known that Indian tribes roamed this area, which is between a large river and a fair sized mountain. I expect it was from a hunting expedition. Other residents have lived and hunted arrowheads around here years before we bought the property so my chances of finding another are pretty slim. We have found squared off rectangular rocks we think we’re part of a log cabin foundation.

Amylou, your luck in digging in random items is amazing.

When my son was young he wanted to find buried treasure. So we bought a cheap metal detector and buried loose coins here and there on our 2.5 acres. He would go searching in the places that we told him might be best. He would get so happy and excited when he found some of the coins. He got bored with it after a few months. So there might be some coins still buried out there.

I found a hubcap when prepping my flower bed. It was a good 12 inches down. Not worth saving.

I have found things while double digging new flower beds, and a dry well:

Many marbles, and a couple of old toy cars (small ones), Just as Amylou did, found about a foot down.

A couple of old paving bricks (I think an alley used to run behind the houses). Also about a foot down.

A whiskey bottle, and a glass bail jar lid.

A small seashell

When digging the dry well, about 2.5 feet down I came across chunks what looked like thoroughly burned wood - completely black throughout, and shiny. I vaguely recall reading that well before the area was developed (first houses went up in 1941) that there was a fire that burned over the area.

Oh, when I was having the floor rebuilt in the addition, we found two large, decorated enameled metal exterior tiles - the kind made back in the 50s for the exteriors of restaurants or gas stations - in the crawl space. The woman who owned the house and had the addition built as her office worked for the company that made them.

This house had an inground pool that the previous owners decided to fill in before selling. My dogs are constantly digging up pieces of the tile that I assume surrounded it.

When I was a kid, there was an old house catty corner to where we lived. I don't know why I started digging in the trash pile there, but I dug up a gold ring. It was a signet ring, I think they were called. It had a place to engrave your initial. I also dug up a small Staffordshire cat figurine. Found an Indian Head penny digging a flower bed at our place in Arcadia. And I found a silver ring at our place on the bayou. We bought a 1906 house in Port LaVaca from an estate. A lot of really cool things left in the attic, including a diary and old letters. Also a very old typewriter, cast iron candle holders and probably more that I've forgotten.

Marilyn's digging adventure jarred my memory about the summer the neighborhood kids and I spent digging up bones - big bones. . We were convinced they were dinosaur bones. My mother contacted the Museum of Natural History in New York City whose staff informed us that these were bones belonging to horses who most likely succumbed during the Revolutionary War. There had been encampments and battles in the area where we lived. Not dinosaur bones, but still cool.

No, but when we had the locksmith out to change the locks on the house the locksmith asked if we found the key in a jar the lady we bought the house from had buried at the base of a tree! Never found it.

Marilyn's post about the horses reminded me of the horses skull we found when the city of Detroit was digging up and paving our street. All us kids were fascinated by it.

When I was a little girl, the kid next door, must have been 12 or 13, wrote a note, rolled it in a glass pill bottle, in a glass jar, sealed everything with rubber cement, put it in a padded box, and buried it behind their garage. The note read, “I am the last person on earth.” He was an interesting kid. Think I should ask the current owners if they ever found it?

I actually made the newspaper years ago with a find that my contractor dug up. The article took 3/4 of the page. and featured a huge picture of me. We live in an 1840 house and were building a carriage house in the back in the '80s. My contractor was waiting for the excavators when he found all sorts of medicine bottles from the 1800's as well as ironstone and pottery and redware fragments and even a porcelain egg. He was digging in what had been the outhouse area where they threw their "garbage".

My parents bought a small house for my grandparents in the Texas town where they lived. When making some repairs that required digging, they discovered multitudes of artifacts from some native tribe that, apparently, had ben living right there. It is believed to be one of the Caddo tribes.

When we moved in 35 years ago, the area behind our back yard had an old barn and was surrounded by wheat fields. The neighbor kids found old grocery bookkeeping for a grocery store open in the 1930;s, which was very interesting .This was the grocery owner's family farm. In my back yard I have found many old spark plugs, broken china pieces and the small penny tile, as from a bathroom. Without digging, after a hard rain, pieces of glass with come to the surface in areas not sodded. I an constantly vigilant for this due to my little dogs possibly stepping on it.

We live on an old colonial property...first house was built about 1790...but never found any neat artifacts. FIL used to dig in the garden and always came up with peach pits though.

Years ago the owner of the farm property east of mine apparently used to dump a lot of their garbage in a storm water run off ditch. That ditch runs off the property and then through mine. Over the 20 years I've lived here I found lots of interesting things that have washed out of that dump. Lots of older bottles but nothing of real value.

I can tell what type of person lived here immediately preceding me. Loads of beer caps in the yard. I get drinking beer, I don't understand trashing up your own yard??? I do find loads of really old pieces of toys, but not an entire toy. Yet. The neighborhood was built in 1918, and most people here refuse to tear down or even change things, so it's fairly intact. When I moved in, the entire heating system from the mid 20s was downstairs. Still is. Called a parlor furnace, and it is massive. I see why it's still there ;) Also still had the old sewing machine and I gave that to my neighbor, who gave it to his daughter, who turned into a sink pedestal.

Ya'll found all that cool stuff, and (hear the disgust in my voice) I got nuthin'!

(Pastor was showing the kiddies a ring he'd inherited from his grandfather, as a remembrance of grandfather. Little boy with loud voice: "MY grandpop died last year and I got nuthin'!)

My family had a homestead on Flint Ridge in rural Ohio and over the years we collected arrowheads and axe heads from the property. They were fascinating.

seagrass

There is an old homesite on this property. House, long gone, but a barn and chicken house still standing. The chicken house had a lock on it, but I could see in via a long strip of "window" covered with hardware cloth. We pried the hatch off of it and opened the door, which was an old house door, in bad shape. One bottom corner was chewed or rotted off. There was a huge planter and a smaller one. The big one is big enough to make a little watergarden for a miniature waterlily, but what interested me most was a huge pile of sticks, about 3' tall in the center of it. The sticks were all about 4 to 8 inches long. I found out it was the home of an Eastern bushy tailed packrat. Being somewhat of a packrat myself, I felt an immediate kinship. I used to take food back there to it every day. They are vegetarians and get their water from the food they eat. So I took grapes and various fruit and vegetable scraps. Also peanuts in the shell, which obviously that was a favorite because some were always eaten on the spot. Celery was refused. I also took fiberfill and placed it in a can to keep it dry, and that was taken. Also little shiny metal buttons and a little Power Rangers toy. One day, the food was still there....and the same the next day, so my little "pet" was obviously gone. So I quit going back. I did go back a couple of weeks ago, and the pile of sticks looked even taller, so there may be another resident.

One of my best finds back there though, were literally hundreds of yellow daffodils that came up, and I discovered last spring.

After my Grandad passed away I was given his old oak library card catalogs. Lots of drawers! I found: 3 vintage ladies watches, lots of tools, some old very small oil cans, and..... a speeding ticket that he got in 1964!

Edited to add: Well--I guess this wasn't buried treasure. But is was pretty much buried in all the junk in his workshop!

I grew up on a farm in the Great Lakes area, the original part of the house had once been a stagecoach stop. There was a 'window' in one room with a drawer below it that opened both ways. We figured that one side had been the outside of the building, and that was where they had handed mail and parcels through. The window part had been closed off on one side, and shelves for knick knacks were in that space. The last time I was in that house (late 1980's), it was still there. Not really a 'find', but interesting, we thought.

Then when my Dad remodeled the bathroom in the early 50's, he was installing a medicine cabinet in one wall and found, in the wall, newspapers dated from the 1880's. I have no idea whatever happened to them, they weren't found when the house was cleared out when it was sold.

We lived in the country here in Texas for a few years, and our boys often played near a creek that ran through the property, and in some surrounding woods. They found several arrowheads, and numerous pieces of broken pottery, glass, etc. None of the pottery or glass appeared to be very old, but to them it was exciting 'treasure'. And even more so were the sun bleached bones of javelinas and who knows what all that they brought home.

Rusty

Marilyn_c, that's a lovely image you describe of the daffodils growing where they weren't expected. It must have been a wonderful sight.

seagrass, did you know that Flint Ridge flint has been found all over the United States? Thought to be evidence that the early Native Americans had wide trading networks.

My husband was working in a very old house once, and found a large bone handled Bowie knife in a wall.

Stacey, I have always wanted a mass planting of daffodils but never had the perfect spot or the funds to buy so many. It was a wonderful surprise to go back there and see so many.

The odd thing was in the treasure trove of antiques I got from my "dig", all the old glass medicine bottles were intact with their products still inside and the porcelain chicken eggs were perfect and are now in my living room.

I pity the people in the future who do a dig in my yard, because it's a pet cemetery with countless cats , one dog and one parrot plus dead koi buried.

We found a wedding band set in one of our flower beds at a previous home we lived at in GA. 1/4carat maybe and 14k gold but for a tiny finger

I have found many buried "treasures" over the years in my yard. I tried to put in a vegetable garden in the far back left corner of my backyard which was a bad idea because a small spring runs deep underground and that area is always wet. As I was digging I came up with all kinds of metal pieces, shards of pretty pottery, a few coins. Then I remembered in the early 1960's my Dad had a burn barrel out there. Every now and then I go poking around there and have found a few dinky toys and a perfectly intact old style lipstick case, buttons. My oldest brother said he buried a time capsule in the backyard in the 1950's but he can't remember where and my younger brother said he buried a tin box of coins under the gas meter at the side of the house. I told my brother he should get a metal detector to find the time capsule. I also have had fill added to my backyard to make it higher to stop neighbours water run off so it will be harder to find old childhood buried treasures if there are any left. My property in the 1800s was part of a French family's farm field so unless my siblings buried anything there would be nothing but dirt. One thing I do hope to find one day is my sister's opal ring. In 1972 she got mad at her boyfriend and took the ring off and threw it. At the time we were getting a new road so the front yard and driveway were dug up. I tried to find the ring at the time and couldn't find it. She even went out and looked but there was too much dirt. Even now when I look out my front window and see something twinkle on the gravel driveway I go out and look hoping it is the ring that popped up from underground knowing that it would be impossible because over the years since then I have had 2 loads of gravel to the driveway.