08/23/2026
After a long day of nothing, my Uncle and I went back to that park/school yard I mentioned in a previous post, and I somehow unearthed a 1700s silver coin!
Last time, he found an early 1800s Draped Bust large cent there, so I had hopes of at least finding something older to redeem ourselves from a tough day. I started hunting and got a 1940 nickel and a couple of wheat cents, but then I got a very crisp 86 signal on the XP Deus II at about 5 inches deep. I told my uncle this was going to be a wheat cent…but I was wrong - and I’m glad I was.
I saw a small, thin silver disc in the dirt clog. After removing the dirt, I realized it was a Spanish Half Real from 1779. These were coins used in everyday transactions in the early days of the United States, as we did not have many silver coins of our own in circulation, and they were accepted as legal tender until 1857.
This is my first whole Spanish half real for the year and it was a complete surprise. This is New England, but was still shocking as I personally never found anything quite old at that site. The school yard dates to the early 1900s, but the land around it is centuries old, and was likely former agricultural fields before the school was built. Very glad to have found this little needle in the haystack!
