Found a 200-year-old coin in my garden in Ohio last Saturday

I was digging a new flower bed and scraped against something metal, turned out to be an 1820s large cent coin. Never found anything older than a 1950s dime before, this thing is worn smooth but you can still see the date. Anybody else ever stumble onto old stuff in their own yard?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavin_kelly9122d ago

Yeah I actually just watched a video about this exact thing last week. This guy on YouTube called "The Dirt Fisherman" was talking about how Ohio had a ton of early 1800s settlement activity because of the Northwest Territory land laws. Large cents were pretty common back then but most got melted down or just lost. The fact that yours still has a readable date is actually pretty impressive. Most of the ones from the 1820s I've seen online are completely smooth on one side. You should probably get it checked out by someone who knows coins because there are different varieties of large cents from that period that can be worth serious money if they're in decent shape. The 1823 ones especially have some rare variations that collectors go crazy over. Even if yours is worn, it's still a cool piece of American history that someone probably dropped back when Ohio was pretty much the wild west.

hall.nina22d ago

That's funny you mention The Dirt Fisherman, I found his channel a few months back and ended up going down a rabbit hole watching his old videos about civil war relics. I swear I spent like three hours one night just watching him dig stuff up in random fields.