Found a broken Roman coin in my backyard last month

I was digging a hole for a new fence post and hit something hard in the dirt. Turned out to be a worn bronze coin from around 300 AD, at least that's what the local museum guy said. Has anyone else just stumbled onto something old while doing yard work?

3 comments

3 Comments

nathankim21d agoMost Upvoted

Probably fake, people post stuff like this online all the time.

amyh1221d ago

See it all the time with people finding old stuff in their yards too. My buddy dug up a 1940s soda bottle cap while planting a rose bush and everyone in the facebook group was like "thats just trash someone tossed." But like, yeah, exactly. Old neighborhoods have layers and layers of random junk mixed in from decades of living. People forget that before modern trash pickup everyone just threw stuff on the ground or buried it. Coins, bottle caps, old toys, whatever. It's not some grand conspiracy, it's just how life worked back then lol.

williamw7521d ago

@nathankim you're probably right that some of these posts are fake but this one checks out based on the patina and wear on the bronze... the museum guy could tell it was a late Roman barbarous radiate from the style of the bust. Little scratched letters that spell out something about an emperor nobody remembers. Coins like that were worth basically nothing back then so people just dropped them everywhere, plus the soil in a lot of older neighborhoods has all kinds of stuff mixed in from generations of garbage and fill dirt. Fence posts are actually a pretty common way to find buried things since they punch down through layers that get left alone for decades.