Hidden Treasures

Oh, I do hope you find something good! I think hunting for treasure in your own home would be lots of fun.

Check for false/hollow walls inside of closets.

Measure the rooms and the width of walls to see if there's a 'missing' foot somewhere.

I have heard that sometimes the tops of doors were hollowed out and valuables tucked inside were covered with a strip of veneer -- so tap the top of doors and hope for a 'hollow' sound.

A contractor once told me that he often found old US cents when he removed bathroom walls. Sometimes there are medicine cabinets with a slot for disposing old razor blades and kids would drop pennies down them. That would mean removing a wall....so probably not worth it.

And finally, check for an empty pipe suspended from the basement ceiling.

I'm sure there are more places to look but that's all I can think of for now.

Good luck!

Australia does not have an extensive history to have an interesting buried archeology.
If you want to have fun with a metal detector, you get out into the bush and look for gold nuggets or in my case, rough gemstones.

I have foud a few small sapphires and zircons with a 25 / 5 mm sieve set.

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I was the executor to an uncle's estate and I had to completely clean every room of his house out, and prepare the house for auction.

The house was full of junk to be thrown out, and I filled 5 ton truck with things to be disposed of as trash, to be given to charity, or for auction.

I found a book with $50 in it, then another, then another. Eventually, I found about $2,500 in mint fresh, but very old notes. I found several buckets with some rags over them. They yielded about another $500, mostly in nice condition coins all around 40 years old.

All of that was surrendered to the solicitor to be put in a trust account. I did NOT want top be sued because there were 22 beneficiaries in the Will, most of whom I did not know, and that was the reason for the surrender of the found cash. My wife was one of the beneficiaries

Didn't find any gold sovereigns or anything, but I did find an interesting up market Omega gold Seamaster watch, in perfect working order.

I gave the gold watch outside the provisions of the will, to his son.

The whole cleaning out job took about six weeks of weekend work.

I would love to get a metal detector and do the garden - bound to be full of stuff, as some of it has been churned over. In one of the flower beds was a very very very old Scaffhold base.

We have already found some treasures about (in the past) - including a full pack of victorian cigarettes (now in the local museum's collection) and the best treasure of all, the initials of every worker who has worked on our roof since 1889. What happened was the workers would carve their initials and the date into the lead lining on part of our roof. I havent been able to look over the whole strip of lead, but the oldest I found was 1889. In 1936, someone carved their name into solid lead *caligraphically*.

Good plan Buddy, Ill definitely do the door thing. Most of the doors are original, except doors for modern partitions, which are still victorian, but have been brought in from condemned houses. However, all the cupboards are either new (in the last 50 or so years) or full of the biggest spiders you've ever seen. The rooms are all the correct length.

One interesting thing is attic space...theres a very convoluted entrance to a section of attic space, but for many reasons, mainly the cupboard below it was collapsing, we never got to look in it. Our house onced housed a jack the ripper suspect (hes basically been cleared of it though) so I'm not sure how excited I am to look into a flat attic space 6 ft long and 4ft wide.

Congrats on the finds! I'm afraid my home town hasnt been a farming town for a long time. Theres many a picture of my road with my house with horses and carriages but unfortunately no evidence of a stables.

However, there are many large trees which can be seen in the victorian photos (one got chopped down without permission...really changed the whole look of the road) so I could detect around those with the owner's permission.

Bad news on the metal detecting front, I've looked at the garden and how its been altered and it appears all the top soil was taken away when it was renovated. Originally, there should have been a slope, which was removed when the house was built, which removes earlier medieval finds out of the question. The gardens will not turn out more than victorian finds.

However, next time they tear up the road may be a good thing to hunt (if I ever get a detector) due to the history of my town and road. It is believed that the name originates from a small stream that once present there, of which no information remains (speculation...).

A victorian house plot where the house burnt down (way back before WWII probably) has recently been churned uip and turned into a little flower bed. The original victorian front step was torn out, so I guess nothing good will have been left there.

There is also a small area tucked away that used to be used to grow fruit trees, which was torn up by a guy without permission. He hasnt been able to build on it, so there may still be good stuff there.

I could also look for the location of a mint in a town quite nearby (driving distance) from around 800AD, thats not been located yet, but 1 coin minted there was found.

Im bringing this back, I had sort of stopped my search when I realised something, which was staring me in the face.

The shelf I use to put all my books on is an old one well bolted into the wall (not victorian, but old). Only today did I realise that the shelf is longer on the bottom that the top (its in a bay). Hmmmm. This is a difference of up to 5cm. How could I find out whats back there? Theres brick under the shelf and drywall above the shelf.

any ideas?

Keep looking those old housed hold secrets. I had a friend renovating an old farm house in Oregon. He was adding on and when he tore out a wall there was a $5 liberty gold piece sitting on a cross member.

I have a story about 75 gold sovereigns...for another day.

Bad news, the wall hides piping! Darns.

Theres other bits of the house which are hollow which have been closed since at least before the previous owners (so atr least 1970s) which could be good. And one area is hollow and we know theres something there, our millenium Time Capsule!

aussie builders had a tradtion up until around the 70's, every building they built they would leave silver coins under the front and back door and under the fire hearth, as a kid I found many crawling under our houses to search those spots.