Found a Roman coin in my backyard in Ohio last Saturday

I was digging a hole for a new fence post behind my garage and hit something metal about 8 inches down. Turned out to be a small bronze coin with a faded emperor profile on it, local museum thinks it's a 4th century Roman follis. Has anyone else found something way out of place like this in the middle of nowhere?

2 comments

2 Comments

lisa_murray21d ago

Well holy cow, that's a wild find for Ohio! You gotta get that coin properly documented with the museum before you do anything else, like cleaning it. If you scrub that patina off, you'll ruin the value and any historical details. Most folks don't realize those old coins are delicate, so keep it dry and in a soft cloth or a pill bottle for now. Have you checked the site with a metal detector again? Sometimes where there's one, there's more hiding nearby, maybe from an old settlement nobody knows about. Ohio's got a lot of hidden history beneath all that clay and cornfields, so don't be shocked if you stumble onto something else.

fisher.diana21d ago

Oh wow I gotta hard disagree with this take honestly. If you dig up an old coin in Ohio, it's probably just a random souvenir someone dropped or a modern replica that got buried decades ago. I mean how would an ancient Roman coin even get there? It's way more likely it got mixed into fill dirt or washed out of someone's collection than being some hidden treasure site. You're gonna waste a ton of time and energy if you go buying a metal detector and tearing up your yard over a single beat up coin. Plus the museum guy might have just been being nice since you brought it in, I bet he sees junk like that all the time from people thinking they found something crazy. Just sayin, don't quit your day job to become an amateur archaeologist over this lol.