Paid $80 for a carbon dating test on a pottery shard I found in my backyard

I found this old pottery piece while digging a garden bed near Cincinnati and got curious, so I shelled out $80 to a local lab for carbon dating. Turned out it was from the 1920s, just some old farm debris, not ancient at all. Has anyone else wasted money on testing something that turned out to be nothing special?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade2216d ago

Did you at least get a cool story out of it? I paid $150 to have a rock tested once, thought it might be a meteorite. Turned out it was just a lump of slag from an old coal furnace. So now I've got a very expensive paperweight and a good reminder that I'm not an archaeologist.

william9176d ago

Did you keep that slag paperweight as a conversation starter or did you just toss it in a drawer somewhere? Slag can actually look pretty cool sometimes with those weird swirls and colors from the old furnaces. I'm curious if the people who tested it gave you any pointers on what to look for next time so you don't waste another $150. Or did they just hand you the results and act like you should have known better? Seems like something the local rock club or a university geology department could have told you for free if you'd asked around first. Sometimes the best lesson is just admitting we all get fooled by shiny things in the dirt.