Posted
8/03/2008 05:20:00 PM
by Douglas
Note to plumbers: When you find $9,000 worth of
silver coins while you're digging in someone's back yard, put them in your pocket and shut your
pie hole.Our story begins June 11. Plumbers were digging a trench to run utilities for a pool house and swimming pool on property Hodge had purchased adjacent to his home on Oldham Circle in Amarillo. Randy McMinn had a backhoe about a foot deep when on one particular scoop, mixed in with the dirt, was found a bunch of dingy little objects.
Work came to a halt, and closer inspection revealed them to be coins — old coins from 1887. Careful digging found a lot more in some kind of fine plastic, what Margaret, Hodge's wife, described as sort of an old version of Saran Wrap.
Metal detector sales just went through the roof.