Colonial-Era Shoe Buckle Found Metal Detecting | Quarter Hoarder

A beautiful 1750 house looked like it should be loaded with history, but getting to the old stuff turned out to be harder than we expected.

We got permission to metal detect an incredible old house built way back in 1750. The sky was the limit for a property this old, so we arrived early in the morning, fired up the detectors and got to work.

Rich shows Lynne the colonial-era shoe buckle moments after finding it.

It didn't take long to realize we had a problem.

At some point in the property's past, fill dirt had been brought in and spread around parts of the house. Fill dirt can be a nightmare for a detectorist. Coins and relics that may have once been within range of our detectors can suddenly be buried under several more inches of soil and pushed much deeper.

But we weren't throwing in the towel just yet.

We were still finding plenty of silver coins and relics from the 1930s and later, so we kept searching and hoping we'd eventually get into some older ground.

FINALLY, SOME ORIGINAL GROUND

Eventually we found a section of the backyard that appeared to have escaped the fill. You could tell just by the look and feel of the soil that this ground was different.

We slowed way down and started working the area carefully and then Rich finally found what we'd been waiting for.

An incredible colonial-era shoe buckle frame.

The colonial-era shoe buckle frame moments after it came out of the ground.

A LITTLE COLONIAL STYLE

Shoe buckles were one of the most common ways of fastening shoes during the 18th century, but they weren't always purely functional. They could also be a visible part of a person's clothing and ranged from relatively plain examples to much more decorative designs.

This buckle frame has an ornate pattern covering its face, giving whoever wore it a little bit of style along with its practical purpose.

By the 1790s, shoe buckles were falling out of fashion as footwear and clothing styles changed. By the turn of the 19th century, their heyday was essentially over.

More than two centuries later, though, this one was still hiding in the ground behind a house built in 1750.

And with a little luck and the right location, we got to bring it back to light.