A pocket change question to ponder:

[Anonymous]

First of all, I hope everyone had a merry christmass and/or happy new year.
Now heres my observation;
It seems like I'm finding a pretty high percentage of foreign coins in the ground compared to that of my pocket change, something like 3 times as much. Any ideas why? My assumption is that the source of our treasure is the holes in our great grandfathers pants pockets or the butter on his fingers. Did there used to be more foreign coins in circulation 50-100 years ago? I live in southern Wisconsin, but I dont think that has much to do with it.

 

[Anonymous]

Todd
Like so many things in life there is unlikely to be a single universal answer to your question but I can think of a few contributary factors. The first major thing we need to sort out is how long ago are we talking about?
During much of the early history of the Americas there was a shortage of small change. This shortage resulted in foreign coins and tokens being acceptable in trade. This process was made easier because the face value of the coins was often close to its metal value. Also the large proportion of immigrants (i.e. virtually everybody) ensured that there was a steady stream of casual coin imports. Since then inflation, a few big wars and the huge increase in travel means that the number of foreign coins imported each year must be enourmous.
Once the currency had sorted itself out, say by the early-mid 1800s base metal foreign coins became worthless and, however they got to the US, they were probably given to kids to play with or just chucked away. In both cases they would probably end up in the ground.
I once detected underneath a pier where there were hundreds of foreign coins. It was a few years before I found out that the owner of the slot machines regularly threw all the foreign coins he took over the side. A few a week disposed of like this since WW2 nearly drove me to distraction, especially since most of them were no longer currency even in their countries of origin!
Good hunting
Fred