“Finding Buried Treasure at a Historic House,” an article Alexis Gutter wrote for the This Old House website, lists a lot of valuable old items that members of the This Old House renovation crew found in a 300-year-old house in Bedford, Massachusetts. They found bells, buttons, part of a silver brooch, buckles, a chisel, old iron ox shoes (which are kind of like horseshoes, only bigger), and plumbing fixtures.

Forty or 50 years ago, only people who owned airplanes could zoom over the earth, looking for sites likely to contain precious metals. If they found the location of an old church, factory, house or mine, they noted the location and then visited it on foot. Today, you can do it all online.