I didn’t know people did this. Caches of anything are rare, especially buried ones. People tend to hide things where they’re easily accessible, which is usually inside, not buried. This is the second cache I’ve found over many years. The first was buttons and some costume jewelry, probably buried by some kids playing pirates.
These were buried in tin cans. You can see the rust from the tin cans overlapping the green corrosion on the brass of the rifle rounds, and the two smaller tins of percussion caps that were inside have also mostly broken down. That’s the thing about tin cans – they disintegrate within 50 years underground. There was little left of them, and the contents fused together in the muck.
Here’s a surviving piece of the can, a section of the bottom, with large bubbles in the metal and bits of red paint clinging to the exterior, and a variety of small arms cartridges welded together.
There were different types of .30 caliber rifle rounds, 9mm Luger & .45 ACP pistol rounds, even some 45-70.
Best guess is that these are .38-55 Ballard. Someone may know better. You can see a bit of white has formed on the lead below the powdery rust, and pieces of the side of the tin can are stuck to several of these.
Here’s the majority of what was recovered. Over 600 rounds, plus bits of their containers. It’s a mixture of military and civilian ammunition manufactured between WW2 and the ’60s.
Or was – none of it’s viable. Things that are buried are exposed to conditions that cause the damage we see here.
What’s interesting about burying something is that it’s not just the landscape that changes. The buried item can change. And the soil flows, so it may even move.
