The Civil War continues to be a topic of interest more than 150 years after it began. For many detectorists, the idea of finding something from this long-ago era is thrilling.

But before you head outside hoping you’ll stumble onto a Civil War site, there are a few ways you can stack the deck in your favor.

Do Your Research

To find out where the best potential Civil War sites are, you need to put in some legwork. You need to figure out where the battles were and then determine if you’re allowed to hunt there.

Many Civil War battle sites are off limits to amateur metal detectorists, so you may need to get a bit more creative when you’re looking for Civil War artifacts.You don’t just want to narrow your search to include Civil War battle sites, you’ll also need to consider how soldiers got to those sites.

Try to figure out with careful research which roads or trails those soldiers took to get to the battlegrounds. Pay special attention to any camps they set up along the way. The longer soldiers stayed at any one place, the more likely you are to find artifacts they may have dropped, like buttons and bullets.

Realize You Can Find Civil War Artifacts in Unlikely Spots

If you don’t live in a state that has a history of many Civil War battles and if your travel budget won’t allow you to take many out-of-state trips, you may still luck out and find Civil War items.

Once, when digging in the backyard of a house built in the 1860s in a state that didn’t have any Civil War battles, I found two Civil War era bullets. How they got there is anyone’s guess, but I think the likeliest explanation is that someone who lived in that house fought in the Civil War and dropped those bullets at some point.

I was flabbergasted when I found Civil War Artifacts because I never expected that morning as I headed off to this house for a routine dig that I would come across something from the Civil War. But it just goes to show you, you never know what any hunt will turn up. With metal detecting, you should be prepared to be amazed every time you’re out there digging.

Take Time to Authenticate Your Find

If you haven’t stumbled across a Civil War item before on your digs and you aren’t entirely sure that what you’ve found is truly from the Civil War, you can rely on the expertise of others to authenticate your find.

One free way to get a good indication of what you’ve found is to ask other detectorists you know. If you belong to a metal detecting club, at least one member in there is likely to have found Civil War items before, particularly bullets from that era. Bullets are one of the most common Civil War artifacts you can find.

If you don’t know of any nearby detectorists who have experience with Civil War finds, you can take a picture and send off a quick query to one of the big metal detecting magazines. The editors and publishers are usually metal detecting enthusiasts themselves and they are often glad to help out other detectorists with the identification process.

If you live near a Civil War museum or another museum that has featured Civil War pieces in the past, you can send an email to the museum curator asking if he can take a look at your find. Or you can go straight to an authenticator instead, such as the Civil War Antiques Preservation Society.