Metal Detector Hunter – My Story
Metal detecting is a great hobby. Years ago, in the early 70’s, I was in a barbershop waiting to get a haircut and they had some treasure magazines on the table. As I looked through the pages, it showed all these guys with their metal detectors showing off all the gold bars, coins, and other artifacts they had found. Well that’s all it took to get me hooked. After getting my hair cut, I ran to the local bookstore and bought all the treasure hunting and metal detector magazines I could find.
After I got home, I read the front and back of all the magazines twice. My wife came over to see what I was doing, she gave me one of those looks and walked away from her, what does she know. OK Now what kind of metal detector to buy? As I look through these metal detecting magazines, there were many to choose from. There are so many different styles of metal detectors, some cheap, some ask for a second mortgage.
Anyway, I’m going the cheap metal detector route. After as hard as this can be, wait for a beep and dig up some treasure. I go to my local Wal-Mart with dollar signs in my eyes and dreams of being in one of those magazines. Well I got my new metal detector for only forty bucks and headed home. Take it out of the box, start reading the instructions, here comes the wife again, look, shake your head and walk away from her, go do your makeup, you scare me.
After reading the instructions and setting up my metal detector with the only knob it had, I was ready to find some treasure. We lived in a pretty old house, so I thought there might be some good stuff buried in the lawn. After about four hours of swinging this thing around and hearing every kind of beep imaginable, I figured my house was built on a landfill. My metal detector finds cans, nails, aluminum foil, and rusty iron. How could this be not a red penny.
Now my neighbor sees me and comes to see what I was doing since my garden seems to have been bombarded with all the holes. I show him my metal detector (which he didn’t even know existed) and he asks me what I was doing. I explained the best I could about metal detecting and he seemed impressed. So he reads the instructions and we’re gone for another hour. Same results, rubbish. Okay, I show my neighbor the magazines he had bought and he takes them home. Take a look at my poor yard, clean up all the finds from my metal detector, go inside, have a beer and try to figure out what went wrong.
A few hours later, my neighbor returns glassy-eyed, excited, and blabbering over metal detectors. Boy is he hooked. He starts to tell me that he just read all the magazines and that the metal detector I just bought is junk. That made me feel really good. Anyway, he says we partner up and buy a better metal detector. We’ll split everything we find.
We decided on a Whites metal detector, we spent about two hundred and fifty dollars for the unit. Alright, this has assigned more bells and whistles than my one button. The instructions are more detailed and tell you what to listen for and how deep the object can go and how to dig without destroying the garden, great. We started in her yard as my wife still wasn’t amused by what she did to ours.
Alright, here we go. About ten minutes into the search we get a signal, we dig it up and down and hold a room. Wow, you thought we just won the lottery. Alright, this was good, our metal detector was doing what it was supposed to do, finding treasure. Three hours later we had found about sixty five cents and a wheat penny from 1943. Well that’s all it took for the wheat penny it was like gold other than history who lost it how long has it been buried , etc.
Now my neighbor remembers that one of his friends used to be a newspaper boy back in the day. We go to his house and explain our new hobby, metal detecting. He thinks we’re crazy, but he agrees to let us hunt. Are you ready? Five minutes and a good sign we unearthed a permanent freedom half. Well, his friend thought we’d gone crazy the way we yelled it. We continued hunting until dark, our metal detecting findings for that day included: permanent liberty half, three quicksilver head dimes, five roosevelt dimes, four wash quarters and eleven pennies wheat. Not bad for beginners. Most of the finds were about three inches deep.
We continue to use this same metal detector for the next several months. Visiting relatives we haven’t seen in years not just to see them, but because they lived in some older houses and wanted to hunt in their yards. We did pretty well with our metal detector finds; in fact, one of the relatives had lost a wedding ring years ago and he guided us to the approximate place where he thought she had lost it.
About half an hour later, yes you guessed it, we found the ring. I don’t think any of us have ever seen so many tears of joy, it made us feel good and we got a great steak dinner for our effort. Metal detecting had gotten into our blood and we were on a huge high.
Now we both continue to read books and magazines on metal detecting. We share ideas and thoughts about new places to hunt. At one point we both agreed that we needed to purchase our own individual metal detectors. We had shared this one for a long time with good results. We finally agreed to sell the one we had split the profit on and get new ones. After doing some research, we both settled on a hip-mounted Whites metal detector (prevents arms from firing). I can’t remember the model, maybe 6000 Di, but we both spent a little over six hundred dollars on our units. During our research, we discovered that by wearing headphones we could hear those faint signals from deeply buried treasure. Also, we were now equipped with big old Bowie knives to cut our plugs, instead of a garden tool. It made my wife happy as we had broken everything she had. Oh, now we had bags to put our finds in, keep dirt out of our pants pockets.
These metal detectors had all the bells and whistles, deep depth identification and best target identification, 8″ search coil, and could easily pick out desirable targets from trash areas and handle harsh ground conditions much better. The Curve Learning on these metal detectors was hard but with trial and error we figured them out pretty quickly Now that we had some top of the line metal detectors we decided to go back and revisit the spots we had already hunted the ground with coins No could be alive we had missed so many finds with our old metal detector I guess new technology is from spring to late fall we hunted every minute we had available I must say we hunted in every possibly spot we could find .
Living on the east coast old man winter kicks in and slows down our metal detecting. Hey look, spring is here, grab our detectors and let’s go. Wait a minute, the neighbor has an idea, let’s try underwater metal detection. What are you crazy I said? He says no, he did some reading on it over the winter and with what we know now it would be easy to do. OK convinced me. Now, for some reason, we’re going to a Garrett underwater metal detector. We do our best in this case, wetsuit, boots, weight belt and shovel to collect the loot. We may have thought we were going diving. It was basically the same concept anyway and hunting on the ground was just a lot slower. Digging underwater and not being able to see where to dig is difficult. In the water we placed long sticks to establish a kind of grid to know where we had hunted. The first few times it was slow, our finds consisted of some newer coins, reeds, tins and lead sinkers.
We went and did some research on an old pond and found that it had been a popular swimming spot years ago. I got permission from the owner (very important) and off we went. It was a crisp fall morning and I had better ideas than jumping in the water and swinging my metal detector. This was a small pond and I thought it wouldn’t take long. About half an hour into the hunt I get a good signal, I pick it up on a silver quarter, great. My neighbor yells above sight, he brings an old class ring. This looks promising. Now I don’t feel bad about being out in the cold. Another sign to pick it up and as the bottom sediment washes away I see a flash of gold and diamonds. Good grief, it’s a wedding ring, and with a big diamond. Well, I start yelling at my neighbor to come see what he found. Now they were excited. We stay there for about four hours, on days when metal detecting finds: my diamond ring, several silver coins, a gold necklace, and some sinkers. My neighbor: the three graduation rings, one of gold metal, another of silver metal and some silver coins. This was our best day in our metal detecting hobby.
Winter is back now and my endeavors have changed along with a new job. As spring rolls around, I realize I don’t have time for metal detecting anymore, and besides, we’re moving. My neighbor feels bad for me, but he mentions what a great time we had during two years of metal detecting together. We moved and I no longer have time to dedicate myself to my hobby. To my neighbor continues, he joins a metal detector club and in a very short time he becomes the president of this club. I see him from time to time and he still hunts. He showed me one of his greatest finds, a small bag with five gold Indian head coins that he found in an old picnic area. I sold everything of value he had found over the years, including my metal detector.
He had accumulated a small treasure over the years; I sold for the sum of twelve hundred dollars for my metal detecting findings. My wife, well, she was very happy when I showed her that diamond ring, she still has it to this day. She went and had it appraised for fifteen hundred dollars. The good news is that I am retiring soon, guess what my hobby will be, metal detecting.