Metal Detecting

Just wondered if anyone else likes to go metal detecting....Wife and I are big fans of it...Like the commericals say "It is the hobby that pays for itself"



Actually it is a good hobby for someone that scraps....We pulled a whole bags worth of cans out of the ground during one trip...Other detectorists that were around said we found a bunch of junk but to me it is just like finding money.

Of course finding gold, silver and regular clad is also great....We have yet to find gold but I have found an old Barber dime and a silver ring that just happened to have my wife's birth stone in it (so it was confiscated before I could sell it on Ebay LOL)

This is something I have wanted to do for years. So about a week ago I baught one. Just waitng for the snow to clear and I am off to see what lies below.

I have had some good luck with mine. 9 gold rings, a gold chain and a gold cross. Along with some indian head cents and a barber dime. Other silver too. I was able to find the owner of three of the rings. 2 of those were wedding bands and one was a class ring. That was even better than the gold content.

Beaches are a good place for those. I remember when I was a kid, in the Bahamas for vacation, Dad and I combed the beaches there in the morning, would come back with hundreds of various coins and jewelry.

Originally Posted by j&jscrap

This is something I have wanted to do for years. So about a week ago I baught one. Just waitng for the snow to clear and I am off to see what lies below.

I know the feeling....We had a lot of snow this year and then the flooding started so I have spent a lot of my free time cleaning up after the water damage....But my detector is ready and waiting for me to get out there.

Originally Posted by rca987

Beaches are a good place for those. I remember when I was a kid, in the Bahamas for vacation, Dad and I combed the beaches there in the morning, would come back with hundreds of various coins and jewelry.

Beach combing is great....I always loved hunting beaches because it is much easier to dig through sand than it is through standard soil. There are lots of treasures that can be found beneath the sand.

Originally Posted by j&jscrap

This is something I have wanted to do for years. So about a week ago I baught one. Just waitng for the snow to clear and I am off to see what lies below.

Sweet, what kind of detector did you get? I use two different units depending on the situation...I have one Bounty Hunter and one Minelab.

Just started it last year. Found 1 silver ring and 1 gold. Also found a merc. It's one of the greatest hobbies I've ever had!

I got a Treasure Cove. I know nothing about metal detectors. It had good reviews. Looking forward to going out with the kids and finding some treasure.

Originally Posted by j&jscrap

I got a Treasure Cove. I know nothing about metal detectors. It had good reviews. Looking forward to going out with the kids and finding some treasure.

You have a good machine....I am sure that you will find a lot of great stuff with that machine.

I wanted to offer a little trick that my wife and I have come up with....If you happen to have an old rock tumbler sitting around (or you can pick one up pretty cheap on the internet) you can use it to clean your modern coins.....We found out that banks (especially in Indiana) are pretty picky about dirty coins being brought in because they say it jams up their machine....So we take out the rock tumbler, toss in the coins, a little Comet and some water and let them tumble overnight. By morning they are nice and clean and ready to cash in.

Originally Posted by ComputerScrapper

I wanted to offer a little trick that my wife and I have come up with....If you happen to have an old rock tumbler sitting around (or you can pick one up pretty cheap on the internet) you can use it to clean your modern coins.....We found out that banks (especially in Indiana) are pretty picky about dirty coins being brought in because they say it jams up their machine....So we take out the rock tumbler, toss in the coins, a little Comet and some water and let them tumble overnight. By morning they are nice and clean and ready to cash in.

Keep in mind though, if you're taking it back to the bank then this is ok. If you take it to a coin shop or try and sell it though, don't clean it.

Originally Posted by Insanity

Keep in mind though, if you're taking it back to the bank then this is ok. If you take it to a coin shop or try and sell it though, don't clean it.

Right, anything old and valuable should never be cleaned. We use the rock tumbler for modern clad coinage only.

I've been metal detecting for around 9 years now. I have a Garrett GTAx 550. I love the thing. And yes over time it has paid itself off several times over. I found that the cheap rock tumblers don't clean very good. I bought one of the better ones that are made of rubber and are belt driven. Spent about $70 for it

Any good places to go when you don't live near a beach? lol I'm a land-locked upstate NY'er.

Originally Posted by Saroro

Any good places to go when you don't live near a beach? lol I'm a land-locked upstate NY'er.

We started out hunting in public parks....Of course it is best to check with local law enforcement before doing so, but parks have been good to us over the years and they are generally great for a person just starting out in the hobby. I used my own back yard to get a feel for the machine and learned how to dig without doing any damage to the ground and so on.

Originally Posted by Saroro

Any good places to go when you don't live near a beach? lol I'm a land-locked upstate NY'er.

If I was you, I would look up old battlefields and whatnot up there. The chances of finding something may be low, but I would love to find an old musket ball or something.

DYODD on laws regarding that though...

Also, you don't need a beach for people to go swimming. That old pond out yonder may have just been a huge hot spot 50 years ago where everyone in the county gathered to cool off on a hot summer day. Don't think about where the people are now, you need to think about where they were before.

Look for old drive in theatres. They alwas had swing sets in front of them where kids would play and lose their change from their pockets. And so on....

Old churches and gathering places such as that make a great place to hunt as well....A long time dectorist once told me that the way that pants were made during the horse and buggy era made it so the change in the pockets of men rolled to the top when they were riding to where ever they were going...As such the men would step down out of the buggy and their change would fall in the grass or what not. Old churches have been good to us and the pastors or caretakers are usually super nice and ready to let you hunt.

But a word of caution....The places that you would drive by and dream about hunting may turn out to be a dud....There was this old one room school house near where we used to live and we used to drive by it all the time...I dreamed of getting my detector around there and finally a few years later I was given the chance and I STRUCK OUT....I did not find anything other than scrap metal in the ground...