What is the Point of Metal Detecting?

This is kind of a silly question, but it is very important to have an answer to this question before you start your life long addiction to treasure hunting. Once the treasure bug bites you, it can be really difficult to shake it. Your significant other may even get upset with you because you are spending all of your free time hunting for treasure. Just make sure to bring home all the jewelry you dig up and everything should be fine.

We all want to start metal detecting for the same reason. We want to find buried treasure. This treasure could be old relics, old coins, modern coins, lost jewelry or lost caches. If you put a little bit of time and effort into metal detecting, you will be able to find all of this and more, but knowing why you want to start metal detecting will help you determine what type of metal detector is best for you.

There are hundreds of different metal detectors on the market today. Choosing which one is
right for you is probably the most complicated thing about metal detecting. There are machines
that are made for specific purposes.

For instance, if your interest is to find older coins, then you would be better off with a machine
that was designed for coin shooting. If you want to find gold nuggets, then you are better off
with a machine that was designed for finding gold nuggets. If you want to find a clown, then
you should stop reading this book and go to the circus. I hope you get my point. There are metal
detectors for just about every type of metal and style of metal detecting. Owning the right
machine makes a world of difference.

You may be saying to yourself, “I want to be able to find everything. I want to find old coins,
lost jewelry, relics, and gold nuggets.” We all want to be able to find everything, and luckily there are machines on the market that are multi-purpose. These machines have been designed to help you locate all sorts of treasure, and most of them work as advertised.

The main thing to remember is this. Your new hobby is supposed to be fun. Don’t over complicate things by getting a machine that has a huge learning curve. You will quickly lose interest. The more time that you have to spend learning how to use a metal detector, the less time you will be able to spend digging up buried treasures.

If you don’t already own the machine, my advice to you would be to start simple. Work your way towards a more expensive machine with all the bells and whistles. Get a taste for what metal detecting is really about before you start spending a lot of money on something that is going to collect dust. You may quickly find out that you don’t really like digging up pull tabs and all the other garbage that you have to dig up to get to the good targets.

As of this writing, metal detectors have come a long way, but many of them still can’t determine some of the most common trash from some of the most sought after buried treasures.

They are getting close, but they are not quite there yet.

Digging up trash is just part of the metal detecting game. You can use your machine to help you ignore the trash, but you could be passing up potentially good targets. I will talk about this more later on.

For every piece of garbage you dig up, you are one step closer to finding some very valuable
buried treasure. I didn’t believe that I could find a single item that would pay for my most
expensive metal detector, but I have. I have done this on several occasions actually, and it is
an amazing feeling when you dig up an extremely valuable treasure.

In many ways valuable treasure is a lot like trash. What I consider to be a valuable treasure, other people might consider to be junk. I often get asked, “Have you found any treasure with that machine?” My reply is always the same. “Well that depends on what you consider to be treasure.” You might find more value in an old World War II relic than a gold ring. Value is relative.